Camden County By Jon Broscious and Paige Gillette

A list of the latitude and longitudes of the exact major stops of the various existing transport services found in Camden County can be found below:

There are over 300 schools in Camden County and over 4000 industries, offices, and businesses in Camden that attract more than 500,000 Camden travelers daily. A list of the major attractions such as malls, museums, sport centers, and other leisure attractions like theaters and skating rinks, along with their corresponding city locations, can be found in the table below:

The mock PRT network design for Camden County for this project included 750 stations and 150 interchanges making 900 nodes, providing a 1:6 interchange to station ratio. While the exact coordinates of the rail stations represented in the table above were not used directly in the mock PRT network system, it is important to note that the locations of these stations were taken into consideration in order to yield the most efficient network design possible. The structure of the mock PRT network can be explained as a modified honeycomb-type network with more of a straight line type of station/interchange interaction towards the northwest of Camden County where there is more production/attraction density.

With a success rate of 90.36% of total productions supplied (459868 productions, represented by yellow and reflecting business areas) and 94.81% total attractions supplied (693095 attractions, represented by red and reflecting residential areas), the mock PRT network for Camden County can be regarded as quite successful. These generated numbers also provide that the total productions of a 100% ideal PRT network would include 508939 productions and 731030 attractions. Our mock PRT network had a total of 1153298 productions and attractions; an estimation of 4 trips per person can be made in Camden County. An important side note is that the U.S. Census bureau information was used nearly flawlessly in generating numbers for residential capacity, density, and thus, attractions, and there was deviation in the number of productions generated because not all businesses were found nor able to be geocoded on Google Earth thus providing a very rough, low estimate in the number of businesses and in the number of people being attracted to certain businesses (i.e. in the number of productions in general).

The cost for every station was calculated to be 2 million dollars per station. At 5 million dollars per mile of guideway, and with 730.8807 km of guideway, which converts to 454.15 miles of guideway, the cost of all guideway would be 2.27 billion dollars. At $100,000 dollars a vehicle and 1.5% of the fleet driving cars with a 90% or more covered PRT network, 100K*.015*517K = results in a 775.5 million dollar contribution for vehicles. Thus, for stations, guideway and vehicle fleet, expense per person would be (750*2 million)+(2.27 billion) +(7.75 million)/517,000 = 7307 dollars. At 4 trips per person per day, the cost per trip would be 7307/(4*365) days per year= $5 per trip per person. With 750 stations, over 450 miles of guideway, and 775.5 million dollars in vehicle travel, this would prove to be a very expensive project.

In conclusion, clearly, while a mock PRT network of this sort would appear ideal in transporting persons throughout Camden County, the sheer effort in trying to transport nearly 90% of its inhabitants throughout the county appears fiscally impossible to achieve by the government due to the significant cost of rail and due to relatively few trips taken per person. However, due to the density of Camden, particularly around the city of Camden near Philadelphia, such a mock PRT network appears achievable and possibly economically viable down the road; but when Camden County becomes rural as it comes closer to its southeast corridor, such a mock PRT network does not prove to be viable in an efficiency sense. While the future may hold a mock PRT network of this sort being the most efficient and economically viable alternative to travel and transport of Camden County’s citizens, such a future in Camden County’s PRT network still seems years away. Thus, the system in place, with such transit systems like the PATCO high speed line and the River Line, combined with the NJ Transit and Bus system to go along with automobile travel, appears economically to be the most viable solution still at this time although such a mock PRT network system that was created could cut down on factors like travel time (lack of traffic on highways), environmental damages, etc.
*Note that many of the data figures in this report and the two maps of Camden County were drawn from Wikipedia.

**The map of the NJ transit system was found on njtransit.com.

***The brief description of the various transport systems in Camden County also came from the 2005 class report on Camden County and the layout of much of the paper was also influenced by the 2005 report.
Total guideway length: 730.88007 in km

Productions: 459868 supplied of 508932, 90.36%

Attractions: 693095 supplied of 731032, 94.81%

Total Station: 750, Total Interchanges: 125

Avg Walk Attr: 0.1369km

Avg Walk Prod: 0.2303km