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Review of PRT Costing Studies - May 2004
A cost review by Rob Means. See original
document.
Estimating the
cost of a PRT system is relatively easy if one is
willing to settle
for a general "ball park" number within 20% of
actual
costs. Two primary methods for estimating costs suggest
themselves: 1) review the costs for whatever PRT prototypes
have been built,
and 2) find projects similar to PRT
in terms of size, weight, and
complexity. For purposes
of estimating the costs of PRT in
transit projections, the following
leads to a conclusion that PRT costs
between $10M/mile and $15M/mile.
Costs
of PRT prototypes
The Advanced
Transit
Association (ATRA) offers a good starting point with their
reports on
"Personal Automated Transportation: Status and
Potential of Personal
Rapid Transit". A table on page 89
of their Technology
Evaluation (dated January
2003) presents
cost estimates from PRT vendors. Of the 14 systems
reporting
cost estimates, four have actually built a prototype: Cybertran,
Frog
(CyberCab), Taxi 2000, and ULTra.
-
For those
four,
guideway costs range from $2.6M/mile for Taxi 2000 to $5.0M/mile for
Cybertran.
-
Assuming a
saturation
level of one vehicle every 100 feet (or 50 per mile of
guideway), vehicle
costs range from $2.1M/mile for Taxi 2000 to $8.0M
for Cybertran.
[Note that Cybertran vehicles carry 6-20
passengers while Taxi 2000 and
ULTra vehicles hold a maximum of 4
passengers. The smaller vehicles
and superstructure likely
account for the lower costs of both Taxi 2000 and
ULTra.]
-
As indicated in
the
"Additional component costs" on page 90, station costs
can range
from $100K to $500K per station. Stations would be
ADA compliant and
usually include elevators. Planning for two
stations per mile would
add, at most, $1M/mile to guideway costs.
-
Costs for
land
acquisition are excluded because public right-of-way (primarily
roadways) will be used. Due to the small footprint of each
supporting post (approximately 4 square feet every 60-90 feet) and
the
flexibility of routing, utility relocations will be minimal and
relatively
insignificant. Other costs might include modifying
buildings,
providing parking at stations, and enhancing aesthetic
features.
Adding an extra 10% for planning, environmental
studies, and management
seems reasonable.
In summary, full
costing for
these four systems can be expected to range from
$6.27M/mile to
$15.4M/mile. Bi-directional costs, which are
useful for comparison
to corridor-type transit systems, would be
$12.5M to
$31M/mile.
[ATRA's report,
"Personal Automated
Transportation: Status and Potential of
Personal Rapid Transit -- Technology
Evaluation (dated January 2003) can be found
at http://www.advancedtransit.org/pub/2002/prt/tech6.pdf]
Another data point
comes from a recent article in the Feb.
2004 "Mechanical Engineering
Design". The
ULTra system is estimated to cost $8-12M/mile
(one way).
Here's an excerpt from page 33:
In Cardiff,
a
half-mile test track for ULTra has been up and running since 2001.
Lowson and his team have taken to heart the lessons from Raytheon's
failure. "Raytheon didn't pay enough attention to the
infrastructure," Lowson said. "It got seriously oversize
and
overweight and therefore over cost. We've spent a lot of time
looking at
optimizing the infrastructure." For example, the
depth of the steel
guideway is only 18 inches, which saves on
material both in the guideway
itself and in the structures that
support it.
 "The
span-width ratio exceeds the normal
rule of thumb, but we can exceed
them because our loads are very
different," Lowson said.
"It's not a footbridge, and it wouldn't
work as a footbridge
because it's too thin. But it works as a PRT
guideway."
And unlike
Raytheon, which developed all the
technology for its system from
scratch, Lowson's team concentrated on
finding off-the-shelf parts to
build ULTra. Lowson's group built the
vehicles from automotive
industry parts, which enabled them to piggyback on
decades of
research. Consequently, Lowson says that ULTra has greater
reliability and lower costs than other transit systems.
As a result,
Lowson says he can deliver ULTra at a cost of between $8 million and
$12 million a mile, far cheaper than conventional light rail systems.
And in
comparison to relatively inexpensive solutions such as diesel
buses, ULTra
can theoretically carry far more people per hour. Based
on rider studies
conducted in Cardiff and on estimates of the
capacity of the line, the
system could deliver about 2,000 people
each hour among a dozen
stations.
[The Mechanical
Engineering Design article
entitled "Ready when you are?"
can be found at http://www.memagazine.org/medes04/readywhn/readywhn.html]
Taxi 2000, another
PRT vendor, expects to publicly announce their
cost/mile estimates
for their Skyweb Express system sometime in the summer
of 2004.
For an early, unofficial estimate, contact Jeral Poskey at
612-240-2729. Or
monitor their website (www.skywebexpress.com)
for the official announcement. Learn more about their guideway
and
other components at http://www.skywebexpress.com/150d_guideway.shtml.
  
Costs
of PRT-like Systems
According to the October
2002 issue of TeMPO published by the
Metropolitan Planning
Organization for the Indianapolis, IN,
region:
 The
Clarian People Mover is America's first privately owned transit
system to
operate over city streets. Each vehicle can seat 8
and stand another
19. A train-set includes 3 vehicles for a
total of 81 people.
Each fully automated trainset will travel
at up to 30 mph on rubber wheels
riding on pre-stressed concrete
guideways. Empty weight of each
trainset is 45,000 pounds.
[Note that each Skyweb Express cab weighs
only 1000 pounds.]
Even though a 1700" section of an 18" gas
main had to be
moved laterally 5 feet, the overall cost of the system was
only
$40M. The Clarion People Mover is 14,800 feet long (7,400-foot
long two-way guideway), or about $14.2m per one-way mile.
Operating costs are estimated at $900K per year (2.25% of
construction
cost). The project broke ground in May of 2001,
and the superstructure
was completely erected by mid-2002, right on
schedule. The system was
commissioned in the Spring of
2003. System capacity is 1800 riders per
hour with an expected
500,000 riders per year.
Although
most APM
systems run $20-30M/mile (world-wide estimate of systems in
development or recently completed), this one cost only
$14.2M/mile.
A large part of the difference can be attributed to
the smaller,
lighter design. However, the fact that the Clarion system
is
privately built (and therefore more financially accountable) may
explain a significant portion of the cost reduction.
[The
TeMPO
article entitled "Clarian People Mover" can be found on
page one at http://www6.indygov.org/indympo/pip/newsletter/tempo_se_10_02.pdf].
View other photos at http://www.sibelle.info/peoplemover/carpics711.htm.]
Another relevant
recent costing study was BART's Group Rapid
Transit Investigative
Study. Although GRT differs from PRT, an
independent GRT
costing provides a reasonable upper limit for PRT
costing.
In the BART study, one of the subs on the SFO people mover
came up
with costs for a 5-mile system for Cybertran's GRT system. The
guideway structure is rated to sit on the Oakland Airport fill and
withstand a big earthquake. Although the final report has not
been
finished, the consultant's version of the costing should be
available to
MTC from BART. Note that Cybertran vehicles
carry 6-20
passengers while Taxi 2000 and ULTra vehicles hold a
maximum of 4
passengers.
Another common
technology that
in many ways resembles PRT is amusement and
"roller coaster"
rides. Here's an excerpt from an
e-mail sent by Dick Gronning, a PRT
supporter:
 I
called S&S Mfg. that does roller coasters. Their smaller
track
can be had for $3.2 million a mile, which is about what Taxi 2000
says its track should be. However, S&S produced a track in
Japan
that looks very similar to the Taxi 2000 track and cost $7.1
million a mile
[see photo]. This track regularly takes twenty
riders to over 110 mph
with forces five times normal gravity.
This is a bit more than what
Taxi 2000 needs.
Then I talked to
Met-Con
Construction in Faribault about the price of stations.
The estimator
engineer said that a three car station would be $150 to
$200 thousand with
stairs and elevator. He said that a five car
station would be between
$400 and $500 thousand per station.
Taxi 2000 uses figures of $400 to
$600 thousand for stations.
A harder estimate
is the
cars. A small Ford Focus, or Chevy Malibu can be
purchased at about
$10 thousand, but these cars are manufactured at a
rate of 20 thousand a
month. They are also much more
complicated and have far more moving
parts than a Taxi 2000 car.
So, what could a car like Taxi 2000 with
only sixteen moving parts
and only produced at a rate of two thousand a
month really cost?
Taxi 2000 says that if they could get someone to
manufacture 2000
cars a month, the cost would be about $25 thousand, but if
they only
produced 1000 cars, the cost would go up to $30 thousand per
car.
Councilmember Dean
Zimmerman
has proposed a system for Minneapolis that has 31 miles of
track, 68
stations and probably can use about 2000 cars. I
calculated the cost
using the highest figures from the estimates
above and got $320.8 million,
or $10.3
million a mile.
Conclusion
Based on the above figures, one
can reliably
predict that fully costed PRT will run about $12.5M per
mile.
Utilizing a "fudge factor" of plus or minus 20%
gives us a cost
range of $10M/mile to $15M/mile. Although
somewhat higher than most
PRT estimates, this range provides an added
degree of confidence until an
actual system is deployed.
For purposes of estimating the costs
of PRT in transit projections, most
transit professionals accept a range
of $10M/mile to $15M/mile for
all economic costs
of putting into operation a PRT
system.
DOCUMENT# 1061
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