Several cities will try PRT

Several Swedish cities are interested in something called PRT. A series of localities just now possibly to try the new method of transport, small driverless vehicles that run on an elevated rail. (March 30, 2008)

"I believe that this is the future. We must look at alternative transport and I believe myself that this is a very good alternative," says Tommy Olsson, Karlskrona municipal commissioner, one who places hopes on PRT.

What will this provide Karlskrona?

A less noisy environment, less emissions, quieter and above all fast transportation.

Background Karlskrona information and map

The traffic problem in Karlskrona, with only one principle entrance to the peninsula-located city center, makes the city show interest for testing PRT.

Small vehicles run on an overhead rail at short intervals. At stations one orders one's own vehicle and keys in where one wants to go.

A test track is already in Uppsala, and city leaders have recently decided to also go forward with planning for a real system.

Also out in front is small Hofors. Together with a manufacturer's plan for a pilot track between the town center and the train station, says municipal commissioner Marie-Louise Dangardt.

"This one will see in a new time, at a small station there will be a great many people gathering at the same time. A flexible system where you ride there directly in your own vehicle, without following a set path. You get yourself a vehicle, tell it where you want to go, and go there without sharing the vehicle," she said.

At least ten places in the country have begun seriously discussing PRT, and in Hofors also finds Swedish Rail interested.

But the question is how realistic the hopes are.

"In certain small discrete places where one has large or moderate flow, then it may be useful, between various terminals and airports for example. But not as an entire substitute for buses -- or railways. That I have seriously studied myself," says Ragnar Hedström, traffic researcher with the Swedish National Road and Transport Institute (VTI).

Why not?

"It has a capacity problem. One requires a great many vehicles in this type of system and it is rather disturbance-sensitive if something should happen somewhere out on the lines. The knowledge is in itself worth testing, but afterward the scope of the reality is difficult to say."