Would More Drivers Use Mass Transit if It Mimicked Private Cars?

[thelakelander]

Personal Rapid Transit is probably best described as a hybrid between the private car and public transit, with some more familiar elements of the taxi and elevator thrown in. Picture, in short, a pod car. Engineers and researchers have been fantasizing for several decades now about the concept, which would personalize public transit in small vehicles – perhaps running on or hanging from an elevated track – that would transport you straight to your destination without any of the stops and delays of a bus route, or without the cost of a taxi ride.

In concept, an automated PRT vehicle would hold four people or fewer, mimicking the private, quiet ride of a car. Relative to all of our existing alternatives, there'd be very little emissions, no traffic congestion, no loud teenagers or offensive odors. It's the kind of public transit – again, in theory – that holdouts in private single-occupancy cars on the highway might actually be willing to ride.

full article: http://www.citylab.com/cityfixer/2013/01/would-more-drivers-use-public-transit-if-it-mimicked-private-cars/4391/

[KenFSU]

I have always really liked the PRT concept, but I can't imagine a) how obscenely expensive it would be, b) how it would function in a dense, urban environment. To prevent overload, feeding into a larger mass transit system would be a necessity. On the poll question itself, I think mass transit ridership is more a factor of convenience and opportunity cost than it is of the actual mode of transportation. Time and money are precious. In cities where mass transit is both cheaper and more time-efficient than driving a personal vehicle (NYC, for example), ridership is through the roof. In cities where it will almost always be quicker to jump into your personal vehicle and drive from point A to point B (like Jacksonville),  mass transit ridership will be mostly utilized by those who can't afford to drive themselves. In my opinion, mass transit will explode when either a) its associated time-efficiency approaches that of personal driving, or b) personal driving becomes obscenely expensive, either through fuel prices, taxes, tolls etc. It's all about where that tipping point between money and time is for each individual.

[strider]

Science Fiction authors  have sometimes handled this by making the assumption that the individual would still purchase the actual car but the system would engage with it and control it to the intended destination. Perhaps that would be the best of both worlds.  It seems to reduce the social expense (keeps it at where it is today - a roadway of sorts), it gives a sense of individual freedom and actually makes sense from the standpoint that once you arrive at a set destination within the system, the individual and privately owned car can complete the journey if need be. In large cities where public transportation is king, this would also seem to blend in better, simply replacing the congestion on the current roadways with a more organized chaos.

[spuwho]

Du Page County, Illinois looked at this back in the 80's.

2 reasons it came up.

-Permanent transit funding model was established
-Surveys showed large aversion to using buses

So alternatives were sought. They even talked to Disney about their monorail. They finally spent the most time on a PTS that used a cable system hung from concrete poles.

All was going well until they did some surveys and the system failed to attract for a few reasons.

-No bathroom button to express the pod to the closest potty (mostly for kids)
-No way to guarantee the cleanliness of each pod that pulls up
-The system required universal access in the entire county to keep effectiveness high.
-Unclear how to abate crime in and around the pods in remote locations

There were other issues and they finally threw in the towel and went with a graduated bus arrangement mostly dictated by Metra schedules and access to major malls. As far as I can tell it is unchanged today.

The issue came up again briefly when the county looked at the idea of an express PTS using a track system going to and from O' Hare Airport. That died when the City of Chicago determined that having every county build their own PTS was unmanageable and the fact they wanted 100% control and spend no money of their own sent it to the planning graveyard.