Incremental Improvements to the Morgantown PRT

This paper presents modifications to the existing Morgantown, West Virginia, Personal Rapid Transit (PRT) system architecture that will further modularize the design and allow for more cost efficient construction and operation. The major cost of any elevated transit system is the guideway and station infrastructure. The Morgantown PRT, built in the 1970s, required custom designed guideways and stations to allow for inductive loop communications, presence sensing, power distribution, and switching. The design architecture presented herein alters the vehicle control, allowing for additional onboard computing, sensing and communication. The communication and sensing subsystems rely on wireless and non-contact technologies. Such modifications to the vehicles have a two-fold effect. Switching to non-contact sensing and wireless technologies decouples the design of the guideway from command and control system allowing for the economy of standard bridge components. Secondly, more intelligent vehicles with some autonomous navigation capabilities could enable vehicles to perform relatively complex turn movements within stations. This would allow all berths within a station to service any directional demand. Changes in the distribution of trip demand would no longer impact station layout. More robust turning capability could also reduce the station size — thus conserving on real estate and cost. This paper identifies and discusses proposed modifications to the vehicle control system and their impact on the performance and operations of the Morgantown PRT system.