Camden County

PRT in Camden County



A PRT network in Camden would be able to serve the county extremely well. The northwestern part of the county will reap the majority of the benefits of the expansive system, as it is the mostly densely populated and served by the most stations, while the southeastern section will also be served quite well by the network even though it is less populated. Approximately 90% of the county is within 3/8 of a mile of a station, and once they arrive at a station a PRT car will pick them up and take them anywhere they please within the glorious state of New Jersey. In Camden, there are a total of 312 stations and 239 interchanges, connected by 330.55 miles of track, which will hopefully connect the 500,000 people of Camden.

An example of how the track will be laid out is given below.

As you can see, there are a series of loops going around smaller communities that are connected to each other with smaller loops made up of stations located in between the larger loops. There are also numerous cut-throughs in the larger loops so t hat you don’t have to make the full loop in order to get to the other side of the community. I think this sort of network will be extremely efficient in transporting passengers around the county, because there is a minimum of complicated interchanges where traffic will inevitably congest flow. So, if everyone is moving in the same direction within a loop, there shouldn’t be many traffic problems.
One of my first priorities in constructing this network of PRT track was making sure that there were stations at basically every school, hospital, public park, golf course, and mall. This alone made up more than 100 stations and covered a large part of the county already. From that point, I tried to fill in the gaps using the 3/8 mile guideline and construct the PRT network in an efficient and organized manner. Not every location in the county has a station within 3/8 of a mile, because it is not always worth the cost of $1M to put a station on a farm to serve one family. Also, I tried to avoid putting lots of track through parks and just locating the stations around entrances.

A very important part of the PRT system will be to serve the schools as a replacement for the bus system that has traditionally been used throughout America.

Almost one-third of the Camden population is enrolled in school, from nursery school to middle school all the way to graduate school. Making sure that these students are able to get to school on time every day will be a top priority to ensure that they receive their education.
Perhaps an even greater priority (not to put a damper on education) is allowing the 225,000 commuters to get to work every day. The distribution of travel time to work is

provided in this table and ideally, the PRT network would be able to reduce the mean travel time of 28 minutes. Even if the travel time was not decreased, the PRT system would improve travel merely by the fact that travel stress would practically disappear. You would enter the destination of your travels when you got on the PRT car and you could sit quietly and read a book or work on your laptop in a safe, stress less environment.

Service to housing is the top priority because in order to get to work and school, the PRT stations have to be close to where the residents of Camden county actually live. There are roughly 180,000 households in the county, the great majority of which are in the extensively serviced area in the northwest half of Camden. In these areas, the stations are closer together than the 3/8 mile guideline to provide easier access to the residents and to offer a good incentive to using the PRT system instead of driving.
Another integral part of the Camden county PRT network would be the integration of the PRT system with current forms of public transportation going to Philadelphia. Since the PRT would only be in New Jersey, it would most likely not be able to cross the river into Pennsylvania, so it is very necessary to have PRT stations going to train stations so that commuters can still get to Philadelphia easily without having to drive to the train station or ferry port. The bus system however, since it is very limited, would most likely be cancelled, with the superior PRT network replacing it entirely.
The PRT network would service all of the 20 parks of Camden county as well as the many golf courses and various other forms of entertainment.
Value of PRT in Camden
The potential value of the PRT network in Camden is immense. Based on the number of stations, interchanges and miles of track, the entire PRT system would cost slightly less than $1 Billion to build, assuming that a station, interchange and mile of non-urban track would each cost $1M and a mile of urban track would cost $3M. With over 500,000 people in the county, this comes out to about $2,000 per person in the county, which is extremely low compared to different counties in New Jersey. Despite this cost, the potential benefit is tremendous. The city of Camden would be entirely revitalized by a solid transportation network that offered reliable service. Travel within Camden and the rest of New Jersey would become much less plagued with traffic and the environmental costs associated with driving would be practically eliminated. There seem to be an endless number of positive externalities associated with the PRT system, including, but not limited to: being better for the environment, decreasing automobile accidents which result in both traffic and human loss, saving time, alleviating stress associated with driving and getting lost, saving money by spending less on oil and car maintenance, which leads to spending more money on other goods and boosting the New Jersey economy immensely. It seems like the PRT system, although clearly decades away from being implemented, is a win-win situation for everyone involved, especially the state of New Jersey.

Directory: ~alaink -> Orf467F05 -> NJ%20PRT -> OriginalDesigns -> PRT05 Orf467F05
~alaink -> Tuesday, August 20, 2013
PRT05 Orf467F05 -> Southern New Jersey Summary
~alaink -> Atlantic County Paige Gillette and Jon Broscious
~alaink -> Personal Rapid Transit in Cape May County
~alaink -> Janney Montgomery Scott restaurant analyst Mark Kalinowski
~alaink -> Final Project Written Report
~alaink -> Camden County By Jon Broscious and Paige Gillette
~alaink -> Existing Transit Service patco high Speed Line
~alaink -> Prt proposal \chapter{Ocean County}