People Movers With Numerous Small Vehicles

Has anyone seen in operation a people mover system with hundreds of small (2 to 12 passenger) vehicles and with passing sidings at every station and under usage conditions heavy enough that careful control was needed as cars leaving a station and cars bypassing the station merged almost bumper to bumper?

I'd be interested in what speeds at the merge points were considered possible and safe given automated control.

Hundreds of vehicles? No such system exists, as far as I know. The closest is the PRT which serves West Virginia University at Morgantown. Each intermediate station has both stopping "tracks" and through "tracks." At peak periods, when you go through the entrance turnstile at a station, you press a button indicating which station you want to go to, and then go to a platform designated for that destination station. Your car runs "express" to that station.

At off-peak periods, cars stop at all stations in sequence.

There are some calculations for the RUF at http://www.ruf.dk/files/index.htm , in particular rufsim.exe. Since the RUF forms trains out of its vehicles by compressing the space between them to zero, it makes no sense to admit vehicles which are already at zero spacing. Plus (think about it) if you have zero spacing between vehicles at the entry point, then how would vehicles speed up in-between entry points?

In case it's not completely clear, think about traffic flow, not in terms of the vehicles, but in terms of the backward movement of holes between vehicles. As a train moves forward, it consumes the hole in front of it, and leaves a hole behind it. Run out of hole movement, and you have no vehicle movement either.

Ugh. People movers. The dry hump of "rapid transit."

-otto-

Hey, Otto, don't be so dismissive. In the great war between circuit (long trains) switching and packet (small individual cars) switching, packet switching (the Internet) has won. The crucial problem is (as Disney Guy posted) switching. Switching as long trains have done it is completely impractical for small cars. I happen to be a fan of the RUF even though its switching is fairly expensive. There are other technologies for switching, however. I've seen one (http://www.jpods.com/) where the track is a box beam with a slot underneath it. A powered bogey runs inside the box beam, and pulls power from a hot rail inside the beam. When you get to a switch, the top of the box beam has the points of the switch. The bogey itself has a wheel which it directs to one or the other side of the points, pushing it in one direction or the other.

I know. I just tend to focus more on conventional railroad and rail transit operations.

-otto-

Miami's PM is the largest and most successful big-city system and I actually think it's kinda cool. It's a great distributor of Metro rapid transit passengers thru all points of downtown Miami on several routes with very frequent (very full) cars ... and its TOTALLY FREE!!!! Detroit's PM is a pauper by comparison.

sounds great, just hope its not controlled by a windows computer. Also the price tag may be why its not in operation everywhere, I heard microsoft is installing one at their redmond campus, but thats about the only place it makes sense is on a campus.