Personal rapid transit capacity evaluation for inner-city: A detailed micro-simulation study

This paper describes a detailed, discrete-event, micro-simulation study of an inner-city personal rapid transit (PRT) system, for the purpose of evaluating the capacity of such a system and the effect of various parameters on this capacity. While former studies considered various parameters, most considered only a partial set of the overall set of parameters considered by this paper. In many cases these parameters were treated differently from the model proposed here, which thus provides valuable insights for future research. This evaluation is crucial for justifying construction of such a system, and for judging its feasibility and may provide an initial step towards creating a PRT manual, similar to the Transit Capacity and Quality of Service Manual (TCQSM). The complex operation and structure of the problem suggests micro-simulation as a viable tool for this study. This necessitates tailoring a solution using general simulation software rather than a transportation-oriented tool. The simulation evaluated the capacity under three major scenarios related to passenger arrival characteristics. The results show that the capacity is not sensitive to pod velocity, nor to acceleration/deceleration rates, but is sensitive to the number of pods and suggests an optimal pod quantity.