Warner Center (Los Angeles San Fernando Valley) PRT circulator sketch concept

First sketch: January 2011, concept updated November 2011

ULTra is a battery-driven, 200-mpg-equivalent, elevated personal rapid transit (PRT) system with many four-person vehicles. First passenger operation at  London Heathrow Airport began in 2010, serving Terminal 5. Working as circulator transit for office parks, airports, universities, and other major activity centers, ULTra is faster than a car. In these applications, ULTra makes carpooling, Orange Line busway, Northridge Metrolink, Metro bus routes (150, 161, 164, 244, 245, 645, 901, etc), and Amtrak more effective, by solving the "last mile problem." PRT also enables longer bike commutes and shopping trips. A three-minute youtube video of ULTra can be viewed here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7PyUQuWmt2M. Peer-reviewed market research for two San Francisco Bay Area transit-served major job centers, Palo Alto's Stanford Research Park (SRP) and Pleasanton's Hacienda Business Park, forecasts a PRT-induced commuting mode reduction from more than 80% single occupancy vehicle (SOV) down to 45% SOV. In these two studies, carpooling increased to more than 30% and commuter rail transit increased beyond 15%. Such commuting shift shifts acres of parking for higher use.

As of October 2011, the PRT Industry has three established manufacturers with four customers. A two-page brochure developed by the three PRT manufacturers can be found here:  http://www.cities21.org/cms/Vendor_Neutral_US_PRT_Desc_Oct2011.pdf

A Warner Center PRT system should be branded with a local or regional transit operator, and should seamlessly share fare media and ticketing / fare gate interface

A PRT circulator might possibly have 22 stations, 7 miles of one-way guideway, and a capital cost of approximately $112M (at $16M per one-way mile). A faster-than-a-car PRT circulator follows the Phase IV 1993 Warner Center Specific Plan, that called for an internal Warner Center circulator. A PRT circulator can easily handle more than 20,000 passenger trips per day. A rough sketch is provided below. It is likely that multiple modifications will improve this sketch (such as east-west crossing guideway on Oxnard or Erwin).

High resolution satellite imagery showing 200 meter walking radius:

Right click on this image and open image in a new window for 2,000 x 2,000 resolution

Relevant PRT Quotes

• "We've concocted a system where local trips take an auto. That's our biggest tragedy. Streetcars, such as those used in Portland's Pearl District, and elevated people movers, like those in downtown Miami, are moving people from rail stations to their final destinations. But a new concept, PRT, may help revolutionize urban transportation, providing a cost-effective way to get people from train stations to where they need to go." - Peter Calthorpe, co-founder, Congress for New Urbanism.

• One of the advantages of a PRT network "is that it offers a lot of flexibility. It's much less expensive than traditional transit. It doesn't serve the same needs as high-speed rail or BART metro. It's a complement to those systems," Laura Stuchinksy, Sustainability Officer, City of San Jose Department of Transportation.

• "All the advantages of New Urbanism - its compact land saving density, its walkable mix of uses, and its integrated range of housing opportunities - would be supported and amplified by a circulation system that offers fundamentally different choices in mobility and access. Smart Growth and new Urbanism have begun the work of redefining America's twenty-first century development paradigms. Now it is time to redefine the circulation armature that supports them. It is short sighted to think that significant changes in land-use and regional structure can be realized without fundamentally reordering our circulation system. We've been developing TOD without the T for far too long.  PRT is the T." - Peter Calthorpe.

• In summer of 2010, Los Angeles City Councilmembers Koretz and Rosendahl passed a motion requesting consideration of ULTra for application in Los Angeles. This motion arose as an outcome of Councilman Koretz’s citizen Transportation Task Force.
• Warner Center is "fired up" over "effective mass transit, sustainable infrastructure, park-once concepts, walkable streets, and great neighborhoods." The Summer 2008 Woodland Hills Warner Center Neighborhood Council event "Destiny of the West Valley" drew over 300 people to a standing room only crowd. "Bart Reed, Executive Director of the Transit Coalition, offered transit innovations and options that included people movers, horizontal elevators, and circulators to make getting out of the car a viable choice."
• "Councilmember Koretz is always looking for ways to address traffic congestion ...  . That’s why he introduced a motion to study how Personal Rapid Transit (PRT) might be used to move people around Los Angeles ... and connect ... to the City’s transit system. PRT uses small automated vehicles on fixed guideways to transport people to their destinations. Some transit advocates are passionate about this technology, pointing out that it will soon be deployed in London’s Heathrow Airport. The technology is under serious consideration in other cities here in California and around the world, including in San Jose where city officials are evaluating various PRT proposals for possible linking of their international airport with local businesses, hotels and other regional transit options." http://www.simplesend.com/simple/textlink.asp?NewsletterID=48921&SI=&E=&S=457&N=48921&Format=HTML#prt

Transforming Office Parks into Transit Villages

The US Environmental Protection Agency studied "Transforming Office Parks into Transit Villages" with PRT. One summary paper from the EPA study follows: