Personal Rapid Transit

Justin Corfield

The idea of personal rapid transit (PRT), in which there would be podcars or the like that would be able to transport people to and from work, as well as to and from shops, was first raised with the expansion of a number of European and North American cities in the 1890s. However, it was not until 1953 that Donn Fichter, a U.S. city transportation planner, came up with a viable means of implementing it, writing a book, Individualized Automatic Transit and the City , which was published in 1964. Two years later, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development started collecting information to see whether a system of PRT could be developed that would be different from public transport. Essentially, its aim was to replace cars with people having the ability to travel in a form of public transport, but alone or in family groups, and so avoid ...

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