In the 1950s, Ocean County saw a wide degree of suburbanization. Being just 60 miles from New York City and 50 miles from Philadelphia, Ocean County became the perfect spot for city workers looking to raise a family, as well as retirees looking to get away from it all. These groups found immense solace in the wide stretch of sparsely populated, rural areas of the county.
Due in part to this continued population growth, a wide variety of other industries have sprung up in the county. In fact, Ocean County has seen some of the fastest growing employment numbers in the state for the past 10 years. Among these new industries, health care has taken the forefront as many large corporations have sought to set up large corporate headquarters, due to the lower land value and ready access to two of the nation’s largest cities.
One other important aspect to consider is Ocean County’s vast amount of environmentally protected open space. Much of the western part of the county contains large areas designated as state parks, wildlife refuges, and protected forests. In addition, the 20,000 acre Edwin B. Forsythe National Wildlife Refuge to the east and the 1,580 acres of protected farmland to the northwest provide a wide area of undeveloped, natural land.
Ocean County is 636.28 square miles and encompasses 33 separate municipalities. The 2006 census estimates the county’s population at around 553,251 in around 200,402 households, making it the fastest growing county in the state. The census shows that the population demographics of Ocean County are spread out fairly broadly. 28.10\% of households had children under the age of 18, 56.40\% were married couples, 9.20\% had a female householder with no husband present, and 31.20\% were non-families.
Interestingly, the working population of Ocean County consists of just over 200,000 individuals, and around 56\% of these workers work within the county borders. Contrarily, of the 133,000 persons employed within Ocean County, 85\% are residents living in the county. When coming up with a specifically tailored PRT system for the region, we used these metrics and the various overarching facts mentioned above to create a usable system that would serve the most people.
\section{Transportation Systems Overview}
Public transportation in Ocean County can be divided into the main 4 groups of air, bus, highway, and rail. Before PRT can be implemented, a brief overview of each of these systems already in place is necessary.
\subsection{Air}
The major mode of air travel within Ocean County is the Atlantic City Airport.
Although a secondary airport when compared to the relatively nearby international airports of Newark and Philadelphia, the Atlantic City Airport is also international, and is owned by the South Jersey Transportation Authority. Although not in Ocean City, the Atlantic City Airport provides services for many businesses located within the county. In addition, the county also has three smaller general airfields. The Ocean County Airpark is located in Berkeley Township and maintains a capacity of about 100 planes and hosts about 55,000 takeoffs a year, the majority of which are corporate flights. Airfield N12 at Lakewood and Eagle’s Nest Airport at West Creek maintain similar yearly statistics.
\subsection{Bus}
There are three main groupings of bus routes in Ocean County. Academy Bus LLC provides private bus service between Atlantic City and New York, with stops in various Ocean County municipalities. This charter service provides transportation for corporate events and a wide range of groups seeking recreation. New Jersey Transit, a public entity, provides the most comprehensive scheduled service within Ocean County. In addition, scheduled service is available to New York, Newark, Philadelphia, and a wide range of other major cities in New Jersey. Transfers are also available to Greyhound buses. Finally, the Ocean County Department of Transportation provides the “Ocean Ride” service. This includes 17 separate bus routes within Ocean County designed to connect key residential areas with popular destinations such as healthcare, shopping, and employment.
\subsection{Highways}
Car travel on major roads in Ocean County spans a wide range from county, statewide secondary, statewide, and interstate roads. County roads are delineated by the 600-series system, and include route 614 in the middle of the county. There are a few statewide secondary roads, designated as such by being part of the 500-series road system. These roads include 528 and 547 in the north, and 539 in the south. These county and state secondary roads provide a fairly useful circulatory system for travel to the more rural areas of the county. In addition, there are more major statewide highways such as route 9 (north-south) and route 70 (east-west). Both the 500-series roads and roads with lower designations continue throughout the state of NJ. The only major highway in the county is a stretch of the famous Garden State Parkway, which provides a coastal route from New York City all the way down to the southern tip of the state. The Garden State Parkway is a toll road, and provides the often-traveled route to the various seaside resorts for vacationers.
\subsection{Rail}
New Jersey Transit, a public entity, controls all personal rail service in the state of New Jersey. Interestingly enough, via government mandate NJ Transit trains can run on Amtrak owned track for free. Although no Amtrak trains provide service in New Jersey, most of the track laid in New Jersey was originally laid by Amtrak, and is still maintained by Amtrak today. The NJT system provides scheduled rail passenger service on the “New Jersey Coast Line” to the towns of Point Pleasant and Bay Head. Because of the very poor amount of service to Ocean County, New Jersey Transit has planned the Monmouth-Ocean-Middlesex Project that will extend rail service to Lakewood and Lakehurst, although a timetable has not yet been announced.
\subsection{Notes}
Basic modal split in Ocean County is highly skewed towards transportation by car. Specifically, 92.5\% of working residents use cars to commute work, and a wopping 89.2\% of these car-traveling residents commute to work alone. A staggeringly small 1.9\% of working residents actually use public transportation. This makes sense, given the lack of any real train service nearby to residencies or even town centers in Ocean County, and the aversion many people have to taking a bus to work. A PRT system correctly implemented in the region would have a remarkable and highly beneficial change on the transportation practices of the county’s residents.
\section{PRT Overview:}
\subsection{Size and Coverage}
The PRT system proposed in this document was built with two major considerations in mind. In order to specifically deal with the population densities and dense areas of employment, we needed to think of the county as a functioning whole. As mentioned elsewhere in this proposal, there is a major economic and commercial center in the eastern part of the county, and a major population center in the mid and western part. In order to connect these two centers we formed major “highways” that served the flow of traffic from west to east in the beginning of the day and east to west as people returned home from work.
We also noticed that there was a major traffic flow as people moved from south to north and north to south along the beach or near to the beach. In order to compensate for this we added major highways running north and south along the beach and another set a couple blocks from the beach. As mentioned elsewhere this will allow us to transport traffic that would have otherwise drove rapidly up and down the commercial and recreational areas of the beach.
In addition to these networks of major highways, we created a “cycling” system for the remainder of the nodes. We felt the most cost effective way to create the network of arcs would be to segment a certain number of nodes into its own circular network. By creating these smaller “cycles” and then connecting them to each other, we were able to save a lot of money on track, but still connect each node to every other. In addition to fulfilling the connection constraint, we were also able to provide a very rapid transport by keeping each cycle to less than 10 or so nodes. All in all, this system provides a very rapid and cost effective way for the citizens of Ocean County and the greater New Jersey area to get to their destinations and safely home again.
\subsection{Service to Employment}
The optimal output for any PRT system is to provide a system that will raise the space and time utility of the act of transportation, a secondary good. Research into the current state of employment in Ocean County shows that roughly half of the county’s residents work in the county, and half work in either Philadelphia or New York (The figure shown here gives a general view of employment density in the county and how the morning commute looks). This means we must put equal emphasis on those working within county lines and those commuting to a major city. In order to maximize the utility of each traveler, these trips to employment must be cheaper than transportation by car or bus and take less time.
As far as service to the major cities is concerned, the network of PRT stations does a good job in connecting travelers to major rail lines that lead to the traveler’s ultimate destination. Service to the New Jersey Transit stations at Point Pleasant and Bay Head is as direct as possible, and provides for a large capacity of travelers, since many will be using these arcs in the network during peak hours of travel. Those residents working in Philadelphia must take the PRT rail south to Atlantic City and switch to the New Jersey Transit line that runs straight to the city. This path is also optimized for large capacity and quick transport, especially during peak hours.
Share with your friends: |