Contribution of the personal rapid transit (PRT) systems to the road safety: A scenario-based comparative evaluation

Abstract

Though the number of "real ground" PRT projects are few, it can be possible to deduce some hypothetical safety conclusions. For the very optimist assumption that the control algorithms will only "allow" them to operate in non-collision mode on the network, the safety figures are re-evaluated for two urban settings: First (1) is the case where the urban design was fully recreated based on PRT system. The other (2) is the hypothetical PRT system would be embedded into the existing transportation system. The two cases of the safety measures and cost figures are compared to evaluate the opportunities and pitfalls by the application of a PRT system via the scenario analysis. By doing so, after description of the present situation, there comes the construction of possible alternative futures to compare with the present one. It can be deduced that, even if the safety figures of PRT system are hypothetical, PRT-based urban environments promise a lot in terms of safety levels (as far as 80 per cent) with, however, the expense of financial burden for the local government. Yet, for low-cost solution, PRT-embedded urban environments also provide promising results compared to "doing nothing" as far as 30 per cent reductions, in accidents in total and 44 per cent in deaths.