Local Mobility Using Advanced Transit

By Robert "Rob" Means

Test advanced transit with a pilot project that provides a critical crossing of Montague Expressway. Then, extend it into a BART circulator loop that helps people get to/from the BART station. As we add loops, a city-wide automated transit network (ATN) will emerge that saves residents gas money, chauffeuring time, and traffic frustration - while helping clean our air, reducing our dependence on foreign oil, and reducing our greenhouse gas emissions.

Neary twice as many Californias die from traffic pollution as from motor vehicle accidents. By converting to electric vehicles, we can reduce the pollutants that cause asthma, cancer and other health problems. By automating those vehicles and putting them on their own elevated pathway, we can reduce congestion and save money.

Traditional big-vehicle mass transit running in narrow corridors does not serve well the majority of Silicon Valley residents. Attaining the required level of housing density in Milpitas for cost-effective mass transit is impractical. However, attaining the required level of transit demand for cost-effective personal transit is possible.

Instead of Mass Transit, what we need is Smart Transit. Automated Transit Network (ATN) is an umbrella term that includes Personal Rapid Transit (PRT) and offers clean, quiet, responsive public transit with automated, non-stop service - available 24 hours a day. In addition to these service benefits, PRT costs far less to build and operate than other public transit options. ATNs are scalable from the smallest possible 2-station loop that bridges a barrier (creek, railroad tracks or freeway), through a small campus network and feeder to a BART transit hub, up to a network covering many square miles and connecting hundreds of stations.

Here in Milpitas, a PRT crossing of Montague Expressway will cost less than a standard steel-and-concrete pedestrian over-crossings (POC) - and provide a low-risk opportunity to test the technology. Success could lead to a BART circulator that serves the entire transit area, weaving together the six areas currently separated by various barriers. That could be followed by a citywide feeder to the Milpitas BART/LRT/bus transit hub that would dramatically increase local mobility without increasing the negative health effects of conventional automobiles. Community costs for fuel will drop because the electricity needed to propel an electric vehicle is 1/2 to 1/4 the price of gasoline. And more of the money we pay for electricity stays in the local economy, especially as more of us install PV panels on our roofs.

What was once called global warming, then climate change, is now a climate crisis. Dramatic reductions in CO2 emissions are required to avoid a rapid slide into very bad consequences. PRT could help reduce the 40% of our CO2 emissions that come from transportation.