Preliminary economic appraisal of personal rapid transit (PRT) and urban gondola feeder systems serving a university campus and its surrounding major attractions

Personal rapid transit (PRT) and urban gondolas are two types of driverless transit vehicles that are increasingly attracting attention as viable mass transit alternatives in urban environments. Both systems are identified with high reliability of travel time, as they have their own right of way and, thus, do not interact with vehicular traffic. They are also associated with environmental benefits, resulting from their low emissions, energy use, and noise pollution. The objective of this study is the investigation of the potential economic viability of the implementation a PRT feeder line linking the University of Calgary to its surrounding major attraction centres, compared to that of two types of urban gondola systems. The main focus of the research is the examination of the thresholds and feasibility of these emerging urban transit systems relative to certain important inputs, such as capital costs, ridership levels, and modal shift from other modes. The VISSIM microsimulation tool was used to simulate the operation of these systems to replicate more closely the on-demand nature of PRT and to get better estimates of the operating speed, reliability, and passengers waiting, boarding and alighting times for both types of examined systems. The project efficiency was analyzed given the calculated economic cash flow for a certain period (e.g., 30 years). The results indicate that the three examined systems differed widely in terms of their capital cost, maintenance and operating cost, capacity, and their anticipated benefits.