More than 100 years ago, electrified rail transit was the hot new technology. Trains were far superior to the next best option for urban travel: the horse. By 1945, trains and buses accounted for 50 percent of travel in urban regions in the U.S.

Since 1945, buses’ and trains’ share of urban travel has shrunken down to the 3 percent range. Between 1945 and today, rising personal income has increased the ability of families to own autos and houses. Residents without vehicles living in densely populated urban centers are likely customers for public transit. Auto-owning suburbanites are not.

If public transportation hopes to win more than a low single-digit percentage of the travel it is going to have to offer a better product. The traditional mass transit methods -- requiring passengers to wait for scheduled trains or buses, ride with strangers, make multiple stops along the way, maybe have to transfer to another vehicle (enduring more waiting in the process), and perhaps ride standing—are not attractive to automobile travelers.

Autos don’t dominate urban travel options without good reason. Your car is ready to go when you are. You don’t have to stop along the way to pick up strangers. You don’t have to transfer to another vehicle to complete your trip. You never have to ride standing. Competing with the automobile is tough.

One option that looks like it stands a chance of luring significant numbers of drivers out of their cars is personal rapid transit (PRT). Personal Rapid Transit is a different kind of transit concept. It proposes to provide transportation for the masses without requiring them to “mass” in order to use it. Taking a hint from the fact that a small capacity vehicle like the automobile accounts for well over 90 percent of urban travel, the Personal Rapid Transit concept focuses on the attributes that make the auto attractive and incorporates them into its transit system.

Personal Rapid Transit features a small vehicle that is available on demand, guarantees a seat to every rider, requires no transfers, and travels at high speeds providing non-stop service to the passenger’s chosen destination. These features give Personal Rapid Transit a chance to compete for the segment of the urban travel market now dominated by the automobile. [Prevedouros: The Personal Rapid Transit vehicles are so light that pylons that support the slim guideway are very similar to street lamp posts which combined with quiet magnetic levitation propulsion results in a virtually unintrusive system.]

Because Personal Rapid Transit vehicles are small and light-weight, a Personal Rapid Transit system can be built over existing streets at a cost far lower than the cost of building light rail transit (LRT) tracks on the ground. The elevated alignment avoids the surface conflicts that plague in-street light rail systems like the one being built in the Phoenix metro region.

Unlike Light Rail Transit, Personal Rapid Transit vehicles won’t be tying up street traffic. Few are aware that Valley Metro has admitted that the Phoenix Light Rail Transit will actually increase traffic congestion. It’s all there in the Central Phoenix/East Valley Light Rail Project: Final Environmental Impact Statement. [Prevedouros: For different reasons, the 2006 Alternatives Analysis for Honolulu clearly states that in 2030, with Rail, traffic congestion will be far worse than it is today despite Honolulu’s generally slow rates of growth.]

Unlike in-street Light Rail Transit, Personal Rapid Transit vehicles won’t be crashing into cars. Based on data reported by the Federal Transit Administration and Federal Highway Administration, Light Rail Transit has a higher fatality rate per person-mile of travel than buses and, surprisingly, cars. [Prevedouros: This won’t be an issue for the proposed Rapid Transit in Honolulu because all of it will be elevated, but intrusion of pylons and stations as well as extensive lane closures in Kalihi, downtown Honolulu and Ala Moana areas will tie up traffic tremendously for up to six years.]

Public transit officials’ argument against Personal Rapid Transit is that it is “new and untested.” This same argument could have been applied to LRT when it displaced the horse as the top-of-the-line urban conveyance. However, “new and untested” has a far better potential than the increasingly costly and ineffectual traditional trains and buses transit officials offer as their main solution to urban travel needs.

Personal Rapid Transit is the only public transit concept that meets the challenge of the automobile head-on. If there is to be a future for public transit it will most likely be something in the Personal Rapid Transit mode.

The views expressed are the author’s and should not be construed to represent the official position of any public agency.

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