Personal Rapid Transit A Transportation Plan for New Jersey
by Professor Alain L Kornhauser PhD
Students in Orf_467_F2010
Department of Operations Research amp Financial Engineering Princeton University
January 2011
Project Contributors
Atlantic County Anna Zhao Bergen County Sida Huang Burlington County Taylor Stewart-Cannon Camden County Alexandre Faust Cape May Felicia Yau Cumberland County Jonathan Erlichman Kexin Christina Ren Essex County Claudine Fernandez Brandon Reyes Gloucester County Jonathan Erlichman Kexing Christina Ren Hudson County Claudine Fernandez Brandon Reyes Hunterdon County Dao Mi Matthew Douglas Mercer County James Connolly Middlesex County Juan Mazzini Monmouth County Julio Fredes Caroline Logue Morris County Ican Kleinfeld Ocean County Caroline Logue Julio Fredes Passaic County Hillary Ford Salem County Jonathan Erlichman Kexing Christina Ren Somerset County Thomas Wells Sussex County Dao Mi Matthew Douglas Union County Ma Claudine Fernandez Brandon Reyes Warren County Dao Mi Matthew Douglas Programming Team John Valentino Ethan Goldstein Nathan
Keyes Justin Fu Leadership Team Talal Mufti Michael Yaroshefsky
Contents
1 Executive Summary 4
2 PRT Details and News 5
3 Programming Team Report 7
4 Atlantic County 12
5 Bergen County 31
6 Burlington County 40
7 Camden County 53
8 Cape May County 66
9 Cumberland County 77
10 Essex County 0
11 Gloucester County 22
12 Hudson County 31
13 Hunterdon County 48
14 Mercer County 52
15 Middlesex County 70
16 Monmouth County 84
17 Morris County 106
18 Ocean County 124
19 Passaic County 143
20 Salem County 160
21 Somerset County 169
22 Sussex County 184
23 Union County 190
24 Warren County 223
1 Executive Summary
11 What is Personal Rapid Transit Personal Rapid Transit is a hybrid between personal private transportation and public transportation Using small passenger pods traveling along a dedicated guideway a PRT network is a fully automated transportation system that ferries passengers between stations Unlike other modes of public transportation the PRT system allows passengers to ride in privacy with other passengers of their choosing it uses tiny vehicles that allows for a smaller infrastructure footprint and it allows passengers to use the service on demand PRT is convenient fuel-efficient and cost-effective
12 What is the history of PRT1
An essential premise of PRT is that people prefer the end-to-end transit convenience afforded by personal vehicles a convenience emulated by PRT The concept arose in the 1960s as the suggestion of a Housing and Urban Development study Numerous PRT implementations were designed for major United States cities but the first to become a reality was in Morgantown West Virginia in the 1970s The United Arab Emirates recently launched a PRT system in the planned city of Masdar in which the system provides the primary means of transit
13 What are the benefits of PRT Based on the modeling done by our team members we believe that a PRT network would benefit the residents of New Jersey in measurable important ways such as reduced greenhouse gas emissions and less disturbance to communities
Because the PRT vehicles are designed to be light and energy-efficient they use less energy than automobiles Also since they run on electricity the energy to power a PRT network can come from a diverse portfolio of energy generation modes especially renewable sources Consequently PRT systems can dramatically reduce greenhouse gas emissions
For communities PRT systems will be less disruptive than automobiles since the guideways are mostly elevated thereby freeing up space for pedestrians and other uses Further PRT vehicles generate less noise and vibration than automobiles resulting in quieter operation and less disruption By taking vehicles off the road and letting passengers use PRT system we are making our communities better
14 What might a PRT network in New Jersey look like In the report below we detail a county-by-county breakdown of what a PRT network that could serve New Jersey might look like This network has a total of 10076 miles of guideway and 9281 unique stations and it could be built over a 20-year period for a cost of $1107 billion
1 httpfacultywashingtonedujbsitransPRTHistoryhtml
2 PRT Details and News
21 Fundamentals of Personal Rapid Transit Technology The defining characteristics of PRT include
bull On-demand origin-to-destination service The PRT traveler indicates his destination and a vehicle already at the station or one sent to the station takes this passenger to his destination
bull Small fully-automated vehicles Vehicles are computer-controlled and are completely automated Each carries approximately the same number of passengers as a passenger vehicle
bull Exclusive-use guideways Like trains PRT vehicles travel only on guideways and should be designed to prevent at-grade crossings usually through elevated guideays
bull Off-line stations Stations are designed so that a vehicle stopping to let a passenger disembark will not delay other vehicles passing by
bull A network or system of fully-connected guideways Similar to vehicles on roads PRT vehicles travel on an interconnected network or guideway with junctions and intersections and may use all guideways and stations in the network
22 Recent Developments in PRT Technology Recent technological improvements have made PRT systems more viable and less costly For example battery charging technology has advanced enough to obviate the need to have electricity provided along the guideway Computer systems have also become fast enough that the vehicles can guide themselves without the need for the track to physically direct them Further as the global community becomes more interested in sustainable transportation methods PRT comes out as a positive alternative to conventional transportation systems Numerous websites also keep track of developments in PRT technology around the world
bull httpkineticseattlewausprthtml bull httpfacultywashingtonedujbsitransprtquickhtm
221 Case Study Heathrow Airport Terminal 5 The BAA a private company that owns Heathrow Airport wanted to develop a transportation system for the airport that would satisfy the following criteria
1) Low emissions 2) High level-of-service 3) Efficient use of space 4) Good value for money
Although BAA considered other transportation methods such as buses and people movers it determined that a PRT system would provide a 60 improvement in travel time and a 40 operating cost savings2
BAA and ULTra PRT inked a deal in late 2007 for a PRT system to serve the link between Terminal 5 and the N3 Business Car Park The system involves a 12 mile journey between the two stations and includes 21 vehicles The system is currently undergoing testing by employees of the airport and the results seem to indicate that the system will be successful when it opens its doors for public usage
222 Case Study City of Masdar Abu Dhabi When in 2007 the government of Abu Dhabi said that they wanted to build a carbon-neutral city they included an advanced PRT system in their plans because of the technologys zero-emission vehicles and low energy demands The system is currently undergoing testing3 and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries has recently signed on as a partner4
223 Case Study Morgantown West Virginia
The first commercial success of a PRT system was the West Virginia University PRT system which was conceived designed constructed and opened in the 1970s The system was completed in 1975 after a cost of over $60 million The system is comprised of five stations and 73 pod vehicles that ferry passengers automatically to their destinations It currently provides a 98 service availability rate which is higher than the original 965 goal
2 httpwwwultraprtcomheathrow 3 httpfacultywashingtonedujbsitransMasdar-eco-cityhtm 4 httpwwwzawyacomstorycfmsidZAWYA20110115121857
23 Summary Data The table below describes the infrastructure requirements of the PRT project
Stations Interchanges Guideway (mi) Atlantic County 330 433 41916 Bergen County 612 607 52604 Burlington County 573 513 60149 Camden County 512 485 59836 Cape May County 204 111 19775 Cumberland County 291 182 39706 Essex County 741 623 43684 Gloucester County 434 210 47249 Hudson County 232 205 14981 Hunterdon County 144 79 29016 Mercer County 491 460 47885 Middlesex County 698 717 73355 Monmouth County 681 253 73070 Morris County 334 218 41396 Ocean County 702 290 75555 Passaic County 369 381 55004 Salem County 173 49 18389 Somerset County 548 170 49400 Sussex County 473 305 93098 Union County 640 1024 46408 Warren County 99 102 25094 Total 9281 7417 1007570
3 Programming Team Report Google Earth is an embeddable plugin that ldquoallows you to navigate and explore geographic data on a 3D globe using a web browserrdquo Customized specifically for modeling PRT networks the website provides tools to build networks by superimposing images of Placemarks (ie stations interchanges etc) and Guideway (lines connecting Placemarks) on a satellite image of New Jersey provided by Google Placemarks indicating homes businesses and other points of interest can also be displayed The website interfaces with a backend database to store the networks created and also provides a calculation engine that runs network analytics computing statistics and financials about the network Significant improvements were made to the
website as detailed below The most current version of the website can be accessed here and the previous version available here for comparison
31 User Interface Enhancements bull Rubber-Banding Previously new Placemarks could not be built on existing Guideway editing
required first manually deleting the existing Guideway then putting the new Placemark on the map and finally re-inserting the Guideway as desired To allow for more intuitive and flexible network editing the ldquoRubber-Bandingrdquo feature was added This allows new Placemarks to be lsquodroppedrsquo or lsquosplicedrsquo into an existing Guideway connection without having to delete and rebuild the existing line This feature uses a minimum bounding-box and slope-matching search algorithm to automatically determine when Rubber-Banding should occur (ie to decide whether the user is inserting a new Placemark onto an existing Guideway versus building a new Placemark not on an existing Guideway) Once a Placemark is added with the Rubber-Banding it can then be dragged to the desired location with the attached Guideway automatically re-adjusting to the new location
bull Coverage Map In the model each station serves people within a frac14 mile radius To visually depict this modeling assumption the Coverage Map option allows users to create a geographic map of the area their network covers To do so a frac14 mile radius circle is drawn around each station in the network Guideways and all other Placemarks are not included in the Coverage Map The Coverage Map can be toggled on-off building new Stations can also be done with the Coverage Map activated so the coverage area of new stations can be seen during network construction Future versions may address the time complexity issues of the Coverage Map ndash as Google Earth does not provide a generic circle drawing feature each Stationrsquos coverage map is constructed by plotting a series of plots around the Station a very time intensive loop This issue may be resolved by using enlarged Placemarks instead of drawing circles Updates to the feature may also include transparent or semi-transparent coverage maps
bull Year Building This update allows time to be accounted for in network construction by letting users specify a year in which the specific Placemark was constructed This is an editable parameter ranging from Year 1 to Year 20 Future site versions will more thoroughly use this data in analyzing network statistics
bull Year Map This feature is in essence a combination of the Coverage Map and Year Building above It allows users to visually see the evolution of their networks over time in the form of a time-based coverage map All Stations built on or prior to the selected year are colored with the frac14 mile radius circle with all newer stations still visible but not colored A slider bar changes the selected year displaying a year-by-year animated map of network coverage As with the Coverage Map future versions may look to improve the time efficiency of the Year Map Other updates may display the Year Map for only a specific year or may use colors to distinguish the different years of construction
bull Display Mode This feature customizes the network for display purposes It removes all non-Station Placemarks and reduces the size of the Station Placemarks When displaying the network over a large geographical region this feature removes clutter so important network characteristics can be more easily identified Another interesting display feature would be to resize Stations (or even Guideways) according to the relative proportion of passengers served by
that Station Such a display may even take advantage of Google Earthrsquos ability to create 3-dimensional Placemarks
bull Other Updates and Suggestions A variety of other site updates were implemented as well These include fixes to the ldquoCounty Placemarks to Viewrdquo section Placemark naming and infrastructure development for the Loading Bar Future versions may consider some of the suggestions above or the following updates features
o Automatic Guideway Generation This function would automatically generate Guideways to connect existing user-built Placemarks This feature could be used to decrease the time needed for network construction or could be used as a baseline metric to make comparisons with the user-built network This feature could be based on an adapted minimum spanning tree algorithm
o Curved Guideways Currently to build non-linear Guideways users must use ShapePoints to make a series of small (linear) connected Guideways approximating the shape desired While appropriate for angled city-block layouts this is suboptimal for the curving nature of suburban roads One approach would allow users to lsquodrawrsquo Guideways using the mouse as a stylus Another option may be to allow users to shape existing Guideways by clicking on an existing line segment and drag it to the desired location without ShapePoints A curved Guideway improvement may include some of the automatic Guideway generation techniques mentioned above
o Automatic Naming Allow the system to automatically label Stations The passenger use of each Station can be estimated from existing data so an interesting approach would be to label Stations with the name of the largest nearby trip productionattraction This would require a lsquosmartrsquo approach to avoid naming nearby Stations the same
o 3D Tour This feature would make use of Google Earthrsquos 3D and StreetView technology functionality by letting users to lsquotake a ridersquo in the constructed PRT network After users select an origin and destination the tour would zoom to ground level and progress (at street level) along the path outlined by the PRT network There is no better way to test a PRT then to actually try it out
32 Server-Side Scripting Enhancements
bull Placemark Upload Page The Placemark Upload Page is an interface for the user to upload a CSV file of county Placemarks with population and other trip information for a given latitude and longitude The upload page processes this CSV file and automatically adds the Placemarks to the database and outputs them to a KML file that can be read by the Google Earth interface to display the Placemarks while users are builting their networks This page replaces a process that was previously accomplished manually with the help of a Python script This page keeps track of previous versions of the CSV file that have been uploaded although there is not yet a way to make these previous versions accessible to the user A simple future improvement would be to create a user interface for accessing these previous file versions
bull Network Combine Page The Network Combine Page takes custom networks saved by users and combines them into one network so that it can be loaded into the Google Earth interface
worked on and analyzed as one unit It works by parsing the KML files generated when the user saves a custom network and combining them into one file updating Placemark ID numbers and other properties to maintain the integrity of the combined KML file
bull Network Matrices Page The Network Matrices Page analyzes a custom network file by computing three matrices
o Line-of-sight distances between each pair of stations o Adjacency matrix to indicate if the row station is directly connected to a column station
possibly passing through shape points or interchanges but not other stations o Adjacency matrix to show the distance in guideway miles between a row station and the
column stations to which it is directly connected These matrices can be downloaded in CSV format and run through a Matlab script for Dijkstrarsquos Algorithm to determine the Guideway Distances between each row station and column station and compare those distances to the line-of-sight distances In the future further Matlab scripts can be developed to perform additional analysis on this Guideway Distance Matrix
bull Yearly Statistics Page The Yearly Statistics Page analyzes a custom network file by computing the number of stations interchanges shape points and guideway miles built per year This functionality can be improved in the future by including the number of trips served by each yearrsquos network These yearly statistics calculations should probably be combined into the same script that performs network analysis from the main PRT Tool page
33 Network Overview Enhancements
bull StationTripsphp Update When a network designer clicks ldquoCompute Trip Informationrdquo on the PRT homepage network statistics are written to the NetworkStats table on kornhauser-devprincetonedu Known issue Hudson and Warren counties have such large KML files that they do not reliably write to the database Future Improvements When a designer clicks ldquoCompute Trip Informationrdquo overall statistics and individual station statistics are displayed in a pop-up window However stations are NOT identified unless named Station ID numbers should be displayed to help the designer figure out which stations are contributingdetracting from the network Additionally if the Station NameID could be hyperlinked such that the Google Earth plugin snaps to the station of interest
bull Network Statistics Overview The Network Statistics Overview Page displays overall trip data for each county PHP and SQL are used to read from the NetworkStats table and write to an HTML page Statistics by county include station count guideway miles total trips served possible trips served percent of possible trips served actual home trips served possible home trips served actual work trips served possible work trips served actual education trip served possible education trips served actual transportation trips served possible transportation trips served actual recreation trip served possible recreation trips served actual patron trips served possible patron trips served and date network was last modified Known Issues 1) Because Hudson and Warren are not properly writing to the database their statistics are not displayed 2) The SQL query currently selects county data by MAX entryid but the entryid is only pulled
from the first day of edit As a stopgap solution previous entries were removed from the database
bull Real-time Double Count Elimination Nathan implemented client side ldquoquery circlerdquo cropping to provide a more accurate representation of trips served in the frac14 mile radius circle in the Google Earth module Number of stations within a frac12 mile radius and their coordinates are passed via GET variables $c and $m respectively in the PRT5b-xxhtml Future steps check station of interest against nearby stations Only include trips served if station of interest is closest
bull Network Financial Statistics Overview The financial report that the network designers manually created included number of trips price per trip station naming rightsadvertising revenue cost of building network maintenance costs and operating costs This process could be streamlined by creating an input page that processes PampL server side displays desired metrics in a pop-up and writes to a FinancialStatistics table similar to the interaction between StationTripsphp and NetworkStatsphp
4 Atlantic County
41 Atlantic County and its PRT Needs Atlantic county is located in southern New Jersey and has an area of approximately 671 square miles of which 561 square miles is land There are just over 103000 households5 with a total population around 270000 people While Atlantic County has a population density of 450 people per square mile6 the majority of the people reside in the Atlantic City-Hammonton metropolitan statistical area the US Census estimates that close to 40000 people live in Atlantic City7
Since Atlantic City is the most well-known attraction and densely populated region in the county the PRT networkrsquos priority is to provide high quality service in Atlantic City An estimated 37 million people visit Atlantic City annually and its 13 casino hotels which have over 12000 guest rooms enjoy occupancy rates in the 90s year round8 However while visitors can easily access the boardwalk from the Atlantic City International Airport about 23 of the visitors to the city travel by car the other third by coach bus and only 2 of the tourists arriving by air 9
This statistic reveals the commutersrsquo needs for and demands of PRT in Atlantic City 13 of the visitors to Atlantic City do not have a car and must rely on public transportation taxis bike or foot to travel around the city
Even though there is a shuttle that runs in Atlantic City and services the major attractions PRT would give them a cheaper and more convenient way to see the city while still being able to reach their destinations quickly Because of the high number of people who could potentially use the PRT to attract the highest number of customers possible the network needs to minimize the distance traveled and hence travel time to go from one attraction to the next Furthermore there needs to be a sufficient number of stations so that all the attractions can be reached As a result as one can see below the network for Atlantic City appears more congested than the rest of the county since there are more and quicker route options Ideally the ease with which one can reach several tourist attractions will make increase revenue to the city which can help fund the building of the network
5 httpwwwaclinkorgculturalaffairsfastfacts 6 httpquickfactscensusgovqfdstates3434001html 7US Census Estimate httpfactfindercensusgovservletSAFFPopulation_event=ChangeGeoContextampgeo_id=16000US3402080amp_geoContext=01000US|04000US34|16000US3400100amp_street=amp_county=atlantic+cityamp_cityTown=atlantic+cityamp_state=amp_zip=amp_lang=enamp_sse=onampActiveGeoDiv=geoSelectamp_useEV=amppctxt=fphamppgsl=010amp_submenuId=population_0ampds_name=nullamp_ci_nbr=nullampqr_name=nullampreg=nullnullamp_keyword=amp_industry= 8 httpwwwatmeorgpubsarchives77_255_1119cfm 9 ibid
Figure 11 Transportation in Atlantic County
NJ Transit currently has the regional rail the Atlantic City Line which connects Philadelphia and Atlantic County making stops in Hammonton Egg Harbor Absecon and Atlantic City In Feb 2009 NJ Transit also started operations for the Atlantic City Express Service line which connects Atlantic City with Newark and New York Penn Station This three stop line only runs on Friday Saturday and Sunday10 The majority of the visitors to Atlantic City are regional hailing from New Jersey New York or Pennsylvania11
so the creation of the PRT network could change the method of travel to Atlantic Csity from car to rail by eliminating the need for a car To further reduce the number of visitors who drive to Atlantic City the municipal government should consider increasing parking costs to NYC levels
In order to capture the New Jersey market the PRT system needs to be connected to neighboring counties Those closest to Atlantic City are least likely to travel to the city by bus and are also probably the most frequent visitors to Atlantic City It should also be noted that connecting Atlantic County and Cape May County should be a priority because of Atlantic Cape Community College which focuses on educating residents of both the counties of Atlantic and Cape May
10 httpwwwacestraincom 11 httpwwwatmeorgpubsarchives77_255_1119cfm
42 PRT Network Creation Process
43 Data Collection Step 0 of the PRT process is to gather data on the number of commuters which entails the number of visitors to businesses students enrolled at each school and people living in each census block We used the data for the county from the previous yearrsquos class so this step mainly required eliminating repeat entries making sure that the locations of major placemarks such as high schools were accurate and editing the visitor estimates to be more realistic ie removing estimates of 16 146 400 visitors at the local newspaper The final estimates used reflects some news updates discovered during this editing process such as that the Atlantic City Surf minor league baseball team ceased operations in 200912 and the Sweetwater Casino burned down in the summer of 200813 and the opening of Cedar Creek High School in 201014
For the enrollment numbers the number of students was obtained from the schoolrsquos website and the number of employees was estimated using the state of New Jerseyrsquos student-teacher ratio of 139 and adding on 30 people for principals custodians librarians the lunch lady etc Visitors to a school was estimated by assuming that 1 of the student body would have a visitor (such as parent dropping off something homework left at home) and adding 5 for non-student related visits such as deliveries The number of visitors to an office or manufacturing type of business was typically estimated to be at most 200 people per day and often much less and the number of patients estimated per day for a private practice to be around 50-60 people a day after assuming that 2-3 people were seeing patients every 20 to 30 minutes for seven hours a day The Convention Center patron total was estimated to be 7000 per day as a compromise between the extremes of the Convention Centerrsquos predictions of general public attendance (sometimes over 40000) and exclusive conferences (600)15 An unreliable internet source said that a manager said that Walmart could receive up to 4000 shoppers in a day This number was used as a cap for most attractions and all stores because like Walmartrsquos everyday low prices nothing beats Walmart16
The casinos are probably by far the largest attraction in Atlantic City and accurate estimates for daily patrons are difficult Estimates for annual total visitors are around 37 million which is approximately 100000 people a day Most major casinos and attractions (attractions were estimated to be as popular as a major casino at best) were estimated to have 8 to 15 thousand visitors a day to account This estimate comes from the fact that several of the major casino hotels have roughly 1500 rooms (some have more than 2000) Assuming that each hotel has a
12 httpwwwnjcomnewsindexssf200903atlantic_city_surf_minor_leaguhtml 13 httpabclocalgocomwpvistorysection=newslocalampid=6236543 14 httpenwikipediaorgwikiCedar_Creek_High_School 15 httpwwwatlanticcitynjcomvisitconventioncalendaraspx 16 Upon later review when it was too late to change all my estimates a more reliable source puts the Walmart daily visitor count as ranging between 200 and 2200 httpinsightkelloggnorthwesterneduindexphpKelloggarticlewal_mart_supercenter_versus_the_traditional_supermarket
100 occupancy rate which is not far off from the actual rate which is in the 90s year-round17
we get 3000 people a day who are staying in the hotel not including the day-trip only people (assumed to be at least twice as many) and people who go to the resort to enjoy the various other activities there such as the spa shops nightclubs and restaurants Estimates for the visitors to the boardwalk were relatively low since most of the major casinos are next to the boardwalk and so there would be overlap that would inflate the patron trip count If the total number of patron trips should be approximately 4 times the population these estimates are fairly close to the 370000 person count at 155 million
The patron trip totals did not differentiate between shopping dining and entertainment Estimates for the categories were based on the following assumptions 65 of the patron trips were for shopping such as clothes groceries medical (buying medical services) etc 25 of the trips were for dining only 10 of the patron trips were for entertainment since estimates of casino visitors were reflected in recreation which was included in entertainment So to clarify entertainment consisted of recreation and 10 of general patron trips
17 httpwwwatmeorgpubsarchives77_255_1119cfm
44 Network Design Process The next step required building the actual network by placing the stations at logical and profitable locations and connecting them with interchanges Restrictions taken into account were that stations could only have one arc in and one arc out and interchanges could have at most 4 arcs in or out total There was also emphasis on minimizing the amount of two-way guideway because of the significant increase in cost Stations were placed to minimize coverage overlap overlap occurred most frequently in the more suburban and rural areas due to reduced location options Stations were connected with several ldquomain linesrdquo that rarely if ever changed direction and then interchanges were placed in the middle of stations as much as possible These restrictions and technique led to a network similar to the Manhattan subway system with one-way guideway and every other parallel guideway going in the opposite direction This forces riders to pay an ldquoaround the blockrdquo penalty where they would potentially have to loop around the block to reach a destination that they could have reached if it were a two-way street Below is a picture of the Absecon region that demonstrates this technique and shows the coverage of each station
Figure 12
Any station that was outside of the main lines that run north-south through the county typically required a loop To minimize the around the block penalty when beneficial because of the one-way nature of the guideways these loops were designed to go in the opposite direction of the main line A simple example of this loop can be seen with the Egg Harbor Train Station shown below If we take the upper-left hand corner to be north then the main line runs north-south
This design meant that when the loop was reconnected with the main guideway the commuter enters the main system further up the line and thus has more options and a smaller around the block penalty In this example the backward loop allows for commuters from the train station to access the station circled in blue and cross to the other side without having to go down and back around
Figure 13
This design was especially important as we move further away from downtown Atlantic City and towards the suburbs where many of the streets do not have a checkerboard design that minimizes the around the block penalty By minimizing the penalty more stations have direct access to a larger loop As seen below the circled stations do not have to loop around and instead can go directly to the loop from the main line
Figure 14 The Full-Service PRT System 14
With these considerations in mind we get the full-service PRT System shown below This 450 mile network has 350 stations and 445 interchanges While it only serves just under 54 (5880 of 10986) of the placemarks this system serves 905 of the trips
The blue lines highlight the guideway headed towards Atlantic City with the guideway in the middle going ldquouprdquo headed away from Atlantic city There are two lines headed towards Atlantic City to allow the residents of Atlantic County go to Atlantic City at any time of the day There is no need to go only when the trains allow for it because as the saying for PRT in Atlantic County goes all lines go to Atlantic City
Figure 15
In creating this network one principle that I tried to go by was to make sure that every school was connected because not only do we always have to keep the children in mind but children have to go to school and itrsquos the most guaranteed destination in a region This principle became an issue when the school districtrsquos neighborhoods were spread out with low population densities When the school in question was an elementary or preschool the decision to not provide PRT was easy because no parent would send their preschooler off to school by themselves and only elementary school children of a certain age may be allowed to go to school by themselves An instance of this occurring is circled in blue Small schools were also neglected if they were remote with a small enrollment because they tended to be private schools and itrsquos unlikely that they would fire their driver and ride the PRT to school anyways
While there are few stations along the three main tracks of guideway and only one main purpose of connecting the northwest part to the southeast part of the county one justification for having it is that it could be what the 6th Avenue elevated railroad line was to NYC Before the construction of the 6th Avenue line there was little developed there but after it became
connected the property value went up and the area flourished18
By having the guideway there it would be easy to build stations in the future to increase service if necessary If it doesnrsquot then the system just provides better service to the customers
18 ORF 467 Evolution of Transportation Technology lecture notes
45 The NJ Transit-PRT System Profitability is a function of the demand and the location of a station Even if there is enough demand to make building a station profitable it makes little sense to have a PRT station if it is remote and requires miles of guideway to connect to the rest of the network As one can see in the full-service PRT network in which stations were placed for maximum service ie in the densest areas we can say that Atlantic Countyrsquos population is clustered in two chunks If we consider the Hammonton Train Station as representing a mini-network then based off our definition of profitability this mini network creates an enormous fixed cost by having to connect it to the main network
This multimodal system has 330 stations 433 interchanges and is connected by 419 miles of guideway to serve 89 of the trips and 5769 of 10987 placemarks
Figure 16
We get the NJ Transit-PRT System by removing eliminating the guideway that connects the two networks By making this reduction we cut the amount of guideway needed by about 30 miles19
19 Calculations made with full-service system and original NJ Transit-PRT system that did not include changes to patron estimates or additional placemarks
and at $5 million a mile we save 150 million dollars without even considering maintenance costs By eliminating this guideway we do reduce service by eliminating the
stations along the removed guideway but we are still able to serve almost 90 of the trips with this network This multi-modal network uses NJ Transit to connect the people of inland Atlantic County to the Atlantic City half of the network Based on the assumption that people attend their local school and donrsquot travel across the county for most of their activities this design allows the residents of the mini network to use the PRT to do their shopping go out to eat at a restaurant visit friends and go to school While the residents of Hammonton and Buena (lower half of mini-network) can only reach the other network by train or car to address the inconvenience of disjointed networks two possible solutions are park and ride lots on the border of the Atlantic City side of the network and increased NJ Transit service from Hammonton to Egg Harbor The other assumptions made for this system is that those on vacation going to Atlantic City from New Jersey donrsquot value their time as much as those on business so they wonrsquot mind waiting a short time to catch the train For those traveling for business the belief is that they can plan their meetings accordingly around the train schedule drive to a park and ride lot skip the train and catch the PRT or allot more time for business
451 NJ Transit-Recession Model
In light of the recession there is also the NJ Transit-Recession System in which service to Buena is cut (circled in blue) The NJ Transit-Recession is 386 miles long with 316 stations and 416 interchanges This multi-modal transportation network serves 5634 of the 10 987 placemarks which accounts for 880 of the trips While the percentage of trips served does not decrease significantly I do not like this model because a network in Buena would allow the residents to commute to work go to school and go shopping
Figure 17 Recession Model
Of the three PRT networks mentioned I believe that the most viable option is the NJ Transit-PRT system This system minimizes costs by reducing excess guideway without sacrificing satisfactory service to the commuters by utilizing the transportation system that is already in place
Keys to success for the PRT in Atlantic County
Construction for the PRT will start from Atlantic City and move inlands as the years progress because it has the greatest and most dense demand in the county In constructing the network I noticed that it was relatively easy to service 75 of the county because many of the major trip attractions are clustered together only approximately 220 stations were needed However once the dense areas were served and the focus shifted to the more spread out areas of the county it became exponentially harder to increase the proportion of trips served with a similar increase in the number of stations For example it took approximately 280 stations to serve 80 of the trips and 326 for 83 and 404 for 85 of trips served20
Of the NJ Transit model the mini-network (Hammonton and Buena) will be lowest in priority Eventually once the system is sustainable we can consider expanding to the full-service model
I made my network before the year feature was added so below is a picture with circled priority areas The Atlantic City network should be built first (circled in purple) followed by the Pleasantville area (circled in blue) Richard Stockton College of New JerseyAbsecon (green) Egg Harbor (yellow) Mays LandingAtlantic Cape Community College (orange) and Absegami High SchoolGalloway (red) After Atlantic City which has the greatest demand in the county these priorities were based on NJ Transitrsquos bus weekday ridership data which shows that most of the people who ride the bus particularly lines 502 507 508 and 509 have a final destination of Atlantic City (typically at least 23 of the riders) a large portion of these riders board the bus from the Pleasantville Egg Harbor and Absecon regions21
20 This number is greater than the final network of all designs because it was tracked before a missed major attraction was served and a number of other revisions were made after the initial network was completed However this does not change the point that past a threshold that is probably close to 75 it becomes exponentially harder to see an increase in trips served that corresponds to a similar proportional increase in stations We can see this fact from the other direction as well because in my revisions I was able to remove several stations while only decreasing the percentage of trips by 2-3 21 2009 Bus Zone Profile Weekdayspdf
Figure 18
Each PRT network design only serves just over 50 of the placemarks so to increase ridership there needs to be park and ride lots throughout the county Many of the smaller neighborhoods are out of walking distance from a station but are still close enough to where it would not be inconvenient to access the PRT with a two minute drive to a nearby station Furthermore park and ride lots are crucial to the success of the PRT because while many of the stations are technically frac14 mile away the walking path distance is usually greater than one would like to walk not to mention that the frigid cold in the winter The idea of the park and ride stations is that each major station could be like Princeton Junction where the daily commuters catch the NJ Transit to NYC to go to work
One of the main sources of competition for the PRT network in Atlantic City will be the jitney operated by the Atlantic City Jitney Association This shuttle has four different lines three of which run 247365 Each trip costs $225 but trips to the terminal station are free Not only will the PRT provide quicker service with more freedom but to address this competition the Atlantic City PRT will have promotions and packages such as individual and group day passes There will also be lockers at each station that will be have unlimited use for free with the purchase of a pass or at a very low cost for one-time travelers These lockers are meant to overcome one of the main inconveniences of being car-less not having a free storage place for everything not needed at the moment The lockers will free people finish their errands or enjoy their entertainment without the annoyance of lugging around a bag of clothes or groceries
One suggestion for next year is to try and get a bus map such as this one incorporated into Google Earth as a toggle feature It could be useful in helping plan out routes or seeing which important neighborhoods are being overlooked If not possible using a bus map in conjunction
with NJ Transitrsquos ridership data could be useful in finding important places to provide service for
46 Cost Analysis of NJ Transit-PRT Network
NJ Transit-PRT Network 330 Stations
419 miles
433 interchanges
Table 11 Network Statistics18
Total Trip ends served
Total Trips
Peak hour Trips Fleet size
Average trip Length (miles)
Average Vehicle Occupancy (tripsvehicle)
Vehicle Operating Costs
3702477
2672087
400813 44089 5 2 $ 020
Table 12 Capital Costs
Item Cost per Total Total Capital Cost (in millions)
Station $2m 330 stations $660
Mile of guideway $5m 419 miles $2096
Vehicle $100000 44089 cars $4409
$ 7165
Table 13 Annual Recurring Costs (M)
Cost of Capital Maintenance Operating Total
$573 $143 $401 $1117
Table 14 Annual Revenue (All values in millions except for fare)
Fare ($) Fare revenue ($) Station lease and naming rights ($) Total ($)
Annual Profit (loss)($)
500 4 008 12 4 020 2 903
400 3 207 12 3 218 2 101
300 2405 12 2417 1299
250 2004 12 2016 899
225 1804 12 1816 698
200 1603 12 1615 498
150 1202 12 1214 97
137 1 106 12 1118 1
100 802 12 814 (304)
$225 is NY Metro fare
$137 is minimum fare to barely break even
Standardized plot of profit (in millions) vs the fare
Figure 19 Standardized plot of profit (in millions) vs the fare
Trip Ends Statistics (Per Day)
Table 15 Trip Ends Statistics (Per Day)
Home School Work Shopping Transit Entertainment Dining Total
Trips Served
769448
120696
268062
967511
4052
239204
372120 2741092
Possible Trips
1010208
130336
294318
1008927
4052
245866
388049
3081756
Possible (Non-Student) Patrons trips in your county 155219622
Total Trip (Ends) Served 2741092 3081756 (8895 service)
Figure 110 Trip ends served per station
22 Patrons split into 65 shopping 25 dining 10 entertainment (in addition to recreation)
Figure 111 The 25 busiest stations
Figure 112 After removing the 25 busiest stations
5 Bergen County
51 Introduction
Bergen is the most populous county in New Jersey boasting a population of 895250 With 234 square miles of inhabitable land Bergen County has an average population density of 3826 people per square mile It is part of the New York Metropolitan area and thus the transportation system serves as a vital system for people commuting to New York Population is densest towards the lower portion of Bergen Bounty as shown below in Figure 21 From httpwwwcity-datacomcountyBergen_County-NJhtml we can see that Bergen County has a population that is rather evenly distributed in terms of age and sex with a slight tendency towards younger age However its workforce is mainly office workers due to its proximity to NY There are approximately 22000 students attending school and 14000 students attending college The average income of tax payers was $90000
Figure 21
Interestingly enough 73 of the people in Bergen County currently use private vehicles with no carpooling to commute to work and only 17 use public transportation For more information on public systems see httporfeprincetonedu~alainkPapersORF20467F08PRTSystempdf Bergen County
has a wide diversity of various attractions and points of interest ranging from schools to offices to heavy commercial areas
52 Initial Network We decided to place the initial networks in the two areas of denser population Namely the lower left and lower right of the county Since the practicality of a system is important to its use we focused on creating enough stations in the local area to be usable
The tracks usually followed existing roads and sometimes went over forests and water One route conveniently leads to the densely populated region of Passaic County Roads were not followed 100 of the time because the PRT seeks to create close locations not linked by roads closer in terms of travel time Thus it is convenient to have it transverse over water and forests
Figure 22
53 Construction Evolution In the second stage we will try to add networks and link the two bottom networks in
the west and east This will also cover the paths leading to the airport and Giants stadium increasing revenue significantly Thus stage three will consist of saturating the bottom half of the county as well as extending the top half The fourth state will complete the process and expand the networks to profitable positions in the top half of the county In addition it is important to note that due to the block system used as saturation increases efficiency also increases as interconnectivity increases within the network since the cost of extending a connection between two blocks is subsidized by the building of a station on that connection
Figure 23 Stage two coverage area
Figure 24 Stage three coverage area
54 Final Network
Figure 25 Final Network
Note pictures do not contain guide ways and shape points due to network issues leading to loss of data
The final network spans the entire county and covers 80 of the trips in the county In
total there are 612 stations 607 interchanges and 52604 miles of track However the miles of track should be closer to 600 miles of track because of the lack of shape points in the second model With a $3 fare this network is expected to make $2 billion net profit a year However this number is grossly inflated as the original Bergen County data was inflated The total number of trip ends has been reduced by about 10 million from last year This network produces a higher profit than last yearrsquos due to higher efficiency The tools this year allowed for the users to see the coverage area and achieve a more efficient coverage of the county
Below are some assumptions we took in determining our ridership and profit We assumed that peak hour trips are 15 of total trips In addition the fleet size was 11 of peak hour trips These assumptions are however rather generous considering land prices in Bergen County Table 21
Networks Statistics County Bergen
Stations
Interchanges
Miles of
Guideway
Length
Total Trip ends
served Total Trips Peak hour
Trips Fleet size
Average trip
Length
Average Vehicle
Occupancy Fare
Vehicle Operating Costs
() () (miles) (per day) (per day) (per day) () (Miles)
(Tripsvehicle)
612 607 52604 13402769
4261660
639249 70317 5 2
$ 300 $ 020
In addition it is to be noted that due to the low population density in the northern region the city-gird-like design of the network could not be implemented Instead a series of vertical parallel lines were used to reach isolated populous networks in the north The parallel paths were connected with each other and the isolated networks in the northern region were also linked However the minimal path between stations there is still relatively far compared to the air-distance
Below is a distribution of trip ends served by stations for the final network
Figure 26 Distribution of trip ends served by stations
Note this information was not provided for initial and developing networks as due to a technical error the network data was lost In addition pictures of the network with interchanges and links were also not available due to the same reason
There are a few values that are exceptionally high in terms of station trip ends served because multiple stations could not be inserted due to unavailability of space However as one can see it is still rather acceptable as the average station density is 21000 trip ends per day In addition only a few stations contribute to the high average Perhaps it is possible to make those selected stations larger
Figure 27 Density distribution of trips from largest to smallest
Figure 28 Cumulative Density distribution of trips from largest to smallest
55 Coverage Analysis Below is a table of the various types of trips and the networkrsquos service coverage of those
trips As seen the coverage is fairly decent for all trips except for home trips This is mainly due to the low density of residential areas This makes it cost inefficient to set stations and cover those areas
Table 22 Trip Ends Served
home school work shop transp
entert
dinning Total
Total
2193260
453044
1657101
8109491
86440
2378
901055
13288150
County Total Trip Ends
3536472
535084
1948686
9623340
91222
2828
1069260
16806892
Trips served (per day) 4153256
Percentage 62 85 85 84 95 84 84 79
56 Financial Analysis As shown below our break-even price was $130 fare This is mainly due to the high population density in Bergen County Realistically the break-even fare would be around $170 because the current model lacks shape points Thus the guide ways would be longer
Figure 29 Graph of projected fares and profits
The most costly elements in the capital costs are the vehicles If we assumed that the network was constructed all at once it would require at a 3 interest rate it would require less than 6 years to pay off (See spreadsheet page 2 for calculation) Table 23 Basics costsRevenues
Basic Costs Revenue County Bergen
Capital Costs Annual Recurring Costs Annual Revenue PampL
Stations Guideway
Vehicles Total
Cost of Capital
Maintenance Operating Total Fare
Station lease and
naming rights Total
(M$) (M$) (M$) (M$) (M$) (M$) (M$) (M$) (M$) (M$)
$ 1224
$ 2630
$ 7032
$ 10886
$ 871
$ 218 $ 639
$ 1728
$ 3835
$ 22
$ 3858
$ 2130
57 Conclusion Bergen County is one of the more profitable counties in NJ As seen also in previous years it has always been the most profitable county The concentration of density in the southern region of the county allows for a favorable design of network that maximizes efficiency In addition since Bergen County is one of the most populous and riches counties there is a lot of profit to be made The large number of white collar workers provides a large workforce and a large number of commutes per day This project has allowed me to not only learn more about network design but also has allowed me to realize the importance of the PRT system It was an enjoyable experience
Notes After getting the county file corrupted twice I hope that future classes will back up their data in custom files as well as in the main station file In addition Bergen Countyrsquos data is still not very accurate I hope that future classes will alter some patron trips to entertainment and recheck the school numbers
6 Burlington County
61 Geography and Demographics Burlington County spans central New Jersey and extends from south
east Pennsylvania to Atlantic shoreline Data from the US Census Bureau estimate the total area of the county to be around 819 square miles making it the largest of New Jersey counties in terms of area Counties adjacent to Burlington include Mercer Monmouth Ocean Atlantic Camden Philadelphia and Bucks
As of 2009 the current population of Burlington is estimated to be around 446108 Of the population 58 are under 5 years old 229 are under 18 years of age and 136 are over the age of 65 The 2008 census estimated the average number of people per household as 27 with a median household income to be around $76869
Current Transit Services
Over 80 of the population is currently reliant on automobiles for transportation According to census data of 2000 the average time to get to work was 282 minutes Three US Routes pass through Burlington and include route 9 130 and Route 206 Public transportation needs of the county are dealt with by Burlington County Transport Services which provides pre-arranged shuttle transportation named Paratransit buses which are mainly used by the elderly and disabled Other transportation services the county receives include a light rail transit system that goes from Trenton to Camden while stopping at intermediate stations along the Delaware river front Buses and trains stop in the center of Burlington City Further information on the countyrsquos transportation can be found in the ORF467F04 report
62 Initial Networks
Figure 31 Initial Network Total Stations 64 Total Interchanges 43 Total guideway length 9749 km (6058 mi)
The locations of the initial three networks were chosen for their potential profitability and relative placement within the county The criteria for the initial network location include the size of population in the area the amount of work trips served and the amount of potential recreation attractions serviced The same criteria were also applied to the immediate areas around the initial network as expansion would be made easier in those types of areas The three locations of the initial networks form a triangle that form part of the edges of the final network and cover a large portion of where the final network would be
63 Northern Network
Figure 32 Northern Net Total Stations 20 Total Interchanges 16 Total guideway length 3956 km (2458 mi)
This network is centered in a high population density suburban area Along the straight slanted streets at the outer edge of the area featured many of the retail and restaurant
business that received steady patronage from the families in the neighborhood A network here seems likely to draw in regular customers who need to run errands around the neighborhood seek light recreation on various days or works in any of the numerous shops and business in the area In the south east portion of the network connects the shopping mall to the rest of the suburbs giving families easy access to one of the biggest attractions in the area The odd shape of the roads through the neighborhoods made route planning difficult and somewhat inefficient but when the network expands it would become easier to reach some stations
Southern Network
Figure 33 Southern Net Total Stations 24 Total Interchanges 13 Total guideway length 3251 km (2021 mi)
The south eastern network also extends to both densely populated suburban homes as well as a bustling commercial district The south eastern wall of the network serves both recreation and occupation trip attractions Using the routes and highways around the neighborhood made finding direct paths to points of interest easier and overall made this network more manageable This network made use of a roundabout at the center of the polygon to help facilitate traffic passing through the center region while also reducing the travel time when passengers try to reach the opposite side of the network The location of this network has great potential for expansion as commercial district extends southeast from it while more homes exist both north and east of its location
64 Eastern Network
Figure 34 Eastern Net Total Stations22 Total Interchanges14 Total guideway length 2542 km (1579 mi)
The third initial network is located the farthest east and is centered in an isolated neighborhood with access to commercial areas The distance between suburban areas and retail spots was greater in this area and required longer railways to service all of the trip ends Similar to the Southern network this network also features a square block of interchanges that take in rail cars a lets them out in several directions along the roads of the neighborhood With its proximity to the other northern network its expansion to the west is a priority for the future
65 Profitability Table 31 Trip Ends Network Stats and CostsRevenues
192204 8170 88260 - - 510174 - 798808
1770364 101918 1005780 - - 4110124 - 6988186
39940
Stations Interchanges
Miles of Guideway
Length
Total Trip ends
served Toal Trips Peak hour Trips Fleet sizeAverage
trip Length
Average Vehicle
Occupancy Fare
Vehicle Operating Costs
() () (miles) (per day) (per day) (per day) () (Miles) (Tripsvehicle)64 43 6058 798808 39940 5991 659 5 2 100$ 020$
PampL
Stations Guideway Vehicles Total Cost of Capital Maintenance Operating Total Fare
Station lease and
naming Total(M$) (M$) (M$) (M$) (M$) (M$) (M$) (M$) (M$) (M$)
128$ 303$ 66$ 497$ 40$ 10$ 6$ 56$ 12$ 2$ 14$ (41)$
TotalTrip ends served by station Burlington County
Capital Costs Annual Recurring Costs Annual Revenue
County Total Trip
Trips served (per day)
Networks Statistics Burlington County
Basic Costs Revenue Burlington County
Even while located in areas with high levels of population and attractions the initial network has a relative high cost compared to expected revenue At a fare of $300 annual revenue doesnrsquot cover operating and maintenance expenses and instead loses $19 million dollars annually In order for the initial networks to break even they would have to charge at least $456 to avoid incurring debt Depending on the level of expenses associated with other forms of transportation a person may be willing to regularly use the network for transportation
More than likely the fare would need to be kept low to attract more customers and the network could endure an initial cost The hope would be that once the full network is complete the initial losses could be covered by the profits
Figure 35 Profit vs Fare
66 Expansion and Development
Figure 36
In order to increase the effectiveness of the networks and generate a greater revenue the initial networks would need to be expanded to include more residential zones and other attractions in the county If each of them extended their networks in a direction along the triangle that they form then they would ultimately form a connected network that covered the majority of the densely populated areas of the county The stages of development are listed above and account for a wider expansion of the network as well as greater coverage internally within the network The length of each stage could vary in length depending on how popular PRT system becomes As attractions and residences are reached the rate of expansion can increase as coverage of attraction increases revenue and more trip ends are served By the fourth stage the initial networks could be fully connected with connections leaving isolated points of interest to be connected to the network in the fifth stage of development
Stage Stations Interchanges Guideways (mi)1 71 41 632 190 174 131443 298 286 299634 392 388 409165 542 513 59535
Table 32 Network Evolution
The Final Network
Figure 37
Once the final network is completed the network forms a perimeter around the more rural parts of the county and connects the densely populated areas in the west with the more isolated towns in the eastern parts of the county The total number of stations is 542 with 513 interchanges that connect the railways together and making reaching far off stations faster and more efficient Its total guide way length sums up to 95813 km (59535 miles) Aside from the perimeter the network is also connected through the center where rural suburbs bridge the gap between the two sides of the network
Figure 38
The densely covered region in the west is made up of a web of PRT rail ways that follow along the roads and paths already established in the area To avoid having rail ways being too invasive railways were put along major roads and around neighbor blocks As a larger portion of the population resides within the region more stations were established here than in any other regions in the county For efficiency a higher number interchanges were used to ensure that destinations can be reached in a series of short segments from any location In many of the more densely populated areas round-abouts on and off ramps two-way rail lines were used to help traffic flow
Figure 39
Rivers were present at some points in the time and railways were restricted to pre-established bridges Attention was given the direction of the path on the bridge to ensure a balance of traffic flow across the river Often time interchanges were positioned at the two ends around the bridge in order to allow rail cars to reach a wide range of stations from the bridge and allow traffic to quickly disperse after crossing the bridge If possible when actually constructing the network many more bridges could installed to help facilitate traffic flow
Figure 310
As the population decreases as you go away from the urban centers in the county the number of stations also rapidly decreases Many of the railways merge as the number of stations decrease but overall the same ratio of interchanges and stations are maintained to maintain the same level of efficiency in travel In many of the regions in the east the network serves more as a train than a PRT and many idle stations are connected by one-way rails and are more effectively used to bring people in rural areas to attractions in the more urban areas of the county
Figure 311
Between the densely populate regions in the west and the sparsely inhabited areas in the east it became essential to connect the networks across regions with relatively lower
populations The shortest path between networks was found and new railways were added to connect them If putting a station along the path could satisfy enough attractions then a station was added along the path Traffic balance was a concern so multiple paths were used to ensure that a flow of traffic was maintained in both directions
Figure 312 Trip ends served per station
The minimum amount of trip ends served was 96 and the amount of service increases exponentially up to 61260 Many of the largest values of trip ends served are representative of stations on the border of densely populated area and large shopping centers The actual values of trip ends served may be skewed by the data as many values approximated in the data for the total number of visitors at a business was sometimes 10 times the number of employees or students which may be unlikely The data is further skewed in that census data gives populations and employment based on blocks so as many as 30 businesses could be located at a single point on the map In the program this would result in all of their trip ends satisfied by one station when in reality many of the business may be more than a quarter of mile from the station While some data values may still need to be adjusted to get a more realistic sense of the number of visitors per business it is clear from the data that some areas are in need of multiple stations in the same area to satisfy all trip ends at certain spots Stations with more than 40000 trip ends served should be turned into two stations with over lapping coverage
The smallest of the trips ends served coordinates with stations along the transitions between the initial networks especially along the eastern side of the network These areas were mostly rural and had little productions or attractions The trip ends served may also be different than the reality if you consider the railways acting as a train stop People more than a quarter of a mile might use a station to reach other parts of the county
67 Station types Education and Housing stations
Many of the location of public schools in the county were located within the residential neighborhoods which gave stations in those areas a high degree of service All of the universities were serviced and connected to large attractions to the areas around them to give college students an incentive to use the network to go off campus As Burlington is dominated by suburban neighborhoods much of the railways had to pass through along major roads through neighborhoods in order to be accessible
Recreation and Recreation stations
Recreation place marks were not distinguished from employment stations however special attention was given to try and cover demand for major recreation spots Outside of malls and retail shopping the biggest recreation attractions are its six public golf courses and several nature parks Many of these destinations had some of the largest attraction values in the data series and were included in the network to service their higher level of attraction Interchanges were placed strategically around these spots to increase the capacity of traffic to and from these destinations
Employment Stations
All of the stations used for recreation also served as stations for employees of the same facilities Large office buildings and other areas with a high number of employees were easily identified in the county as they were usually surrounded by infrastructure and dense residential areas These stations were usually connected to residential zones to allow for the employees to use the network for their daily commute As the census data recorded employment based on blocks often times dozens of businesses were satisfied with one station when in reality they may be father than a
quarter of a mile from the station
68 Financial Analysis home school work shopping transportation entertainmentetc dinning Total1005548 64334 613272 - - 2662846 - 4346000
1770364 101918 1005780 - - 4110124 - 6988186
1351403
Stations Interchanges
Miles of Guideway
LengthTotal Trip ends
served Toal Trips Peak hour Trips Fleet size Average trip Length
Average Vehicle
Occupancy Fare
Vehicle Operating Costs
() () (miles) (per day) (per day) (per day) () (Miles) (Tripsvehicle)542 513 59535 4346000 1351403 202711 22298 5 2 300$ 020$
PampL
Stations Guideway Vehicles Total Cost of Capital Maintenance Operating Total Fare
Station lease and naming
rights Total(M$) (M$) (M$) (M$) (M$) (M$) (M$) (M$) (M$) (M$)
1084$ 2977$ 2230$ 6291$ 503$ 126$ 203$ 832$ 1216$ 20$ 1236$ 4040$
TotalCounty Total Trip
Networks Statistics Burlington County
Basic Costs Revenue Burlington CountyAnnual RevenueAnnual Recurring CostsCapital Costs
Trips served (per day)
Fares Profit1 (40683)$ 2 (141)$ 3 40401$ 4 80943$ 5 121485$
At the standard rate of $300 per rider the network gains over $400 million dollars annually At that fare the networkrsquos capital costs could be paid within 15 years and any initial losses could be paid of in the years afterward The breakeven point of the full network is just over $200 which is far more affordable for the average traveler than the initial $450 minimum fare The profitability of the full network far exceeds the initial networks values Compared to the initial networks the rate of profit growth per dollar in fare is much steeper and due to the greater number of passengers being served by the network This would mean that fares would have to be adjusted relatively little in order to see significant changes in profits The overall coverage of trip ends in the network is around 62 and could easily grow as the network continues to gain greater revenue The remaining trip ends are spread out over the rural areas where trips served by a station would not make it profitable to serve so few passengers
69 Conclusion The network would have a pretty hard time getting past its installation cost and
receiving enough profit to expand from initial networks while still keeping prices low enough to invite passengers As the network grows so do the trip ends covered and the distance that travelers can go As the overall appeal of the network to travelers improves the network slowly begins to gain a greater profitability The profitability of the network greatly increases as coverage increases and with it the minimum fare falls making the rail transportation a much more reasonable alternative to driving With the fully connected network the PRT can rival the train stations in the county with its ability to reach deep within neighborhoods and commercial centers to get people close to their chosen destinations The network serves a dual purpose in the county as both a train station to connect isolated neighborhoods as well as local transportation to popular destinations With the rising price of gas and parking a stable $300 fare to meet transportation needs could easily gain favor by the public once the network got expansive As the network grows the break even fare decreases so it may only be a matter of time before fares could drop to more affordable levels Over the course of a few decades the network could gain enough coverage and extend far enough for people to forgo other means of transportation all together except as a means to get to the nearest PRT station
7 Camden County
71 Background As one of the densest counties in New Jersey Camden presents a unique opportunity to
create an efficient financially successful PRT ndash Personal Rapid Transit ndash System With a population of 508932 (last calculated in the 2000 US Census) and a total area of 228 square miles its population density is about 2290 persons per square mile Clearly the density throughout the county differs from area to area but the densest regions of the county are located on the Western side bordering the Delaware River As one moves more inland the county becomes somewhat sparser especially in areas such as Cherry Hill and Lindenwoldi
Understanding the countyrsquos current transportation systems is an important step to understanding the potential for PRT in the county The main public transportation systems that exist in Camden are The River Line which serves trips along the city Camden to Trenton (Figure 41) the Atlantic City Rail Terminal which serves trips along Cherry Hill to Atlantic City (Figure 42) and the PATCO Speedline which serves trips along Lindenwold to Philadelphia (Figure 43)
Figure 41 The River Line
Figure 42 The Atlantic City Rail Terminal ndash Purple Lineii
Figure 43 PATCO Speedlineiii
Given these current transportation networks the PRT system must be carefully designed to enhance these systems not diminish them I believe PRT would complement each of these lines ndash helping people not only arrive at the above stations (from nearly anywhere in the county) but also reach areas that are not covered by the current rail networks
72 My PRT System In setting out to design my PRT system the ultimate goal was the profitability of the network as PRT represents a private enterprise In order to make PRT a viable system I aimed to serve 90 of all trips throughout the county
Step 1 The first step in the system design was station placement After uploading my countyrsquos trip data I laid out all my PRT stations in Camden County Because I wanted a profitable system only stations with over 3000 trips within 025 miles of the station were built
Figure 44 Initial Station Placemarks
Figure 45 More Station Placemarks
Figure 46 All stations in Camden County prior to network connection
Figure 47 Station Coverage
Step 2 After putting down my stations I began deciding how I would connect them My strategy was to first lay out a grid connecting interchanges to stations and interchanges to interchanges for high efficiency
Figure 48 Stations alternated with interchanges
Step 3 After alternating each of my stations with an interchange I connected them in a grid as shown below
Figure 49 Initial Grid Connection
Figure 410 More line connection
In some cases in my county the stations were sparse and this initial line connection was not as simple
Figure 411 South Camden PRT Initial Line Connection
Step 4 After this initial network creation I morphed my grid to fit along the roads and terrain of Camden County This step clearly lowered the efficiency of my network but of course itrsquos crucial to the process In this step the station placemarks remained in their original location but the interchanges and guideway lines were altered to fit the shape of the terrain and roads
Figure 412 Morphed Grid Connections
Figure 413 A section of the final network in Camden County
Figure 414 Another piece of the network
This summarizes the process I used to build my network Below I will discuss the initial networks that planned for my county as well as address some overall network statistics
73 Initial Networks in Camden
The first initial network that I decided to build in Camden County is located in Camden city New Jersey I chose this location because its high population density ndash with 79904 people the density in Camden is about 9057 persons per square mile Additionally this city possesses a high level of diversity in land use and there is already a readily available travel demand to Philadelphia and Trenton due to the available PATCO and River Line railways
I chose Pennsauken as the location for my second small network I chose this location because of its high population density (35737 people total ndash 3392 people per square mile) and diversity in land use This location shows large commercial trip generation areas as well as neighboring residential areas In addition the area possesses a nearby River Line station serving trips along the Delaware River to Trenton
For the third initial network in my county I chose Lindenwold due again to high population density (17414 people total ndash 4415 people per square mile) Additionally this area possesses high levels of commercial and residential zones The PATCO Lindenwold Station (with service to Philadelphia) draws about 4800 entries on average every weekdayiv
Screen shots of my initial networks are shown below
Heavy traffic in these areas are crucial to the initial networkrsquos success
Figure 415 Camden Initial Network
Figure 416 Pennsauken Initial Network
Figure 417 Lindenwold Initial Network
74 Network Profitability and Statistics
8 Cape May County
81 Introduction Cape May County is located at the southernmost tip of New Jersey It is surrounded on by the
Delaware Bay and the Atlantic Ocean to the southwest south and east Its population as of
2009 was 96392 though in summer months that number can swell up to nearly 8 times that
size as its main industry is tourism Cape May is 620 square miles 255 of which is land It is
bordered by Atlantic County to the north and Cumberland County to the northwest Most of its
population is found on the coastal areas such as Ocean City Avalon Stone Harbor the
Woodbine area and the Cape May area Being at the south of New Jersey Cape Mayrsquos winters
are milder than other counties and it also has milder summers compared to most other places
in New Jersey
For previous yearsrsquo reports click here here (p 41) here (p 49) and here (p 43)
For a brief history of Cape May click here
For facts and figures about Cape May click here
82 Initial Network The initial network is located in the boroughs of Avalon and Stone Harbor They are populated
enough that it makes sense to build a network there and they both have ranked on the Forbes
list of most expensive zip codes in the United States so they would have the money needed to
start up a network in the county Avalon and Stone Harbor are also tourist areas in the
summer known for their nice beaches
Stations 22
Interchanges 14
Guideway 204 mi
Figure 51 Initial Network
83 Final Network The final network covers Ocean City Avalon Stone Harbor Woodbine Cape May the suburbs
of Ocean City and Lower Township Other areas of the county did not make it into the final
network because of their relatively low number of possible trips
Figure 52 Final Network
Stations 204
Interchanges 111
Guideway 19739 mi
Table 51 Network Statistics
Table 52 Costs
6784 of all possible trips in Cape May County were covered by this network An average
vehicle occupancy of 3 was assumed because most people go to the beach in groups so there
would be relatively less one-passenger trips A fare of $300 per ride leads to an annual loss of
$43 million To break even the fare would have to be raised to $400 per ride
The stations with the most trips per day were mainly located on the coast near attractions such
as popular restaurants and shops amusement parks and other recreational areas There were
70 stations on the network that serviced less than 1000 trips a day meaning they were at a
loss Ideally these would be removed from the network to increase profit however they still
add to the coverage of the county which is already quite low
This fare vs profit graph has a very gradual slope because of the low number of stations and
the low coverage rate
84 Construction Plan Evolution Ocean City
After the initial network in AvalonStone Harbor the next phase would be Ocean City Ocean
City is the largest city in the county with a population of 15378 according to the 2000 census
The summer population can be as much as 130000 The Ocean City beach is so popular that
you need to purchase a beach tag to gain access during the summer months
Wildwood Area
This network covers Wildwood Crest Wildwood and North Wildwood It has a summer
population of over 250000 and has very nice beaches as well Wildwood also contains Moreys
Piers amusement complex and the Raging Waters and Ocean Oasis water parks which attract
thousands of visitors a day during the summer season This network is just south of the
AvalonStone Harbor network so they would be connected
After Wildwood
There are two areas at the southern tip of the county in Cape May that are tourist hot spots
Small networks would be built there after Wildwood Later a network in Sea Isle City would be
built It beaches attract many tourists plus having a network there would connect the Ocean
City and AvalonStone Harbor networks The suburbs of Ocean City and Lower Township would
be added last as they donrsquot have as many tourists but are still quite densely populated
85 Summer Statistics Since at the moment the network is losing money the possibility of only running the system
during the summer was examined All school trips were eliminated and transit trips were
multiplied by 3 and recreational and PT trips were multiplied by 4 A real summer network
would probably involve removing all non-tourist areas from the network which would probably
result in more profit but these just some rough figures
With a fare of $300 the network would generate $13 million a year The break even price is
$280
9 Cumberland County Cumberland County is located near the Delaware Bay and is approximately 2 hours away from New York City and 45 minutes or so away from Philadelphia and Atlantic City It was founded in 1748 and has total area of 677 square miles with 489 square miles of land According to the 2007 estimates from the census bureau over 155000 (146438 from the 2000 census) people reside in the three cities ten townships and one borough of Cumberland County Cumberland was named after Prince William the Duke of Cumberland and is adjacent to Gloucester County Atlantic County Cape May County Kent County and Salem County
91 Demographics The population density of Cumberland according to the 2000 census was 299 people per square mile with an average density of 108 housing units per square mile This means that the county is one of the larger counties in the state with one of the lowest populations Most of the inhabitants reside within one of the three cities (Bridgeton Vineland and Millville) Table 61 Age Breakdown
Age Breakdown
Demographic Total of Residents of Population
lt 18 37195 254
18 - 24 12447 85
25 - 44 45689 312
45 - 64 32070 219
gt 65 19037 130
Figure 61 Population Density Map (from 2000 Census Data)
Municipalities of Cumberland County Table 62 Summary of Cumberland (Data as of April 1st 2000)
Cumberland County
Number Municipality Population Square MI
1 Vineland City 56271 687
2 Millville City 26847 424
3 Bridgeton City 22771 62
4 Shiloh Borough 534 12
5 Stow Creek Township 1429 184
6 Greenwich Township 847 182
7 Hopewell Township 4434 299
8 Upper Deerfield Township 7556 311
9 Deerfield Township 2927 168
10 Fairfield Township 6283 523
11 Lawrence Township 2721 375
12 Downe Township 1631 508
13 Commercial Township 5259 325
14 Maurice River Township 6928 934
Economy Summary
According to the 2000 census data Cumberland has a per capita income of $17376 and a median household income level of $39170 whereas the state of New Jersey had a per capita income level of $27006 and a median household income level of $7034723
The majority of the residents of Cumberland are involved in the farming industry although in the three cities of the county residents are employed in other areas ranging from mining manufacturing and construction industries to business services education and health services as well as the hospitality industry
suggesting that Cumberland is perhaps one of the poorer counties in New Jersey
Education Summary
There are 37 elementary schools in the county 7 high schools and according to information from the Cumberland County Public School System there were over 26000 students enrolled in 2004 In the county there is one institution of higher education and that is the Cumberland County Community College in Vineland with totally enrollment of approximately 3000 students (all commuters no student residents)
Transportation Summary
Transportation information is very important for the PRT building process According to the 2000 census the mean travel time in the county was 231 minutes Highways that provide easy access to Cumberland County are the New Jersey Turnpike the Garden State Parkway Route 55 Route 322 and I-295 With the completion of Route 55 (a 40 mile length of highway that took over 20 years to build) the county has seen commerce develop as well as expansions in business and leisure Route 55 allowed for the reduction of the drive between Cumberland and Philadelphia and also feeds into 295 and is according to the countyrsquos website ldquoCumberlandrsquos gateway to the worldrdquo
23 httpquickfactscensusgovqfdstates34000html
Cumberland has an airport in Millville and is one of the sites of major employment for the city of Millville as it employs between 1300 and 1400 people and helps to generate over $30 million in payroll annually Cumberland also has bus systems that are run by NJ Transit
92 PRT Network in Cumberland In Cumberland the final PRT Network is as follows
Figure 62 Final PRT network
In this image you can see that there is a large cluster of stations in the Eastern portion of the county which is where the majority of the population resides and also in the middle of the county toward the western border There are areas between the two larger groups of residents that also have stations which helps to join the two networks together There are individual stations around the rest of the county especially in the southeast corner of the county and in the mid to northwest areas of the county
For our networks we used a grid system whenever possible and otherwise we just built loops We used smaller loops so that the trip around the network would not take as long and so that the commuters would be able to save time wherever we could but in certain scenarios where there are only isolated pockets of people living we had a longer track in place so that they could also be connected to the PRT network For Cumberland we were able to achieve a coverage rate of 8613 through 291 stations and 182 interchanges with a total of 39706 miles of guideway The original goal of 90 coverage was rather difficult to achieve because there just arenrsquot enough residents in Cumberland for it to be profitable that way but we did manage to end up with a coverage of 8574
Network for the East part of Cumberland
The above image shows the grid formation of the network in the east of Cumberland County The grid formation reduces the need for two way guide ways and thus is much more cost efficient
Year Built
For our PRT network we decided to build the entire thing over 8 years We chose 8 years instead of 20 because we felt that 20 was too long a time horizon to look at We felt that 8 years was long enough that we could develop the network slowly without having to space it over such a long time span
Below is a table that indicates how many interchanges shape points and stations were built during each year for Years 1 through 8
Table 63 Evolution
93 PRT Summary Below are the summary statistics for Cumberland County
Table 64 Costs and Revenues
Table 65 Network Statistics
The trip ends served per station is graphed in decreasing order
From this we can see that if we charge a fare of $3 we can expect a PampL of about $6 million dollars In order to build the PRT network there is a total fixed cost of $3280 million dollars
We want to look at the areas where the trip ends served for certain areas because we just used the trip data from last year and so wersquod suggest being more judicious with regard to the filtering of data
In addition to this fixed cost there is also an annual recurring cost of $393 million dollars However with the fare set to $3 per ride and the station lease and naming rights we should be able to make an actual profit from this network
The following is a graph of how annual PampL would look at different fare costs It can be seen that only from a fare of slightly above $250 would this project actually be worth undertaking Since it has been proven that people are resistant to the idea of raising prices we suggest charging a higher price upfront so that when the costs rise (due to inflation and other factors) they would not be as resistant to paying these higher prices
For the networks we scaled down the recreation trips by a constant factor so that we could get the total number of trips to a reasonable number We also went through the data sets to remove placemarks that had ridiculous numbers of employees or visitors and the ones that were duplicates of previous placemarks However because we had set the stations in place already we were unable to find them and remove them easily In the future we recommend that students strictly filter the data given to them for the county and remove the obvious outliers We also suggest that the students note the concept of the ldquowiggle effectrdquo Because of the way that the PRT site worked the ridership numbers that showed up for some stations was greater than the actual number of trips that would be there (which made it look like building a station in an area was actually profitable) We recommend double checking that
10 Essex County
101 Geography
Figure 71 Maps of Essex County
Essex County is located in northeastern New Jersey and consists of 130 square miles of land Of this area approximately 254 consists of water and the remaining 9746 of land It is adjacent to the five New Jersey counties ndash Union to the south Morris to the west Hudson to the east Passaic to the north and Bergen to the northwest Newark serves as both its county seat and largest city Essex is made up of 22 municipalities given below Since there is likely to be large volumes of intra-municipality travel networks are likely to serve a larger volume of trips if small individual networks cover areas in individual municipalities
Table 71 Municipalities of Essex County
Boroughs Cities Townships
Caldwell East Orange Belleville
Essex Fells Newark Bloomfield
Glen Ridge Cedar Grove
North Caldwell Orange
Roseland Fairfield
Irvington
Livingston
Maplewood
Millburn
Montclair
Nutley
South Orange
Verona
West Caldwell
West Orange
The entire county is generally flat except for portions of the Watchung Mountains in the western portion of the county Essex County also has several parks with its own park department the Essex County Park system
Table 72 Parks of Essex County
Park Name Location in Essex County
Anderson Park Montclair
Becker Park Roseland
Branch Brook Park NewarkBelleville
Brookdale Park MontclairBloomfield
Eagle Rock Reservation West OrangeMontclair
Elmwood Park East OrangeNewark
Glenfield Park MontclairGlen Ridge
Grove Cleveland Park Caldwell
Hilltop Reservation CaldwellCedar GroveNorth CaldwellVerona
Irvington Park Irvington
Kiprsquos Castle Park Verona
Mills Reservation Cedar GroveMontclair
Orange Park Orange
Oval Park East Orange
South Mountain Reservation West OrangeSouth OrangeMillburnMaplewood
Valisburg Park Newark
Verona Park Verona
Watsessing Park BloomfieldEast Orange
Weequahic Park Newark
West Essex Park West CaldwellRoseland
Westside Park Newark
Yanticaw Park Nutley
102 Demographic Information
As of the 2000 US Census it has a total population of 793633 a population density of 6285 people per square mile Specifically there are 283736 households with each one consisting of approximately 272 people on average The median age is 35 years 490 of the Essex population is male and the remaining 510 are females In the state of New Jersey it is the county with the second largest population density Basic data regarding Essexrsquos demographic breakdown is given below while a more comprehensive summary can be found in the appendix of this report
Table 73 Age Breakdown of Essex County
Population Percentage of Total Population
Persons under 5 years old 58952 74
Persons 5-18 years old 141006 177
Person 18-65 years old 503479 632
Persons 65 years old and over 93207 117
Total population (est 2009) 793633 1000
The history of population growth will help project construction of PRT network In the recent decades Essex County has actually seen a decrease in population The population growth for Essex County NJ is as follows
Table 74 5 2000 US Census Population Breakdown for Essex County
Year Population Change
1940 837340 -
1950 905949 82
1960 923345 19
1970 932526 10
1980 851304 -87
1990 778206 -86
2000 793633 20
Est 2009 770675 -29
The estimated growth from 2000-2009 for Essex County is quite less than that of the entire state of New Jersey being 37
By examining the population growth of each specific municipality of Essex County we can determine which areas of Essex County in which more immediate and extensive PRT networks would be the most profitable and efficient Both current and future population growth estimates must be taken into account in order to effectively size a new public transportation system such as PRT to an evolving demand capacity
Table 75 2000 US Census Population Growth for Municipalities of Essex County
Municipality Growth
Caldwell -28
Essex Fells -25
Glen Ridge -50
North Caldwell -38
Such data will help determine in which areas more extensive PRT networks are most likely appropriate While most of Essex County has been showing a decline in population areas such as Roseland Newark Cedar Grove and Livingston have shown a positive growth in population Fairfield has specifically shown a population growth of 91 within the past 10 years In declining areas we must be aware that an over-extensive development could lead to massive losses in the future We need to consider economic sustainability in the long-term not only the present
Table 76 2000 US Census Population Breakdown for Municipalities of Essex County
Municipality Population Density (per square mile)
Newark 278154 20528
East Orange 65390 17776
Irvington 56299 14904
Bloomfield 43885 13301
West Orange 42561 10744
Belleville 33831 8962
Orange 31058 8123
Livingston 27990 6396
Montclair 26966 6207
Nutley 26171 6073
Caldwell 22732 5945
Maplewood 21985 5593
Millburn 18755 4917
Roseland +10
East Orange -64
Newark +17
Belleville -58
Bloomfield -80
Cedar Grove +32
Orange -55
Fairfield +91
Irvington -72
Livingston +22
Maplewood -79
Millburn -51
Montclair -52
Nutley -44
South Orange -64
Verona -44
West Caldwell -71
West Orange -53
South Orange 15882 3708
Verona 12937 3023
Cedar Grove 12698 2464
West Caldwell 10441 2224
Fairfield 7707 2106
Glen Ridge 7271 1973
North Caldwell 7092 1534
Roseland 5352 1464
Essex Fells 2107 676
Furthermore the financial viability and ultimate success of a county-wide PRT network seems to be more achievable if it is to grow from smaller networks established in densely populated areas where there is a larger market to penetrate (greater demand for public transport a greater number of productions and attractions generated) and thus larger initial growth potential for the project
103 Demographic Information
The population can also be categorized by Essex residentsrsquo level of education given in the table below
Table 77 Population Breakdown by Educational Attainment and School Enrollment Comparison with NJ and US Overall Levels
Essex County NJ US
EDUCATIONAL ATTAINMENT
Population Percentage
Population 25 and older 513570 667
Population Percentage Percentage Percentage
High school graduates (includes equivalency) 139578 272 294 286
Some college or associates degree 107421 209 229 274
Bachelors degree 84953 165 188 155
Masters professional or doctorate degree 56214 109 110 89
388166
SCHOOL ENROLLMENT
Population Percentage
Population 3 years and over enrolled in school 221424
Population Percentage Percentage Percentage
Preschool and kindergarten 30405 137 137 119
Grades 1-12 143335 647 651 653
College 47684 215 212 228
Total 221424
PRT would need to cater to the school trips generated by the local population The distribution of schools in the county and the ridership demand that students enrolled and teachers employed alike should be a crucial consideration in designing the PRT network Following are the 10 schools in the county with the highest student enrollment
Table 78 High Schools Middle Schools with the 10 Top Levels of Enrollment
School Staff Student Enrollment
West Orange High 198 2000
Montclair High 193 1951
Bloomfield High 183 1846
Columbia Sr High 181 1843
Barringer High 174 1763
East Orange Campus 152 1691
Livingston Sr High 158 1656
Irvingston High School 139 1546
West Side High 131 1487
Belleville Sr High 135 1466
Table 79 Institutions of higher education
School Location
Bloomfield College Bloomfield NJ
Caldwell College Caldwell NJ
Essex County College Newark NJ
Montclair State University Montclair NJ
New Jersey Institute of Technology Newark NJ
Rutgers University ndash Newark Newark NJ
Seton Hall University South Orange NJ
University of Medicine and Dentistry Newark NJ
104 Industry
It would also be beneficial to place stations near these employers which carry the most combined number of employees and patrons daily in Essex County
Table 710 Employers with the 10 Largest Number of Employees
Employer Location
Prudential Financial Newark NJ
Verizon Newark NJ
Public Service Electric amp Gas Company Newark NJ
Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield of New Jersey
Newark NJ
Continental Airlines Newark NJ
MBNA Marketing Systems Newark NJ
McCarter amp English Law Firm Newark NJ
Sills Cummis Epstein amp Gross Newark NJ
Rutgers University Newark NJ
Gateway Security Newark NJ
105 Current Transportation
Essex County currently holds the Newark Light Rail The Newark City Subway section of the rail is 53 miles long and runs between Newark Penn Station in Newark and Grove Street in Bloomfield The second segment is the Broad Street Segment It is one mile long and connects Newark Penn Station to Broad Street Station This segment has stops at Washington Park Riverfront Stadium and the New Jersey Performing Arts Center The entire light rail takes about 21599 daily boardings
5 NJ Transit lines run through the county (NEC Raritan Morristown Line Gladstone Branch and Montclair-Boonton Line)
PATH and NEC Amtrak lines run through Newark Penn Station Our PRT networks will complement these systems providing direct access to each station
106 PROPOSING A PRT SYSTEM In placing stations and interchanges conjunctively while we wanted to place stations in areas of high demand we also wanted stations to be placed amongst each other to form a grid-like structure Ideally each piece of the grid would form a rectangle Interchanges are placed at the four points of the rectangle with one (or sometimes two) station along each side Parallel sides of each rectangle go in opposite directions and each side of a rectangle is also a side of an adjacent rectangle Such an idea is seen through the example of Figure 215
Through such a layout it makes it fairly easy to get from any two arbitrary stations The grid layout makes it so that you can travel in any of the four major directions by crossing at most two interchanges The largest ldquounnecessary circlerdquo that one would need to travel to get between two stations would be the rectangle of each individual grid For the most part we tried to stay on usual roads as building atop current infrastructure would provide both a steady foundation and save on construction costs This would also help complement many modes of transportation
Figure 73 Grid System in Essex County
For the densest areas such as Irvington East Orange and Newark the ldquorectangular gridsrdquo were smaller A quarter-mile radius of some points in these areas served up to more than 100000 trips In such areas 1-3 stations could be found within a quarter mile radius of another
Figure 74 PRT Network Placement and Coverage in a Densely Populated Area
In many of the less dense suburb areas of Essex such as Fairfield Essex Fells etc the population density is drastically less than that of the other municipalities of the region being less than 2000 people per square mile In these areas the same grid-like pattern is also followed as in the dense cities but each rectangular grid is longer in perimeter Usually one station was enough to cover a quarter-mile radius if not more The suburb area also has less of a current grid-like street system but instead features more cul-de-sac and meandering streets To fulfill the grid-like structure of PRT in this area more shape points were necessary In times our PRT network does go through non-roads and ldquonaturerdquo
Essex County NJ is also home to Newark International Airport According to the Airport International Council Newark Airport had over 35360848 passengers in 2009 (Passengers is equal to arriving + departing + direct transit passengers) This meant on average 90000 passengers per day
In reaching the airport one first must converge to the station-interchange of the Newark Liberty train station From there the network mimics the AirTrain station of EWR but instead provides two stops at each terminal
Figure 75 PRT Network at Newark Airport
Newark NJ also features the Prudential Center a multi-purpose indoor arena It can hold over 16000 patrons for events such as ice hockey basketball soccer lacrosse and concerts Its current tenants include the Devils Nets the Liberty the Seton Hall Pirates NJIT basketball the Titans and Ironmen In major areas such as the Prudential Center where the number of daily patrons is exceedingly high we placed two stations directly at the location one at each side of the center During major venues there will definitely be ldquorush hoursrdquo immediately before and after events Thus more than one station will be necessary to fulfill the extremely high demand at specific times
Figure 76 PRT at the Prudential Center
The final PRT network is shown below
Figure 77 Aerial View of the Entire Network and Placemarks (Productions and Attractions)
107 Trip Analysis Statistics The final Essex County PRT Network consists of 707 stations 620 interchanges and 46225 miles of guideway Of the 16251 placemarks recorded in the countyrsquos csv file 15025 of them are assigned to stations and thus are located within a quarter mile radius to at least one PRT station This translates into 9246 functional coverage of Essex County by the PRT network and service to 9414 of all trips generated that are currently served by automobile andor bus transit systems
Table 712 Network Trip Service Rates
Trip Type Potential Number of Daily Trips Number of Trips Served by Network Daily Percentage of Trips Served Daily
Home Trips 2337226 2234896 9510
Work Trips 763719 733687 9615
Recreation Trips 55200 52700 9547
Transportation Trips 52800 51665 9785
Student Trips 127679 119656 9372
(Non-Student) Patron Trips 1371753 1298681 9467
Total 4708417 4491285 9484
Figure 78 Network Trip End Service Rates
The maximum number of trips served by a single station per day is 37018 and the minimum number of trips is 510 trips To estimate the total number of PRT vehicles required to adequately service trip demand given average vehicle ridership is approximately 3 and that the network services at most 10 of all trip demand during its busiest times this can be calculated by dividing the total number of trips per day served by the network then multiplying this value by 010 This yields an upper bound estimate for the number of trips that must be serviced at any one time during the day which translates into an estimated vehicle demand of 156947 vehicles
Figure 79 Trip Ends Served by Each Station Per Day
Figure 710 21 Trips Served by Each Station Per Day
108 Growth in Phases
Phase I Year 0 to Year 5
bull Construct the PRTsystem in the most dense areas (the southeastern area of Essex) that will thus generate the most trips per square mile (and build strong initial revenue) With more people using the system the lower the cost per trip is Create the system in areas such as Newark (city and airport) Orange East Orange and Irvington Begin with basic intra-municipal networks to allow patrons to easily travel within their respective cities
bull Immediately eliminate the light rail and replace it with PRT
Phase II Year 5 to Year 10
bull Begin linking regions that were mapped in Phase I bull Construct the PRT system in medium-dense areas that surround Newark Orange Irvington These include Belleville Bloomfield
Nutley Maplewood South Orange Glen Ridge and Montclair Build them so they grow off of those mapped from Phase I This is beneficial to workers who work in the cities but donrsquot live in them
Figure 711 22 Phase I Development
Figure 712 Phase II Development
Phase III Year 10 to Year 15
bull Continue westward in the county Begin mapping West Orange Essex Fells the Caldwells Cedar Grove and Verona Build stations so they grow off of networks mapped from Phase II
Phase IV Year 15 to Year 20
bull Finish PRT network in the final least-dense suburbs in West Essex County These include Fairfield Roseland Livingston and Millburn Build stations so they grow off of networks mapped from Phase III
bull Begin considering inter-county connections Especially between Hudson and Union and their connection with Newark and the airport
Figure 713 Phase III Development
Figure 714 Phase IV Development
109 Financial Analysis
For the entire PRT system of Essex County we incur the following costs
Table 713 Fixed Costs of Essex PRT System
Component Unit Cost ($ mn) Number of Units Required Total Cost ($ mn)
Station $200 70700 $141400
1 Mile of Guideway $500 46225 $231125
Interchange $000 62000 $000
PRT Vehicle $010 15694700 $1569470
Total $1941995
In order to finance this large project we propose that the combined efforts of Essex Countyrsquos municipalities float 20-year zero-coupon revenue (municipal) bonds worth of the entire projected cost ($1941995 million) that are to be repaid directly using earnings from the PRT network In order to determine appropriate unit PRT ride pricing an estimate for the total number of trips per year must be generated From the productions and attractions computed by the csv datasets it was determined that Essex County generates a potential of 4708417 trips per average weekday Given the PRT network design that functionally covers only 9484 of Essexrsquos total area the system is expected to serve an average of 4491285 trips per day This value can be used as an estimate for the number of trips served by the system each of the 260 weekdays that there are per year on average
From our analysis of NJ Transitrsquos 2009 ridership data we can estimate that the number of trips generated and served by the PRT network will be about 4557 of average weekday ridership on Saturdays and about 3010 of average weekday ridership on Sundays Using this assumption we can deduce the following equation
The gradual growth and development of the PRT system must be taken into account before any financial calculations can be made The following table shows a detailed schedule of costs associated with the evolution of Essexrsquos network
Table 714 Schedule of Essex County PRT Projected Fixed Costs
Stations Miles of Guideway Interchanges PRT Vehicles Total Cost No of Trips Served
Unit Cost ($ millions) $200 $500 $000 $010 (Average Weekday)
PHASE I YEAR 5 2409335 Trips Served Per Day
Total No Operational 290 15025 240 80311
Total No Constructed Since previous Period 290 15025 240 80311
Total Cost of Operational Units $58000 $75125 $000 $803112 $936237
Cost of Construction Since Previous Period $58000 $75125 $000 $803112 $936237
PHASE II YEAR 10 3201295 Trips Served Per Day
Total No Operational 452 2802 382 106710
Total No Constructed Since previous Period 162 12995 142 26399
Total Cost of Operational Units $90400 $140100 $000 $1067098 $1297598
Cost of Construction Since Previous Period $32400 $64975 $000 $263987 $361362
PHASE III YEAR 15 3735133 Trips Served Per Day
Total No Operational 605 39025 510 124504
Total No Constructed Since previous Period 153 11005 128 17795
Total Cost of Operational Units $121000 $195125 $000 $1245044 $1561169
Cost of Construction Since Previous Period $30600 $55025 $000 $177946 $263571
PHASE IV YEAR 20 4491285 Trips Served Per Day
Total No Operational 707 46225 620 156947
Total No Constructed Since previous Period 102 72 110 32443
Total Cost of Operational Units $141400 $231125 $000 $1569470 $1941995
Figure 715 Projected Fixed Cost Schedule
Table 715 Essex County PRT Projected Trip Statistics and Costs
Since the PRT system will only begin to be operational and serve trips beginning year 5 in effect the NJ PRT authorities would only have 15 years (between years 5 and 20) to recover the total cost to pay out the $1941995 million worth of municipal bonds used to finance the project by their maturity date in year 20
Though it must be noted that these calculations do not take into consideration the additional variable costs of maintenance and repairs the proposed idea is supported by a feasible finance plan and offers competitively low rates for an efficient mode of transportation with high accessibility
Assuming this trip unit price an average resident of Essex County traveling 4 times a day would spend $536 per day on transportation and an estimate of $195640 per year In comparison the median cost of a new car is currently at $25500 which translates into an average annual cost of $318750 given that the average life time of a new car is about 8 years according to MSNBC still excluding the complementary costs of fuel taxation insurance maintenance and repairs As an additional point of comparison the cost of a one-way trip on a NJ Transit bus is on average $175 statewide This considered the proposed PRT network offers extremely competitive pricing and is accessible to a wider range of socio-economic classes
By Year 5 By Year 10 By Year 15 By Year 20
Cost of Construction Since Last Period ($ mn) $936237 $361363 $263565 $308460
Trips Served per Day 2409335 3201295 3735133 4491285
Trips Served per Year 722142149 959513746 1119519275 1346158256
Cost of Ticket to Break Even ($) - $359 $186 $134
In order to determine the profitability of the system annual recurring costs and the schedule of revenue (accounting for both ticketing revenue initially saved towards project finance repayment and other revenue from such sources as advertising station naming rights etc) must be taken into consideration Based on the same guidelines and rationale stipulated for Union County the following values were obtained
Annual Recurring Costs
Cost of Capital Maintenance Operating Total
Year ($) ($) ($) ($)
0 7767980000 000 000 7767980000
1 7767980000 000 000 7767980000
2 7767980000 000 000 7767980000
3 7767980000 000 000 7767980000
4 7767980000 000 000 7767980000
5 7767980000 194199500 388399000 8350578500
6 7767980000 194199500 388399000 8350578500
7 7767980000 194199500 388399000 8350578500
8 7767980000 194199500 388399000 8350578500
9 7767980000 194199500 388399000 8350578500
10 7767980000 388399000 776798000 8933177000
11 7767980000 388399000 776798000 8933177000
12 7767980000 388399000 776798000 8933177000
13 7767980000 388399000 776798000 8933177000
14 7767980000 388399000 776798000 8933177000
15 7767980000 582598500 1165197000 9515775500
16 7767980000 582598500 1165197000 9515775500
17 7767980000 582598500 1165197000 9515775500
18 7767980000 582598500 1165197000 9515775500
19 7767980000 582598500 1165197000 9515775500
20 000 776798000 1553596000 2330394000
Because of the gradual development of the PRT system annual non-project finance earnings will be as follows
Phase I 0 stations x $5000month x 12 months = $000
Phase II 290 stations x $5000month x 12 months = $1740000000
Phase III 452 stations x $5000month x 12 months = $2712000000
Phase IV 605 stations x $5000month x 12 months = $3630000000
Long Term (707 stations x $5000month x 12 months) + ($134trip x 1346158256 tripsyear) = $149627091688
Thus the profitability of the project over time can be summarized by the following table and chart
Projected Profitability
Phase Year(s) Annual Recurring Costs ($) Annual Non-Project Finance Earnings ($) PnL
I 0-4 7767980000 000 ($7767980000)
II 5-9 8350578500 1740000000 ($6610578500)
III 10-14 8933177000 2712000000 ($6221177000)
IV 15-19 9515775500 3630000000 ($5885775500)
Long Term 20 onwards 2330394000 149627091688 $147296697688
Figure 716 Projected Break Even Chart
Projected PnL
As seen from this analysis while the PRT system will make a loss until year 20 when the municipal bonds used to finance the initial construction of the project are paid out thereafter it will be extremely profitable Thus it will be easy to recover such losses within a reasonable time frame It can be concluded that the proposed project is not only financially viable but also a promising opportunity
11 Gloucester County Gloucester County was covers a total land area of approximately 337 square miles and according to the 2000 census has a total population of 254673 residents It is located to the south of Philadelphia (approximately 69 miles away) and northwest of Atlantic City Originally Gloucester County used to encompass the present Atlantic and Camden counties It is an agricultural industrial and residential area with farming being the main source of income for the county Gloucester is adjacent to Salem County Cumberland County as well as Camden County and several other counties in New Jersey and Pennsylvania There are a total of 22 counties boroughs and cities in Gloucester
111 Demographics According to the 2000 census there were a total of 254673 residents and 90717 households giving a population density of 785 people per square mile for Gloucester County with an average of 277 persons per household The age breakdown of the county is as follows Table 81 Age Breakdown
Demographic Total of Residents of Population
lt 18 67498 264
18 - 24 22755 89
25 - 44 77725 304
45 - 64 57782 226
gt 65 29914 117
Figure 81 Population Density Map (Census Data from 2000)
Table 82 Municipalities of Gloucester and estimated population (as of 2000)
Gloucester County
Number Municipality Population Square
MI
1 Newfield Borough 1616 17
2 Clayton Borough 7139 74
3 Glassboro Borough 19068 92
4 Pitman Borough 9331 23
5 Wenonah Borough 2317 10
6 Woodbury Heights 2988 12
7 Woodbury City 10307 21
8 Westville Borough 4501 14
9 National Park
Borough 3205 14
10 Paulsboro Borough 6160 26
11 Swedesboro Borough 2055 08
12 Logan Township 6032 268
13 Greenwich Township 4972 121
14 West Deptford
Township 19368 178
15 East Greenwich
Township 5430 150
16 Woolwich Township 3032 212
17 South Harrison
Township 2417 158
18 Harrison Township 8788 192
19 Mantua Township 14217 159
20 Deptford Township 30529 176
21 Washington
Township 47114 215
22 Monroe Township 28967 469
23 Franklin Township 16853 564
24 Elk Township 3949 197
We can see that the majority of the population of Gloucester lives in the larger townships and boroughs such as Monroe Washington Deptford Franklin West Deptford and Glassboro
Economy Summary
According to the 2000 census data24
The top 5 large companies in Gloucester are listed in the following table
the median income for a household in the county was $72316 and the median income for a family in the county was $85532 which means that the county has a per capita income of $30893 and approximately 620 of the population of the county below the poverty line
Education Summary
According to the education data on Gloucester County there are a total of 171 schools in the county including 82 public elementary schools 39 private elementary schools 16 public high schools 30 private high schools 2 colleges and universities and 2 businessvocational schools
24 httpquickfactscensusgovqfdstates3434015lkhtml
According to the US Census bureau 77861 are enrolled in the school system in Gloucester County25
Transportation Summary
In Gloucester County 93 of people use private transportation Over 18 of the residents work outside of the state Interstate 295 is the only interstate in the county and passes through the Northwest portion of the county as does the New Jersey Turnpike26
There are sever state routes which pass through the county such as Route 41 42 45 47 55 77 324 and others There are no connections to NJ Transit train systems but there is a bus route that is not very well developed
25 httpfactfindercensusgovservletSTTable_bm=yamp-geo_id=05000US34015amp-qr_name=ACS_2009_5YR_G00_S1401amp-ds_name=ACS_2009_5YR_G00_amp-redoLog=false 26 httpenwikipediaorgwikiGloucester_County_New_Jerseycite_note-GR2-6
112 PRT Network We can see that the majority of the population of Gloucester lives in the larger townships and boroughs such as Monroe Washington Deptford Franklin West Deptford and Glassboro These were the municipalities that we had the most PRT stations in Although the original goal was to have 90 coverage in the county such that the citizens would be able to have a PRT station within a quarter mile radius in the smaller municipalities where there wasnrsquot as much population this was not feasible We managed to end up with a coverage of 8114 service in the county
For our PRT network we had grids on the east and west sides of the county because the population was essentially split that way There were many more residents on the two sides than in the center of the county and this can be seen through the placement of the PRT stations We placed stations where there was an indication from the site that therersquod be a profit and in a few (rare) cases we placed stations where the numbers were really close to the cutoff threshold for profitability (1000)
Figure 82 Gloucester County Final PRT Network
Gloucester County Northern Tip PRT Network
There is a grid network set up here and also in the Northeast We did so because the grid setup is the shortest way for users of the network to get to where they need to go
Northeast PRT Network
Year Built
For the Gloucester County PRT network we decided to shorten the building time to 6 years instead of 20 because we felt that we would be able to realize more immediate profits if we finished building sooner The following is a table indicating how many stations interchanges shape points will be built and guideway miles will be laid in the 6 year time period for this project Table 83 Evolution
113 PRT Summary Below are the summary statistics for Gloucester County for the PRT network Table 84 Network Statistics
Table 85 Costs and Revenues
This is a graph of the trip ends served per station arranged in decreasing order
From the above chart we can see that with a fare of $3 we can expect to make a profit of $122 million dollars In order to build the network however we would have to pay a fixed cost of $4438 million dollars or 44 billion dollars This is because there is a large number of stations (434) and interchanges (210) and there is a total guideway length of 472 miles These stations and interchanges allow for the PRT network to cover 8114 of the county
The following is a graph of how annual PampL would look with different fare costs It can be seen that once the cost of a ride exceeds $250 it because profitable to build the PRT network in the county We recommend charging a bit more initially because due to the way people view increases in price they will be very averse to price increases (which will be necessary later due to inflation and other costs increasing)
Notes for future classes
Now that wersquove finished with the networks for the counties that we worked on we have a few notes wersquod like to make about the networks First off wersquod like to point out that the data really needs to be scrubbed down There are many duplicate placemarks in the csv files that we were given and also placemarks that had completely unreasonable numbers for employees and visitors causing there to be stations with huge ridership numbers What we did to remedy this was that we went through and deleted duplicate placemarks and also rescaled the number of recreation trips by a constant factor so that wersquod end up with a total number of trips that seemed reasonable Something else that we noticed was that therersquos a problem with the PRT page in that the numbers will only update if you wriggle the mouse around a bit so that caused us to place some stations in areas that were not particularly profitable but the way that the site works makes it really difficult to find and delete these stations
12 Hudson County
121 Geography
Figure 91 Maps of Hudson County
Hudson County is located in northeastern New Jersey and consists of 62 square miles of land Of this area approximately 2521 consists of water and the remaining 7479 of land It is adjacent to the counties of Essex Union and Bergen in New Jersey and to the counties of Richmond New York and Kings in New York Jersey City serves as both its county sea Hudson is made up of 12 municipalities shown below
Table 91 Municipalities of Hudson County
Boroughs Cities Towns Townships
East Newark Bayonne West New York North Bergen
Jersey City Guttenburg Weehawken
Hoboken Secaucus
Union City Kearny
Harrison
122 Demographic Information
According to the 2000 US Census it has a total population of 608975 and a population density of 13044 people per square mile making Hudson County the densest county in New Jersey and the sixty-most densely populated county in the United States Such density provides a great market for a PRT system Specifically there are 240618 households with each one consisting of approximately 260 people on average The median age is 34 years Basic data regarding Unionrsquos demographic breakdown is given below while a more comprehensive summary can be found in the appendix of this report
Table 92 US 2000 Census Population Breakdown for Hudson County
Population Percentage of Total Population
Under the age of 18 137628 226
18-24 years old 63333 1040
25 to 44 years old 216795 3560
45 to 64 year olds 121795 2000
Over the age of 65 95609 1570
Total Population 608975 10000
A summary of growth statistics is given below
Table 93 US Census Population Breakdown in Hudson County
Year Population Change
1950 647437
1960 610374 -57
1970 607839 -05
1980 556972 -84
1990 553099 -07
2000 608975 101
2008 (est) 595419 -22
Growth statistics for each individual city will help in generating the phase plan for constructing the network over a long-term period of time The recent growth statistics for the following municipalities since the year 2000 is shown below
Table 94 US Census Population Growth for Hudson County from 1990 - 2000
Growth
East Newark -106
Bayonne -48
Jersey City 10
Hoboken 63
Union City -65
West New York 17
Guttenburg -19
Secaucus -35
Kearny -79
Harrison 54
North Bergen -33
Weehawken -79
Figure 92 Hudson County Percentage Population Change in Each Municipality from 1990 - 2000
Both Hoboken and Harrison have shown substantial growth in the recent years This continued growth provides promise in providing PRT in these areas as demand for the network will hopefully continue to grow as the PRT goes through its 20-year construction phase
Table 95 2000 US Census Population Breakdown for Hudson County
123
Education
The population can also be categorized by Hudson residentsrsquo level of education specified in the table below
Table 96 8 Population Breakdown by Educational Attainment and School Enrollment Comparison with NJ and US Overall Levels
Hudson County NJ US
EDUCATIONAL ATTAINMENT
Population Percentage
Population 25 and older 408799 671
Population Percentage Percentage Percentage
High school graduates (includes equivalency) 109542 268 294 286
Some college or associates degree 75418 184 229 274
Bachelors degree 66835 163 188 155
Masters professional or doctorate degree 36521 89 110 89
Population
Jersey City 242503
Union City 67088
Bayonne 58844
North Bergen 56146
West New York 46425
Hoboken 41015
Kearny 37295
Secaucus 15372
Harrison 15201
Weehawken 12441
Guttenburg 10601
East Newark 2126
288316
SCHOOL ENROLLMENT
Population Percentage
Population 3 years and over enrolled in school 157624 258
Population Percentage Percentage Percentage
Preschool and kindergarten 17994 114 137 119
Grades 1-12 98199 623 651 653
College 41431 263 212 228
A new PRT system would serve school trips generated by the local population Thus the distribution of schools in the county and the ridership demand dictated by the number of students enrolled and staff employed 3are crucial factors in the designplanning process
124 Current Transportation
Serving as the gateway county into New York City Hudson has an extremely developed multi-modal transportation network First of all it is host to an extensive road system that includes multiple tunnels linking NJ directly to New York City as well as the following major routes
bull Holland Tunnel
bull NJ Route 101
bull NJ Route 185
bull NJ Route 18N
bull NJ Route 440
bull NJ Route 495
bull NJ Route 63
bull NJ Route 7
bull County Route 507-508
bull County Route 601602605609
bull County Route 501 505
bull County Route 611612614617
bull NJ Route 85
bull NJ Turnpike
bull NJ County Route 501
bull NJ County Route 505
bull Birdge Street Bridge
bull Port Liberte-Grove Street
bull Bergenline Avenue
bull NJ Interstate 78
bull County Route 621622625629
bull County Route 635637639641
bull Count Route 644653655657
bull County Route 659663670671
bull NJ Interstate 280
bull NJ Interstate 95
bull Lincoln Tunnel
bull Old Bergen Road
bull NJ Route 3
bull NJ Route 139
bull US Route 1
bull County Route 675676678682
bull County Route 685693707719
bull County Route 721728 736
bull Union Turnpike
Figure 93 Map of Major Routes in Hudson County
Hudson is hub to an extensive variety of rail and light railway systems First of all The PATH serves Harrison Journal Square Downtown Jersey City and Hoboken in Hudson County and connects riders directly to various destinations in New York City including the Financial District Midtown (Penn StationHerald Square) and Chelsea the Meatpacking district Ridership volume is vast as it serves the markets of regular NJ-NYC commuting predominantly for work and education purposes
Figure 94 Map of PATH coverage in Jersey City Hoboken and NYC
Hudson County contains the Hudson-Bergen Light Rail which connects the cities of Bayonne Jersey City Hoboken Weehawken Union City and North Bergen The light rail opened in April 2000 and currently has 23 stations With a daily ridership of about 38200 on an average weekday NJ Transit is looking to expand its daily ridership to about 100000 It is looking to expand to the Meadowlands Sports Complex Secaucus Junction Bergen County and Staten Island
Figure 95 Map of Hudson-Bergen Light Rail System
The county is also host to Secaucus Junction Secaucus Junction currently serves access to eight commuter lines ndash Bergen County Main Montclair-Boonton Morristown Meadowlands Rail NEC North Jersey Coast Pascack Valley and Port Jervis ndash with an average weekday ridership of about 4533 (productions the number of passengers boarding at this junction) per day
As another New Jersey-New York City commuter option there are many ferries that regularly traverse the Hudson river Specifically these connect Jersey City Hoboken Weekawken and Bayonne to New York To name a few such ferry systems currently in operation there are the Franklin Street Pavonia Desbrosses Street Spring Street Christopher Street
Weehawken North Weehawken Fort Lee Englewood and Hoboken ferries These ferries also see high ridership volumes which generate both productions and attractions within the county throughout the average day Thus it is imperative that their docking areas and ports be taken into account in the design of a Hudson County PRT system Given rush hour traveler volumes each one will likely merit at least 1 PRT station directly assigned to it
125 PROPOSING A PRT SYSTEM
Figure 96 Final PRT Network for Essex County Map of Placemarks (Productions and Attractions)
126 Trip Analysis Statistics The final Hudson County PRT Network consists of 490 stations 768 interchanges and 28579 miles of guideway Of the 8790 placemarks recorded in the countyrsquos csv files 8415 of them are assigned to stations and thus are located within a quarter mile radius to at least one PRT station This translates into 957 functional coverage of Hudson County by the PRT network and service to 9803 of all trips generated that are currently served by automobile andor bus transit systems
Table 97 Network Trip Service Rates
Trip Type Personal Number of Trips (Daily)
Number of Trips Served by Network (Daily)
Percentage of Potential Trips Served
Home Trips 1217950 1212930 9959
Work Trips 383046 371691 9704
Recreation Trips 18525 18025 9730
Transportation Trips 160668 152120 9468
Student Trips 76428 76062 9952
(Non-Student) Patron Trips 2444138 2384248 9759
Total 4279755 4215076 9803
Figure 97 Trip Ends Served by Station in Descending Order
Figure 98 Trips Served by Each Station
The maximum number of trips served by a single station per day is 127926 and the minimum number of trips is 589 which is equal to 255852 and 1178 trip ends respectively To estimate the total number of PRT vehicles required to adequately service trip demand given average vehicle ridership is approximately 3 and that the network services at most 10 of all trip demand during its busiest times (peak hours) this can be calculated by dividing the total number of trips per day served by the network then multiplying this value by 010 This yields an upper bound estimate for the number of
trips that must be serviced at any one time during the day which translates into an estimated vehicle demand of 149710 vehicles
127 Financial Analysis
The proposed PRT system of Hudson County will incur the following costs
Table 98 Total Fixed Costs Incurred
Component Unit Cost ($ mn) Number of Units Required Total Cost ($ mn)
Station $200 490 $98000
1 Mile of Guideway $500 28579 $142890
Interchange $000 768 $000
PRT Vehicle $010 14971000 $1497100
Total $1737990
In order to finance this large project we propose that the combined efforts of Hudson Countyrsquos municipalities float 20-year zero-coupon revenue (municipal) bonds worth the entire projected cost ($1737990 million) that are to be repaid directly using the earnings from the PRT network In order to determine appropriate unit PRT ride pricing an estimate for the total number of trips per year must be generated From the productions and attractions computed by the csv datasets it was determined that Hudson couny generates a potential of 4279755 trips per average weekday Given the PRT network design that functionally covers 9803 of Hudsonrsquos total area the system is expected to serve an average of 4215076 trips per day This value can be used as an estimate for the number of trips served by the system each of the 260 weekdays that there are per year on average
From our analysis of NJ Transitrsquos 2009 ridership data we can estimate the number of trips generated and served by the PRT network will be about 4557 of average weekday ridership on Saturdays and about 3010 of average weekday ridership on Sundays Using this assumption we deduce the following equation
( )
r tripsyea0301263371 = psyearsunday tri 66608738 ripsyearsaturday t 532842100ripsyear weekday t7601095919 =
kday tripsweeaverage 07621541003arsundaysye2
105 +
kday tripsweeaverage 07621544557yearsaturdays2
105
kday tripsweeaverage 0762154year weekdays260 =YearPer Trips Average
ridership weekday average of
ridership weekday average of
++
timestimes
timestimes+
times
The gradual growth and development of the PRT system must first be taken into account before any financial calculations are made The following table shows a detailed schedule of costs associated with the evolution of Hudsonrsquos network
Table 99 Schedule of Hudson County Projected Capital Costs
Millions $ Stations Miles of Guideway Interchanges PRT Vehicles Total Cost
Unit Cost $200000000 $500000000 $000 $10000000
PHASE I YEAR 5 2100210
Total No Operational 29800 10020 26020 7000700
Total No Constructed Since previous Period 298 1002 2602 70007
Total Cost of Operational Units $59600000000 $50100000000 $000 $700070000000 $809770000000
Cost of Construction Since Previous Period $59600000000 $50100000000 $000 $700070000000 $809770000000
PHASE II YEAR 10 2980210
Total No Operational 379 15879 452 99340
Total No Constructed Since previous Period 81 5859 1918 29333
Total Cost of Operational Units $75800000000 $79395000000 $000 $993403333333 $1148598333333
Cost of Construction Since Previous Period $16200000000 $29295000000 $000 $293333333333 $338828333333
PHASE III YEAR 15 3500210
Total No Operational 432 22463 627 116674
Total No Constructed Since previous Period 53 6584 175 17333
Total Cost of Operational Units $86400000000 $112315000000 $000 $1166736666667 $1365451666667
Cost of Construction Since Previous Period $10600000000 $32920000000 $000 $173333333333 $216853333333
PHASE IV YEAR 20 4215076
Total No Operational 490 28579 768 149710
Total No Constructed Since previous Period 58 6116 141 33036
Total Cost of Operational Units $98000000000 $142895000000 $000 $1497100000000 $1737995000000
Cost of Construction Since Previous Period $11600000000 $30580000000 $000 $330363333333 $372543333333
Table 910 Hudson County PRT Projected Trip Statistics and Capital Costs
By Year 5 By Year 10 By Year 15 By Year 20
Cost of Construction Since Last Period ($mn) $809770000000 $338828333333 $216853333333 $372543333333
Trips Served per Day 2100210 2980210 3500210 4215076
Trips Served per Year 629489118 893248658 1049106568 1263371030
Cost of Ticket to Break Even - $365 $179 $135
Since the PRT system will only begin to be operational and serve trips beginning year 5 in effect the NJ PRT authorities would only have 15 years (between years 5 and 20) to recover the total cost to pay out the $1737990 million worth of municipal bonds used to finance the project by their maturity date in year 20
To breakeven they must charge $135 per trip Thus an average resident of Hudson traveling 4 times a day would spend $540 per day on transportation and an estimate of $197100 per year This is a very competitive price and as demonstrated in the cases of Union and Essex counties it would be accessible to a wider range of socio-economic classes than current alternative modes of transportation
Figure 99 Projected Capital Cost Schedule
To further assess the proposed Hudson PRT systemrsquos profitability annual recurring costs as well as all sources of revenue must be considered as well as their timing
Table 911 Graduation of Annual Recurring Costs
Phase Year(s) Annual Recurring Costs ($) Annual Non-Project Finance Earnings ($) PnL
I 0-4 6951980000 000 ($6951980000)
II 5-9 7473378500 1788000000 ($5685378500)
III 10-14 7994777000 2274000000 ($5720777000)
IV 15-19 8516175500 2592000000 ($5924175500)
Long Term 20 onwards 2085594000 139384071292 $137298477292
Figure 910 Projected Break Even Chart
Figure 911 Projected PnL
The proposed PRT system will make a loss in its first 20 years of existence while capital costs are still being repaid However immediately afterwards in year 20 it will begin making substantial profits Clearly it is an endeavor with massive potential for growth and success within the Hudson County community
13 Hunterdon County
131 Introduction Hunterdon County was established on March 22 1714 and named after colonial Governor Robert Hunters old world home Hunterston Hunterdon is part of the New York Metropolitan Area and Flemington in Raritan Township has been the county seat since 1785
132 Placemarks Hunterdon County Placemarks had two major problems 1) about 50 of the placemarks in the file were actually placed in Mercer and other neighboring counties and 2) all the businesses had 0 visitors and 0 people working there For the first problem we just estimated the boundary of Hunterdon County and then deleted all the placemarks outside of that imaginary boundary For the issue of 0 visitors and 0 employees we implemented a random number generator with normal distribution of mean ten and standard deviation five to generate all the employees for all the businesses for the visitors we again implemented a random number generator with the same parameters and we multiplied this random number to the number of employees in a business to get the visitors We would suggest that next yearrsquos group completely re-do the placemark file for this county
133 Network Design
Figure 101 Hunterdon Initial PRT Network in Califon
Figure 102 Complete Hunterdon PRT Network
134 Summary Of Network Statistics
Table 101 Network Statistics
Hunterdon PRT Network Statistics Trip Type Home Work School Recreation PT
Trip Ends Served
Total
461228 75708 9000 940 176328 723204
Possible 505412 108363 9600 1474 258568 883417 Trip Ends
Served 913 699 938 638 682 819
Table 102 Costs and Revenues
135 Summary Of Financial Statistics Table 103 Financial Statistics
Financial Networks Statistics Hunterdon County
Stations Interchanges Guideway Tot trip
served Total Trips
Peak hour Trips
Fleet size
Avg trip Length
Avg Vehicle Occupancy Fare
()
Vehicle Op Costs
() (miles) (per day) (per day) (per day) () (Miles) (Tripsvehicle)
144 79 29014 723204
327174 49076 2699 5 2
$210 $020
Basic Costs Revenue Hunterdon County
Capital Costs Annual Recurring Costs Annual Revenue PampL
Stations
Guideway
Vehicles
Total Cost of Capital
Maintenance
Operating
Total Fare Station Lease
Total
(M$) (M$) (M$) (M$) (M$) (M$) (M$) (M$) (M$) (M$)
$288 $1451 $270 $2009 $121 $40 $49 $210 $206 $5 $211 $154
136 Summary Of Trip Ends Served
Figure 103
Since we randomly generated the employee and visitors data for businesses certain places with a lot of businesses ended up with a LOT more trip ends served than what is probably realistic The highest trip ends with 40000 trip ends served station is one such example
14 Mercer County
141 Introduction
Mercer County is located in central New Jersey The county contains New Jerseyrsquos state capital Trenton and has a population of 364883 according to the US Census Bureau27
Below is a map of the county
Mercer contains a handful of college campuses including Princeton University in Princeton Rider University in Lawrenceville Mercer County Community College in West Windsor and Thomas Edison State College in Trenton
28
27 US Census Bureau Population Division 28 Image httpwwwreal-estate-maplewood-njcom
Mercer ranks 80th our of over 3000 counties the United States in per capita income according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis29 Some of the larger employers include the universities Bristol-Meyers Squibb Church amp Dwight Company McGraw Hill Companies and Educational Testing Services30
The county has three train stations on the Northeast Corridor Line that runs from Washington DC through New Jersey and New York up to Boston Trenton Transit Center Hamilton Station and Princeton Junction
142 General Strategies and Initial Networks
1421 UrbanmdashTrenton
For urban areas within Mercer such as Trenton my strategy was to build interconnected concentric cycles to create a grid The natural grid network of streets made the network design relatively simple with stations at street crossings and guideway along the roads I think this system worked particularly well in Trenton as the city contains a diverse mix of productions and attractions and in general the concentric cycles allow for direct trips that only incur an additional ldquoaround the blockrdquo cost See below for a picture of the Trenton initial network
29 ldquo250 Highest Per Capita Personal Incomes of the 3111 Counties in the USrdquo 2006 30 Mercer County Economic Profile
Interchanges played a key role in the urban design serving as ways to move between the cycles and provide two-way guideway in some areas The stationsrsquo coverages tend to overlap only because the density of Trenton productions and attractions requires nearly full coverage in order to be effective
1422 SuburbanUniversitymdashPrinceton University
My main strategy in planning the suburban and university networks was to minimize the invasiveness of the system In general schools and neighborhoods pay close attention to atmosphere and PRT guideway all over campus and the surrounding areas would be the last structuring that these places would want in a PRT network However by completely avoiding the suburbs and colleges we neglect an important part of the population and a very high number of trips Thus I attempted to balance the issues of serving trips while minimizing invasiveness in planning out these networks
In order to minimize intrusion I decided to use two-way guideway in a handful of instances I think colleges and neighborhoods would be happier with a few instances of two-way guideway versus lines that run all the way through the campus or surrounding areas See below for a closer look example (from the old Princeton Network)
I chose to create the first initial network at Princeton University and its surrounding areas The University alone has a student population of around 7500 and a staff of around 5000 However the network design is mainly with the staff in mind as college students tend to be frugal and everything on Princetonrsquos campus seems to be an easy walk away The only semblance of PRT currently exists on the campus of West Virginia University in Morgantown WV so another college town seems like an appropriate place to begin See the next page for a snapshot of the Princeton Network
I made a few changes to the initial Princeton Network with the goal of reducing travel time for short line of sight trips across campus On a second consideration these changes would be imperative to the creation of a network in Princeton In my old network I tried to keep campus guideway as close to zero as possible However in doing so there were a few situations where short line of sight trips looked to be a fair amount longer because the guideway went in a loop around campus Thus if adjacent stations were not connected by guideway in the right direction one would have to ride the entire loop to go from one to another By not making these trips convenient (across campus for instance) we neglect a large portion of trips within the University that could provide significant revenue
In this new network I decided to take advantage of the existing on-campus streets Elm and the street south of Dillon Gym to provide the desired accessibility This design would probably not align with the Universityrsquos ideal system but by serving more trips and demonstrating higher profitability of this initial network we can make the push for expansion earlier And with this additional revenue we might be able to make a profit-sharing agreement with the University such that we would be allowed to place some guideway on roads on campus
1423 Rural
I did not design an initial rural network as I mainly used these to interconnect the previous two network designs My basic strategy for rural areas was to make loops with one-way guideway and use two-way guideway only to connect loops or minimize invasiveness For an illustration see the next page
143 General Statistics
Below is a table of the general network statistics The dataset from last year slotted ldquorecreation tripsrdquo under ldquonon-student patron tripsrdquo and for consistency I decided to do the same One area of improvement that can be made to a proposal for PRT in Mercer county would be to split the non-student patron trips into recreation dining shopping etc The main concept that I changed since the earlier report had to do with home trip ends According to the old dataset only 200000 people resided in Mercer County so I took a look at the placemark file and evenly distributed the population throughout the Census blocks to get the number to the 360000 threshold Hopefully the 2010 Census data can be used to get more accurate results The new results are below
Table 111 Total Trip (Ends) Served
Serves Possible Service
Home Trip Ends 1306572 1451448 900
Work Trip Ends 393840 425649 925
Recreation Trip Ends - - -
Transport Trip Ends 39000 39000 1000
Student trip Ends 111656 113410 985
(Non-Student) Patrons trip Ends 294020 324334 907
Total 2145088 2353841 911
On the next page is a table containing the population statistics for Mercer as well as a population distribution for New Jersey as of the 2000 Census The county has about 364000 people so the 425649 work trips indicates a (total) employment percentage of 464 assuming that each person works away from home and 25 trip ends are at work The breakdown is between male and female
Table 112 New Jersey Population Distribution 2000 Census
0-4 288085 342 275700 328
5-10 309563 368 294966 351
10-15 302708 360 287869 342
15-19 271020 322 254196 302
20-24 244628 291 235451 280
25-29 272873 324 272044 323
30-34 319031 379 325092 386
35-39 360230 428 367694 437
40-44 348061 414 359121 427
45-49 297845 354 313512 373
50-54 263357 313 284184 338
55-59 202559 241 220779 262
60-64 156073 185 174573 207
65-69 132558 158 160638 191
70-74 121639 145 159834 190
75-79 95560 114 144571 172
80-84 58291 069 104046 124
85+ 38732 046 97267 116
Total under 25 329
Total over 65 133
Sum 461
100-Sum 539
10 Unemployment 485
As it turns out around 48 of the population should be making work trips so the Mercer numbers slightly low-ball actual employment This is with fairly liberal assumptionsmdash everyone from 5-25 makes school trips only and everyone over 65 (retirees) makes no work trips This result makes a lot of sense as the employment data in the placemark file is less than complete For instance I did a search for a handful of popular fast-food chains (McDonaldrsquos Wendyrsquos and Burger King) and not a single one appeared in the file The placemarks are fine for the large employers and census data but if someone could find a way to improve the employment data that would do a great deal in improving the bid for a Mercer PRT system Given the spotty data I think the number of work trips is fairly realistic
The 089 ratio of patrons trip ends per day to the county population seems reasonable as on the average each person might make an non-work non-home outside trip every day or every other day The trip ends per person per day seems slightly on the low side at 645 given that the 0-5 and 75+ populations are assumed to take no trips However once these factors are considered the average person has about 76 trip ends per day which seems reasonable
Table 113 Population Statistics
Population 364883
Possible Trip Ends Per Person Per Day 645
Persons between 5-75 310151
Possible Trip Ends Per 5-75 Person Per Day 759
Patrons Trips Per Day Population 089
The interchanges were assumed to incur no construction cost leading to a close to 11 ratio of interchanges to stations
Table 114 Network Statistics
Total Stations 491
Total Interchanges 456
Total Miles of Guideway 47885
An image of the entire network is included on the following page
1431 Entire Network
144 Further Analysis
Below is a chart of the total trips served by station in Mercer County The chart has a heavy tail as only a pair of stations serve more than 25000 individuals per day By far most stations serve 5000 people or less See below the chart for descriptions of the two most populous stations
Trenton (serves 35106 people per day) ndash This station is located in probably the densest residential and commercial area in Mercer County as it contains Thomas Edison State College (~7000 people counted at three trips each)
Princeton Junction (serves 27609 people per day) ndash NJTransit Data indicate that 9000 boardings (each way so 18000 total) occur at the Princeton Junction Transit Center on a typical weekday and residentialcommercial establishments make up the rest
145 Finances
In terms of financial feasibility the Mercer County Network seems reasonable with the base line assumptions At a fare of $3 average trip length of 5 miles and using a linear mode split discount factor the network makes an annual profit of $178 million after paying the annual operating expenses and cost of capital Because Mercer is a very wealthy county we could also consider a higher fare than the base $3 in which case Mercer would turn even higher profits
With the changes made to the Census population data to hit the correct Mercer County population the profitability swung favorably
Table 115 Networks Statistics
Mercer Networks Statistics
Stations Interchanges
Miles of Guideway
Length
Total Trip ends
served Total Trips Peak hour
Trips Fleet size
Average trip
Length
Average Vehicle
Occupancy Fare
Vehicle Operating Costs
() () (miles) (per day) (per day) (per day) () (Miles) (Tripsvehicle)
491 456 47885 2046802 851997 127799 14058 5 2 $300 $020
Most of these numbers can be tweaked to test what-if scenarios for running a Mercer PRT Network and there is a fare adjustment graph on the following page A PampL analysis is included in the table below After amortizing the capital cost in debt (at an interest of 8) and including the yearly operating costs the system attains a profit of $178 million
Table 116 Costs and Revenues
One key item to keep in mind is the size of this networkrsquos coverage In the attempt to reach 90 coverage I had to build stations in zones that contained fewer and fewer trips I would guess that there is most likely an optimum profitability level of coverage for profitability between 30 and 80 However most importantly the network does satisfy the overall goal of the NJ PRT system of profitability and 90+ service
Another potential adjustment to the model might be in charging a different fare We assumed $3 for an average trip length of five milesmdashthe chart below depicts yearly profit when varying fares and given completely inelastic demand With the changes made to the population statistics the break-even fare dropped a dollar to about $2ride
Mercer Basic Costs Revenue
Capital Costs Annual Recurring Costs Annual Revenue PampL
Stations Guideway Vehicles Total Cost of Capital Maintenance Operating Total Fare
Station lease and naming rights Total
(M$) (M$) (M$) (M$) (M$) (M$) (M$) (M$) (M$) (M$)
$982 $2394 $1406 $4782 $383 $96 $128 $606 $767 $18 $784
$178
break even point ~$200
146 Station Cost Analysis
I ran a station revenue analysis looking at how many stations would surpass the break-even point I used the assumption that each station would contribute $045 in revenue per trip served I used 300 as the number of days per year as weekend trips are reduced I also discounted the number of trips by 09 to account for modal split To compute the break-even point I assumed that each station cost $2 million dollars and that we would borrow the money over 20 years at an 8 interest rate Inserting this number into a mortgage amortizing calculator31
gives a regular payment of $203000 per year
As it turns out most stations fall below this break-even point This result does make sense for this network thoughmdashattaining the 90 threshold in Mercer meant building stations that served less than 1000 trip ends at first and then moving on to stations that served even less than 500 trip ends per day The stations in Princeton and Trenton are the ones that are on the left side of the scale and in general the stations become more and more rural as you move rightward This graph affirms the proposal that PRT start in denser trip-heavy areas like Princeton and Trenton and gradually expand outwards
31 httpwwwbretwhisselnetcgi-binamortize
147 Construction Evolution Plan
On the following page is a table indicating the yearly build statistics for the Mercer County PRT Network The plan runs 15 years and starts with initial hubs in Trenton and Princeton University Unfortunately I was not able to run a profit-by-year analysis but I would imagine that the initial years networks (years 1-5) offer the best profit margins as the large trip productions and attractionsmdashuniversities urban areas large corporate offices and dense residential areasmdashare covered
Years 5-10 start to move into the suburbs and school districts While these network additions are most likely profitable they would not be as successful as the previous networks due to less trips and more guideway in general Years 10-15 start to move into the less profitable stations in rural areas where some stations serve less than 1000 trips This is the sacrifice a county or the state would have to make in order to serve 90 of trips and in this case it turns out that the system maintains profitability I would not necessarily recommend immediate expansion beyond the 2nd or 3rd year as the modal split numbers indicate that stations built in years 4-5 and beyond do not break even Though the entire system would be profitable in those years maximizing profit is a great objective and adding unprofitable stations would not make sense Of course a more accurate dataset would aid greatly in this regard We could also consider adjusting the $045 revenue per trip assumption especially for the most populous stations but with this data and these assumptions full expansion does not seem reasonable
Table 117 Evolution
Year Built Stations Interchanges Shape Points Guideway (miles)
1 65 245 460 13023
2 58 20 96 4544
3 24 63
4 46 50 7 302
5 19 518
6 32 975
7 21 22 60 2111
8 30 108 29 3316
9 26 15 115 213
10 23 22 118 4394
11 22 15 57 2158
12 20 16 60 2957
13 23 18 61 2043
14 32 9 88 2402
15 50 44 29 3561
It seems as if the program did not correctly calculate years 3 5 and 6
Unfortunately I didnrsquot save each successive year as a separate file and could not do a year-by-year profit analysis or trips served analysis Also it would not be appropriate to assume that each station serves the same number of trips However given the hubs in Mercer and Trenton the profitability chart would most likely take off in the beginning as the densest areas are served by the network Towards years 3-5 the profitability would start to plateau as we start building stations in less dense areas and in years 5 onwards the profitability would start to gradually drop as in the attempt to serve 90 of the population the stations have to be built in progressively less populous areas
148 Room for Improvement and Conclusion
As with most counties one of the best ways to improve the reasonability of the network is to increase the accuracy of the data I think as of this year the Mercer County dataset is fairly reasonable for the large trip productions and attractions but as the number of trips decreases the sketchiness of the data increases For instance as mentioned earlier I performed a sanity check by searching for ldquoMcDonaldrsquosrdquo ldquoBurger Kingrdquo ldquoChipotlerdquo and ldquoWendyrsquosrdquo and not a single placemark showed up even though a handful of each are in Mercer While the dataset is very large I would say it is not quite exhaustive If next yearrsquos team could spend some time coming up with a new way of collecting datapoints (especially employment ones) that would go far in improving the meaningfulness of the PRT project As mentioned earlier categorizing the trips into dining shopping recreation etc would also add to the models representation of Mercer County transportation Moreover the assumption that interchanges incur no cost to build is relatively limiting In order to improve the systems representation to reality perhaps a (small) cost should be attached to the interchange such as $50000-$100000
In general the network succeeds in providing a profit while serving over 92 of the Mercer population I would definitely recommend Trenton and Princeton as starting points for a Mercer PRT network as many trips ends could be served for a reduced cost of capital If the majority of area residents start choosing PRT as their mode of transit then the county can start expanding to server more trip ends and defray costs with the profits from the initial networks I wouldnrsquot necessarily recommend building the networks directly sequentially thoughmdashI firmly believe that the optimal strategy would be to build the initial networks in year one and see how the networks perform profit-wise before expanding The switch from automobiles trains and buses to PRT would be neither quick nor easy Many companies and employees rely on the success of these forms transportation for a living and they will definitely put up a fight by cutting prices and expanding services until they can no longer survive The PRT system might not turn a profit for the first couple years but ideally ridership would continually expand as the other modes dwindle PRT will have to pass this initial test before expanding to fewer-trip zones
15 Middlesex County
151 Introduction
1511 General Features
Middlesex County NJ is the center of population for New Jersey It is located just south of New York City and is surrounded by the counties of Union Somerset Mercer and Monmouth It is approximately 323 square miles and has a population of 790738 as of 2009 or around 10 of the New Jerseyrsquos population32Furthermore it is one of the fastest growing counties in New Jersey with a percent population change from 2000 to 2009 of 54 (versus an average of 35 growth for the entire state of New Jersey)33
The population of Middlesex County is far from uniformly distributed The population is most densely populated in the north which is closer to New York City and is dominated by farms in the south Some of the most important areas in the county are the following
Corporations Merrill Lynch amp Company Johnson amp Johnson Telcordia Technology Prudential Insurance Company and Bristol-Myers Squibb
Hospitals Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital JFK Medical Center Raritan Bay Medical Center and St Peters University Hospital
Universities Rutgers University and Princeton Universityrsquos Forrestal Campus
Shopping Centers Brunswick Square Mall and Woodbridge Center Mall34
Train Stations Jersey Avenue Dunellen Station New Brunswick Edison Station Metuchen Metropark Station South Amboy Woodbridge Perth Amboy
1512 Transportation Demand
The current transportation in the state of New Jersey is pretty well developed In large part this is due to the existent NJ Transit network With both the light rail and bus services it provides people with quick access to different large cities in the state along with access to NYC Philadelphia nearby airports etc In addition there is a well-developed highway
32 httpquickfactscensusgovqfdstates3434023html 33 httpquickfactscensusgovqfdstates3434023html 34 For further information visit httpwwwcomiddlesexnjus
system with the Garden State Parkway and 95 running North-South By taking advantage of these pre-established systems the PRT network can dramatically benefit
1513 Assumptions in Making the Network
Beyond the existing transportation system in Middlesex we assume that therersquos a market for a system with the following traits efficient low-cost and convenient This way it will attract to the well-off community that resides in Middlesex County This however requires for a system that is well developed and provides short trip times In essence the only way this will attract people is if it is cheaper and faster
152 Initial Network
For the initial network I decided that the town of New Brunswick with Rutgers University as its main attraction was a good first start The demand for this type of transportation is not only high but also concentrated in a small area Both these features make this town a good test to the success of a PRT system in Middlesex County
The initial network contains 20 stations 54 interchanges and 3021 miles of guideway One of the key traits of this type of network is that it is very densely populated by people and hence by stations When this happens I took the approach of having a lot of connections through interchanges The idea behind this design is that people in college will only use a system that truly benefits them from a costbenefit perspective If it is inconvenient they will simply not use it and this will consequently put at jeopardy the success of the rest of the network
Figure 121- Initial Network of Rutgers University
1521 Taking a Closer Look
We can look at a closer area of the network to get an idea of how the general loop structure was complemented by two-way rails between interchanges This design allows for quick access to all areas from all locations Although this would prove tremendously expensive in the county as a whole a university campus is one of the rare scenarios where this would be beneficial
Figure 122- Loop within the Rutgers Network
Another reason for the high concentration of station is the high density of students Rutgers the state university of New Jersey has an enrollment figure of 5300035
35
Although not all students attend this campus there are professors workers of shops visitors etc
httpadmissionsrutgersedu
who travel to and from the university With attractionproduction number of trips above 20000 in a lot of areas it is necessary to have this many stations
153 Ultimate Network
In order to expand from the Rutgers University network to the rest of the county I started by making 8 initial networks As mentioned earlier the population is concentrated mostly in the north For this reason I placed 4 networks in the north (West Midwest Mideast East) 3 in the center (West Center East) and one in the south (Center)
To select candidates for these networks I chose areas with numerous school and housing These proved to be the locations with greatest demand for trips Once these 8 initial networks were all constructed it was easier to interconnect them and construct a full county-wide network Irsquoll show the full network next and later reflect on some of its unique features
1531 Quick Overview
The final network has 692 stations 721 interchanges and 73364 miles of guideway It serves 8926 of the total county trips Although it barely doesnrsquot meet the network demand of gt90 of the trips constructing the network to meet the additional 10 of trips would be increasingly inefficient The south contains a network that is defined by long guideway stretches with few stations This represents a lot of fixed costs for fewer number of trips Not surprisingly a majority of the remaining 10 resides in this part of the state The north is the opposite having a low ratio of guideway to station
1532 Image of the Network
154 Strategy and Development
1541 UrbanUniversitymdashRutgers
For urban areas within Middlesex such as the Rutgers network described above the strategy was to build interconnected loops and cycles to create a grid The natural grid network of streets made the network design relatively simple with stations at street crossings and guideway along the roads This would help the popularity of the PRT network since it wouldnrsquot be invasive to the preexistent system of transportation (roads stations etc) I think this system worked particularly well in Rutgers as the city contains a diverse mix of productions and attractions- dorms libraries apartments shops restaurants bars- and in general the concentric cycles allow for quick access to stations
Figure 123- Example of UrbanUniversity Style Network
1542 Suburban
My strategy in planning the suburban networks was to minimize the invasiveness of the system In general neighborhoods are very wary of how invasive a transportation system is to their current atmosphere House prices noises and landscape would all be negatively affected by too much of a PRT presence However by completely avoiding the suburbs we neglect an important part of the population and a very high number of trips For this reason I attempted to take a cost-benefit approach and try to maximize the productivity of the system within the suburban environment
To minimize invasiveness I used two-way guideway in many situations This seems to strike the best balance between the cost of having a PRT system in your neighborhood and the comfort of having a station nearby
Figure 124- Example of the Suburban Style Network
1543 Rural
I did not design an initial rural network as I mainly used these to interconnect the previous two network designs My basic strategy for rural areas was to make loops with one-way guideway and use two-way guideway only to connect loops or minimize invasiveness For an illustration see below
Figure 125- Example of Rural Style Network
1544 General Statistics
A few points can be made on the above figures First the total number of trips is around 28 million Given a population of roughly 8 million this gives an average of 35 trips per person This seems to be relatively accurate to what is seen in the real world Additionally ldquopatron tripsrdquo make roughly about 13 of the total trips in the county For such a residential county such as Middlesex this goes along with what is to be expected Lastly the fact that there are more school trips than work trips can be explained by noticing that it is not always the case that both parents work However essentially all kids go to school
155 Finances
In order to assess the profitability of the network I ran the financial model provided to me in class First we look at some of the basic data that comes out of the model some of which was already expressed above
Table 121 Networks Statistics
Networks Statistics Middlesex County
Stations Interchanges
Miles of Guideway
Length Total Trip
ends served Toal Trips
Peak hour Trips
Fleet size
Average trip
Length Average Vehicle
Occupancy Fare
Vehicle Operating
Costs
() () (miles) (per day) (per day) (per day) () (Miles) (Tripsvehicle)
692 721 73464
2547825
1015024
152254 16748 5 2 $
300 $ 020
Of greatest importance is the assumption that fare is $3 This will be talked about later under the ldquoPossible Improvementsrdquo section Similarly assuming that all trip types are assumed to be with 2 people seems limiting to the model This problem again will be addressed in the last section of the paper
Table 122 Costs and Revenues
Basic Costs Revenue Middlesex County
Capital Costs Annual Recurring Costs Annual Revenue PampL
Stations Guideway Vehicles Total Cost of Capital Maintenance Operating Total Fare Station lease and
naming rights Total
(M$) (M$) (M$) (M$) (M$) (M$) (M$) (M$) (M$) (M$) $
1384 $ 3673 $
1675 $
6732 $
539 $
135 $
152 $
825 $ 914 $ 25
$ 938
$ 113
At first look it is clear that the capital costs are substantial at $6732 B The projected PampL is of $113M Financing this project shown by ldquoCost of Capitalrdquo costs $539M in interestamortization Even so it is clear that there substantial profit that comes from the PRT system in Middlesex County
This seems logical since Middlesex is one of the most densely populated counties in NJ This type of network benefits from people living at close proximities This is due to the high passenger-to-guideway ratio
1551 Judgement
The success of the system in this county does not necessarily mean that it will experience similar profits in other places in NJ
In addition my development of the system was very thorough and provided very short trips for any trip in the county In a more realistic setting the PRT network would have fewer intricacies and would consequently have longer average-trip times This would further help the PampL figure of the county system
As an example last yearrsquos group opted on using fewer stations (256 vs my 692) fewer guideway miles (443 vs 734) Their PampL was of $700M since they stayed away of the southern part of the county which proves inefficiency Of course this came at the cost of 70 coverage instead of 90 Nonetheless this is the type of tradeoff present in these type of situations
156 Possible Improvements
1561 Fares
One of the major improvements that can be done to this system is that of changing the pricing scheme With the vast amounts of technology that will be used for all different components of the system adding a more dynamic price algorithm would not be of much difficulty
The basis for the system should be the one used in taxis today fixed charge with a variable cost dependent on length The main addition would need to be an adjustment to the variable cost specifically it would have to diminish by distance By this I mean that the cost for the first 5 miles should be higher than the price for the next 5 and so on This way the PRT system would be an encouraged form of transportation both for short and long trips
As can be seen from the graph even at an average fare of $4 the PampL jumps to above $400M making the return to investment even higher
1562 TripsVehicle
As mentioned above having 2 people per trip seems limiting For recreation trips this would probably higher while it would probably be lower in the case of work trips In any case even for a constant value 2 is a low estimate This benefits our estimates since we were being conservative
Important Observation Changing the assumption from 2 to 3 or 2 to 4 changes the PampL only slightly in comparison to the huge increase these shifts represent (3 people per car on average is probably too high) For the readerrsquos please the PampL numbers are $164M and $189M
157 Conclusion
Irsquove provided a general framework for a PRT system in Middlesex county of New Jersey The general approach seems to be in line with a hypothetical ldquofinal systemrdquo As I described in the previous section however there are some small changes that can be made to improve the modeling of the financial results
I would propose beginning with a network in Rutgers University like I described in one of the first sections This network would be a good probe of peoplersquos appetite for this type of transformation and ultimately an indicator of the possible success
16 Monmouth County
161 Introduction Monmouth County the northernmost county on the Jersey Shore holds a 2009
population estimate of 644105 people and maintains a population density of about 1304-
people square mile With a total area of 665 square miles comprised of 2904 water and
rivers and bays leading to the New York Harbor Jamaica Bay and the Atlantic Ocean
Monmouth County is ranked 42nd among highest-income counties and 53rd in highest per capita
income in the United States However with the countyrsquos growing population and steep cost of
living the county suffers from obsolete infrastructure
The county is relatively flat and low-lying and the county seat is Freehold Borough while
the largest municipality by population is Middletown Township There are a total of 53
municipalities Monmouth County has a few relatively dense areas along its coast but also
some extremely isolated areas in the southwest In the summer months people flock to
Monmouth Countyrsquos shore making roads particularly congested Some other notable
attractions include Freehold Raceway ndash a horse racing arena Wall Stadium and Wall Ice Arena
On the border of Ocean County and Monmouth County are Six Flags Great Adventure Six Flags
Wild Safari and Six Flags Hurricane Harbor Monmouth County is also home to the Monmouth
County Mall as well as Monmouth University a private four-year university
There are 14 NJ Transit heavy rail stations and approximately 20 Park amp Ride locations
With a substantial number of commuters to New York and a seasonal influx of people traveling
to the beach during the summer Monmouth County would likely flourish with a PRT system
perhaps with the exception of its significant rural area in the Southwest
2009 ORF 467 PRT Proposal
2008 ORF 467 PRT Proposal
2007 ORF 467 PRT Proposal
2004 ORF 467 PRT Proposal
More Information on Monmouth County
NJ DOT Rideshare
162 Placemark Data Our starting point in this PRT was examining the placemark data from last year From
the offset however it became clear that the data needed extensive altering due to a large
number of duplicate placemarks and values for workerspatrons that were obviously wrong (for
example 100000 patrons day at certain hospitals) Caroline and I agreed on a general
approach to cleaning up our data which included
bull Removing duplicate entries
bull Fixing the coordinates that were pointing to Antarctica
bull Double checking that some of the workplacesattractions were in the right place (using
Google Earth to cross reference the actual address)
bull Consolidating schools which were listed twice ndash under type 2 education and type 3
business
I then looked up data for rail station usage and decided to add 7000 train station
commuters on average per train station and 800 commuters in each park and ride This 7000
figure might seem a little high at a first glance but can be explained by the fact that Monmouth
County is home a large number of people who work in New York City
In addition we drastically changed patron numbers for service businesses that would
not necessarily attract many people per day (for example a Comcast office) Instead we
decided that such services as UPS delivery people plumbers etc would be counted as
patronsday in the housing section Instead of having zero patrons per day we set patrons to
1 of the population for each census block This addition did not drastically alter the results but
certainly helped account for these services which had not been added before
This much improved placemark information file allowed us to make much better
decisions when placing our stations
163 Initial Networks My initial 3 networks looked for dense heavily populated places that could serve as self-
sustaining parts of the county Two of them were located in the vicinity of the coast while the
other one focused on Middletown Township the countyrsquos largest town with a population of
roughly 66687 people
My first initial network covers Long Branch Monmouth University West Long Branch
the Monmouth County Mall and others The Long Branch NJ Transit Station provides access to
NYC which is where a high number of people in this county work Therefore access to a station
was crucial and I made sure to include at least 1 in this initial network This network contains a
small number of 2-way guideway The network is pictured below The left image shows the
network by itself while the second image shows the network once it was attached to the entire
network
My second initial network covers Middletown Township and includes 1 NJ Transit
station some shopping areas and the town center I deemed it important to have a PRT in this
area as it not only provides transportation to the people here but is also a symbol of moving
forward Once the most important places have the technology others will want to follow The
initial network is pictured below along with the stations connected with the whole network
included
My third initial network covers the Neptune and Asbury Park Areas (along the shore) 2
NJ Transit stations Brookdale Community College and Bradley Beach This network pays
particular attention to travel time and includes 9 interchanges to help minimize travel time and
provide easy of travel avoiding nonsensical trip routes As before the initial network is pictured
below
164 Building the Rest of the Network When I began the project my goal was to build a network that would grow over time
and eventually serve 90 of the people However I quickly realized that this would not be
achievable given that many parts of the county are not dense at all
For my final network I decided to look for the most logical places to place stations
Thus I added stations in places where the placemarks added up to a reasonable number of
people I looked to stay over 1000 people for each station a task that became increasingly
difficult once I reached the southwest part of the county My general approach was as follows
bull Keep the initial networks as being built in year 1 Then look to connect these networks by adding
stations in year 2
bull Work my way out from these initial networks moving west and south as necessary and
increasing the years I got further away from the initial networks
Following this approach I was able to cover approximately 80 (7965) of the population
by placing 681 stations 252 interchanges and 712 miles of guideway throughout the county
The next step was connecting this large set of stations This part required significantly more
analysis in order to make sure that the network made sense For example I looked to add grid-
like behavior in heavily populated areas in which crossing guideways would connect to main
guideways Below is an example of one area in which this worked successfully
In other cases however loops were necessary due to the sparse population being served by
the PRT These loops would be connected by to other sections of the county by one set of
guideway coming in and another going out as pictured below
On a year by year basis my network looks to be built mostly on years 1 and 5 This
would seem to make sense since after a few years people would become more used to the
idea of a PRT network and to her areas would begin to demand the service On the other hand
if the project wasnrsquot successful a five year period would be sufficient time realize this and not
build another large section of the network However this is an area in which my network could
be improved next year as it is not always spread out in the best possible way in terms of the
year that each section was built The statistics below show the network However there seems
to be a bug in the code that generated this data (for example interchanges information is
wrong) so only stations built per year should be given any serious consideration
Table 131 Evolution
Year Built Stations Interchanges Shape Points Guideway (miles)1 121 1038 252 252937 33 3052 69 50673 58 4509
15 30 249420 2 27411 21 1608
5 108 89839 1 1214 25 1703
13 63 688714 38 323
6 83 568516 23 1575
8 1 11412 5 504
165 Financial Analysis Because of the shortcomings of the year by year analysis that was given to us we
decided to follow the spreadsheet provided by Professor Kornhauser for our financial analysis
This spreadsheet required the trip information for each station total number of stations
interchanges guideways and cost of capital
For the trip ends served per day the program simply added up all the trips for all of the
stations For the total trips per day however the spreadsheet implemented a different
formula which equaled 5total trip ends served(ratio of trip ends served to total trip ends)
Since not all trips were served this resulted in lower total trips per day than total trip ends
served The peak hour trips were defined as 15 of the total trips per day and the fleet size
defined as (peak hour trips 10) 11 The average trip length was 5 miles average vehicle
occupancy of 2 and fare of $3ride These assumptions are summarized below
Table 132 Networks Statistics
StationsInterchange
s
Miles of Guideway
LengthTotal Trip
ends served Toal TripsPeak hour
Trips Fleet sizeAverage trip
Length
Average Vehicle
Occupancy Fare
Vehicle Operating Costs
() () (miles) (per day) (per day) (per day) () (Miles) (Tripsvehicle)681 252 72131 3559059 1417406 212611 23387 5 2 $300 020$
Networks Statistics Monmouth County
Under these assumptions the basic costs revenues and profits for Monmouth County are
Table 133 Costs and Revenues
PampL
Stations Guideway Vehicles Total Cost of Capital Maintenance Operating Total Fare
Station lease and naming
rights Total(M$) (M$) (M$) (M$) (M$) (M$) (M$) (M$) (M$) (M$)
1362$ 3607$ 2339$ 7307$ 585$ 146$ 213$ 943$ 1276$ 25$ 1300$ 357$
Capital Costs Annual Recurring Costs Annual RevenueBasic Costs Revenue Monmouth County
In other words we see that under this set of assumptions (which accounts for the entire
network being built in year 1) the profit per year is about $357 million Below we plot a graph
showing the Profit amp Loss (PampL) for fare values between $1 and $5 per ride and we see that the
breakeven point is at a fare of approximately $220ride
-$200
-$100
$0
$100
$200
$300
$400
$500
$600
$700
$800
$100 $150 $200 $250 $300 $350 $400 $450 $500
Mill
ions
of D
olla
rs
Cost per ride (in $)
Monmouth County PampL
Given the large capital requirements to build such a project it is comforting to find out
that under our set of assumptions the network would be profitable at such a reasonable rate
which we assume people would be willing to pay Unfortunately this analysis assumes that the
PRT would not be in competition with cars and other modes of transportation This is a large
shortcoming of our analysis and one that we would have looked much more closely into had
we had more time to work on this
166 Ridership Information As noted above our statistics are somewhat unrealistic due to high ridership
assumptions In this section we offer two graphs which show the ridership per station
-
5000
10000
15000
20000
25000
30000
35000
40000
1 13 25 37 49 61 73 85 97 109
121
133
145
157
169
181
193
205
217
229
241
253
265
277
289
301
313
325
337
349
361
373
385
397
409
421
433
445
457
469
481
493
505
517
529
541
553
565
577
589
601
613
625
637
649
661
673
Trip
Edn
s se
rved
per
day
Stations
Trip ends served per stationMonmouth County
This first graph shows us a breakdown of how many trip ends are served per station per
day We see that the largest spike occurs at around 37000 riders per day This number may
seem somewhat high Upon closer inspection however we note that it serves an area that
includes the Freehold Raceway Mall and Freehold Horse Track Thus it would make sense that
the ridership would be high in this area See picture below for visual explanation
We tracked down similar spikes and they all seem to make sense Indeed serving
37000 trip ends as our maximum sounds quite reasonable Below we include a sorted graph by
trip ends served per day Our results are quite reasonable once again
-
5000
10000
15000
20000
25000
30000
35000
40000
1 14 27 40 53 66 79 92 105
118
131
144
157
170
183
196
209
222
235
248
261
274
287
300
313
326
339
352
365
378
391
404
417
430
443
456
469
482
495
508
521
534
547
560
573
586
599
612
625
638
651
664
677
Trip
Edn
s se
rved
per
day
Highest to lowest
Trip ends served per stationMonmouth County
167 Dijkstrarsquos Algorithm (section written together with Caroline)36
We implemented Dijkstrarsquos algorithm in MATLAB to measure how efficient our networks
are To do this we used the ldquomatriceshtmlrdquo link provided by John and Nathan and followed the
simple instructions to obtain the distances traveled and the paths from each stations to each
other In the gravity method we implemented in the My City assignment we assumed that
distances between two zones were just 12 times the Cartesian distance of their centroids We
see now after applying Dijkstrarsquos algorithm to our network that in our last assignment we
made a gross simplification Although each of our counties are 916 square miles (Ocean County)
and 665 square miles (Monmouth County) the top ten distances between two stations running
along network guideway can reach as much as 108 miles for Ocean County and 74 for
Monmouth
The table below shows the top 20 largest station-to-station trips using this code
36 See appendix for MATLAB code
From this we clearly see that station 403 has some of the largest distances from other
stations Tracing the station though we noticed that this station as at one of the extremes of
the county In addition the path that one would follow from this station to ones at the other
end of the network is less than optimal
These figures highlight the trade off we made when creating our networks In an effort
to conserve money we purposely avoided constructing stations and consequently guideway
that would produce fewer than 1000 trips per day this cost consciousness caused us to serve
fewer than 90 of trips as per the initial goal Our conservative approach to laying stations
inevitably produced networks that were less efficient
Some more analysis on Dijkstra
bull The graph below produced on MATLAB highlights the sorted distances from each of the 681
stations to each other We notice a sharp increase towards the end this highlights the distances
tofrom extremes of the network
bull The graph below shoes the same information but combined (and sorted by distance) for all of
the stations From this we see that over 50 of the trips are less than 25 miles in length
Indeed the average trip distance I calculated came out to 2402 miles
bull In addition I present a sample vector of distances from one of the stations The station number
is 150 which corresponds to a heavily populated area around the Monmouth Mall (see map
included) The results are not very surprising and we notice the stations around 150 all have
very short distances This is to be expected
Station 150
trips (above) and map
(below)
bull We then compare the distances traveled to the ldquoairplane distancesrdquo (given by the Line of Sight
matrix) We divide each element in the cost (distances) matrix by the Line of Sight distance We
then remove the values along the diagonal which were 00 and produce the error ldquoNot a
Number (NaN)rdquo The average ratio turned out to be 235 This result seems very possible since
the road system is usually considered to have a ratio of 12 and the built network does not
provide as much flexibility We plot the mean actual distanceairplane distance for each station
and display the results below
The results from Dijkstrarsquos algorithm proved very interesting Indeed we were able to
trace which stations were not well connected and fix these minor mistakes and significantly
improve the networkrsquos performance (and statistics) This procedure allowed me to link stations
in a better way and to achieve total connectivity In addition the algorithm brought attention
to stations that were very nearby but had to travel very long distances to reach each other
because of inefficient paths After fixing all this I was able to achieve very reasonable results as
shown above This analysis in the end added an additional level of understanding that one
would not necessarily achieve without Dijkstrarsquos algorithm
168 Appendix 1 MATLAB Code for Dijkstra Implementation
A = csvread(JF40djmatcsv)
C = csvread(JF40guidewaydistcsv)
LoS = csvread(JF40-matrices-loscsv)
[costpath] = dijkstra(AC)
Bring attention to stations that arent connected to the network
This will prove total connectivity when there are no values of -1
for i = 1length(cost)
for j = 1length(cost)
if cost(ij) == Inf
cost(ij) = -1
end
end
end
maximums = zeros(310)
newcost = cost
for i = 150
[r_val r_ind] = max(newcost[]1)
[col_val col_ind] = max(r_val)
maximums(1i) = r_ind(col_ind)
maximums(2i) = col_ind
maximums(3i) = newcost(r_ind(col_ind)col_ind)
newcost(r_ind(col_ind)col_ind) = 0
end
E = reshape(cost1463761)
d = sort(E)
Calculate actual distance airplane distance and remove diagonal
ratio = costLoS
for i = 1length(ratio)
for j = 1length(ratio)
if i ==j
ratio(ij) = 0
end
end
end
Find the maximum values of the ratios in order to trace them and figure
out what the potential problems are
ratioVector = reshape(ratio1463761)
ratMax = zeros(31)
[r_val r_ind] = max(ratio[]1)
[col_val col_ind] = max(r_val)
ratMax(1) = r_ind(col_ind)
ratMax(2) = col_ind
ratMax(3) = ratio(r_ind(col_ind)col_ind)
plot(sort(cost))
plot(d)
plot(cost(150))
plot(sort(ratioVector))
plot(mean(ratio))
plot(ratio(140))
17 Morris County
171 Introduction
Established on March 15 1739 Morris County is now the seventh largest county in the state of New Jersey It is noted for its median household income of $77 340 which makes it the sixth wealthiest county in the United States by this metric Morris County has an area of 481 square miles and had a population of 470212 according to the 2000 census Although large portions of the county are home to residential and suburban areas 53 Fortune 500 companies maintain a presence in Morris County including ATampT Pfizer Honeywell Novartis BASF and Verizon As a result 578 of Morris County residents do not leave the county when commuting to work For those who do leave many travel to neighboring Essex and Passaic County or into Manhattan Additionally Morris County does see an influx of commuting workers everyday as only 501 of workers employed in Morris County live in Morris County Thus when
designing a PRT network integrating the Morris County network into other countiesrsquo networks will be critical to developing a successful network
172 Transportation
Currently 19 stations on New Jersey Transitrsquos rail network serve Morris County Additionally Morris County is also home to the New Jersey Transit Morris County Bus System which consists of eight routes that serve the county Overall though only 42 of Morris County residents use public transportation while traveling to work while 812 travel by car truck or van while driving alone When compared to the rest of New Jersey Morris County residents do show a reluctance to use public transportation In New Jersey 92 of residents use public transportation to travel to work Obviously there is ample room growth with regards to public transportation in Morris County I would however be worried that residents simply might be reluctant to embrace public transportation
173 Data
The most important thing to note on the data is that it is simply is an estimate especially with regards to the data on businesses My first step upon receiving the data file was to remove all duplicate entries This took an extremely long time as schools were entered in the business as well as education category and many businesses were listed multiple times After accomplishing this to the best of my ability I tried to improve upon the existing numbers for people visitors and enrollment With regards to education I kept the existing enrollment numbers but needed to improve the people column I decided to divide the enrollment column by twelve This assumes a studentteacher ratio of twelve and ignores administrative employees Although this is a simplistic measure it was better than was had previously been there Next for businesses I found a table that listed the top employers in Morris County
I used this table to fill out the top employers if an employer had more than one location then I tried to split the total number of employees between the locations as sensibly as possible Then I made sure that no other people values for businesses were greater than the smallest value in the table I also found the total number of employed people in Morris County to be 276965 and made sure the total number of people in the business category was close enough to this value With the regards to the patron column for businesses I took this be too difficult to improve upon
I simply looked for any extreme values and tried to make sure that none existed Lastly I did not alter the recreation data points and updated the transportation data points so that the people column represents the daily ridership at each New Jersey Transit station
174 Initial Network
In order to see if PRT would be feasible for Morris County I began by designing two separate networks in two of Morris Countyrsquos denser areas As one can see from the figure below Morris County contains large areas of low-density residential areas in which a PRT network might not be feasible because of the potentially large distances between stations At the same time though Morris County does have high-density areas with commercial and residential zones in close proximity to one another Therefore for my initial network I decided to focus on the Morristown and Dover municipalities
I built two separate networks that would make use of a loop structure In total this initial network contained 31 stations 9 interchanges and 3067 miles of guideway while serving 270795 trip ends Below I have enclosed pictures of first the Morristown network and then the Dover network I have added the station coverage circles to give a better idea of the relative size of the network When designing both networks I tried to make each station serve at least 2000 trips ends to ensure the profitability of the network In addition I made extensive use of shape points to ensure that the network made use of Morris Countyrsquos existing road and railway network Even in these dense areas I found it difficult to do this because of the lack of straight roads within the county As a result I made use of a loop structure when building my network
because I felt this would best work with the shape of the roads within Morris County Then I used interchanges to make is so that passengers could easily transfer from loop to loop
My next step was to calculate the feasibility of this initial network Below are the calculations done to look at annual profitability along with the number of trip ends served by each station Note I determined it was unreasonable to use the percentage of trip ends for the entire county so I used 60 which is roughly the same as percent covered for my final network to
calculate total trip ends Additionally I changed the mode split factor to be linear because of the low coverage within Morris County Lastly all analysis done can be found in the attached spreadsheet MorrisTripAnalysisxlsx
Stations Interchanges
Miles of Guideway
Length Total Trip
ends served Total Trips Peak hour
Trips
() () (miles) (per day) (per day) (per day)
31 9 3067 270795 81239 12186
Fleet size Average trip Length
Average Vehicle
Occupancy Fare
Vehicle Operating Costs
() (Miles) (Tripsvehicle)
1340 5 2 $300 $020
Capital Costs Annual Recurring Costs
Stations Guideway Vehicles Total Cost of Capital Maintenance Operating Total
(M$) (M$) (M$) (M$) (M$) (M$) (M$) (M$)
$62 $153 $134 $349 $28 $7 $12 $47
Annual Revenue PampL
Fare Station lease and naming
rights Total
(M$) (M$)
$73 $1 $74 $27
From these calculations one can see that the initial network is predicted to make $27 million a year Therefore one can reasonably conclude that expanding the network to the entire county
is economically feasible as well When looking at the plot of trip ends served per station I saw that I managed to have most stations serve at least 5000 trip ends Only 7 of my stations fell below that benchmark From the analysis of the initial network I concluded that I needed to ensure that the remaining stations built continued to serve trip ends at a high level In a somewhat rural county such as Morris County this will mean the percent covered is not nearly as high but it should allow the final network to continue to make a profit
175 Final Network
Figure 141 Final PRT Network
Following the construction of my initial network I set out to expand and cover the remainder of Morris County This network is shown above It is important to understand that my final network could not possibly cover all of the trip ends in Morris County As one can see from the picture below Morris County has many large rural residential areas in which residents may find a PRT network to be too intrusive
Therefore I decided to avoid many areas like this believing that not only would the network be intrusive but also it might not be financially viable because of the amount of guideway needed to connect these rural stations In the end my final network had 334 stations 218 interchanges and 41396 miles of guideway Throughout the entire network I continued to use a basic loop structure and then used interchanges to link the successive loops together I made extensive use of shape points so that my network could follow the pre-established road and railway network in Morris County This final network covers 2113517 out of 3402873 trip ends which is a 6211 coverage ratio I decided that this final coverage percentage would be ideal adding additional stations increased the guideway amount while adding too few trip ends
Below I have included pictures that show the different types of areas within Morris County that my network covers First I have included a picture of the network in the Mount Olive area a rural residential area in the southwest corner of Morris County
As one can see an extremely large amount of guideway is needed to connect the stations and in certain areas two-way guideway is needed Areas like this though were generally avoided when building my final network Next I will show a picture from Netcong which is on the western border of Morris County
I included this picture because I felt that it gave an accurate representation of a typical area within Morris County It is not especially dense but had enough trip ends to justify multiple stations which loop together through the use of various interchanges Additionally I also felt this picture showed the need for an extremely high number of shape points if one wanted to follow the pre-established road network Next I will show pictures that represent the extremely dense areas of Morris County First I included a picture of Dover and its surrounding area to show the growth from the initial network More stations were added to satisfy the amount of trip ends in the area and a number of interchanges were added so that all of the loops could become interconnected Highly dense areas such as Dover make it potentially possible to have a profitable PRT network for Morris County
Lastly I will include another section of the network in a highly dense area Parsippany
As the network moved into the highly dense areas I tried to add as many loops as I could in order to lessen trip lengths This meant the addition of a number of interchanges to connect all of the resulting loops My final network had a 153 station to interchange ratio which I feel is fairly low for a county that has as many rural areas as Morris County Additionally superposition of station coverage started to occur in these areas but because of the population density this is hard to prevent
After completing this network I next plotted the number of trip ends per station which is shown below
I was pleased with this outcome of this plot Only 46 out of 334 or 1377 of stations serve less than 2000 trip ends a day and only 15 out of 334 sort or 45 of stations serve less than 1000 trip ends a day I felt that my network did a good job avoiding unprofitable stations as the presence of a small number of unprofitable stations can easily be subsidized by the presence of so many profitable stations Next one might notice that my top three stations serve 45675 31971 and 29258 trip ends respectively and question how that is possible in Morris County Thus I went back to each station and examined its location to see if any error occurred My station with the highest number of trip ends serves Atlantic Health Systems the second largest employer in Morris County a large census placemark as well as countless of small business placemarks I enclosed a picture of this situation below The station with the second highest number of trip ends serves two census placemarks of size 10152 and 17384 which accounts for the number of trip ends served Lastly the station with the third highest number of trip ends serves a census placemark of size 26660 Therefore although this stations serve a relatively high number of trip ends I feel comfortable with the numbers
My next step in analyzing my final network was to look at its annual profit and loss using the Excel sheet provided The results are shown below
Table 141 Networks Statistics
Stations Interchanges
Miles of Guideway
Length
Total Trip ends
served Toal Trips Peak hour
Trips
() () (miles) (per day) (per day) (per day)
334 218 41396 2113517 656350 98453
Fleet size
Average trip
Length
Average Vehicle
Occupancy Fare
Vehicle Operating Costs
() (Miles) (Tripsvehicle)
10830 5 2 $300 $020
Table 142 Costs and Revenues
Capital Costs Annual Recurring Costs
Stations Guideway Vehicles Total Cost of Capital Maintenance Operating Total (M$) (M$) (M$) (M$) (M$) (M$) (M$) (M$)
$668 $2070 $1083 $3821 $306 $76 $98
$481
Annual Revenue PampL
Fare
Station lease and naming
rights Total
(M$) (M$)
$591 $12 $603 $122
As one can see this analysis predicts my final network for Morris County will make $122 million a year This shows that despite a low coverage percentage a network can still be profitable I feel that by ensuring that nearly all stations served at least 2000 trips and not using excess guideway I was able to keep my network profitable My next step in the analysis was to find the break-even fare for Morris County This produced the following plot which shows that the break-even fare for Morris County is roughly $240
Improvements and Conclusion
From the analysis done above one can tell that it is possible to build a profitable network within Morris County Improvements can be made to the analysis though to give a more accurate picture First the underlying data set needs to be improved Most importantly better data on businesses needs to be inputted Not all businesses in Morris County are included some employee numbers are inaccurate and the patron number is not well established Unfortunately it seems as though this problem will be difficult to solve Second more analysis can be done with regards to building the Morris County PRT progressively The mix between rural and highly dense areas in Morris County makes this analysis even more pertinent For example building the most profitable stations earlier will allow the subsidization of stations that serve fewer trip ends This type of analysis could allow the next Morris County PRT builder to better understand the optimal coverage percentage for Morris County I stopped my network at 62 coverage because I felt as though adding more stations would not maintain profitability looking back I wish I had a better way to determine this value Finally further work can be done to connect a network in Morris County to the rest of New Jersey Research shows that 42 of Morris County residents leave the county everyday for work If the Morris County PRT could serve these trips ends then it could become even more profitable and perhaps subsidize even more rural stations
In conclusion the network I built for Morris County does a good job of showing the potential for PRT This network covered 62 of trip ends within Morris County while trying to adhere to the already established road and railway network In addition by charging $300 a fare the system is projected to make $109 million a year In a county as wealthy as Morris County increasing the fare might not decrease ridership much at all so more profit could potentially be made As a long-term project it definitely seems feasible to begin building the network in the most profitable areas in early years while slowly adding the less profitable stations This could result in the added benefit of increasing the total coverage percentage for Morris County
18 Ocean County
181 Introduction
Ocean County located fifty miles east of Philadelphia seventy miles south of New York
and twenty miles north of Atlantic City holds a 2007 census estimated population of 558531
people with a density of 803 people per square mile Toms River is the county seat and both
the township and the county as a whole are one of the fastest growing areas in New Jersey
since the 1990s Ocean County is the second largest county by area (916 square miles) in New
Jersey and is comprised of 3053 water Monmouth County borders the north Atlantic County
the south and Burlington County the west The county is a particular hotspot during the
summer months due to its extensive eastern border of the Atlantic Ocean
The county consisting of 33 municipalities boasts several well-known beaches including
Seaside Heights Long Beach Island Point Pleasant Beach and Surf City Yoursquore almost
guaranteed to endure heavy congestion on Route 37 crossing the Barnegat Bay to the Barnegat
Peninsula when the weatherrsquos hot The area is so popular that MTVrsquos great reality hit ldquoJersey
Shorerdquo films most of its episodes in Seaside Heights Public transportation is not very well
developed and the local roads become so clogged that traffic may seem unbearable at times
The largest Six Flags theme park Six Flags Great Adventure is located in the
northwestern part of the county along with Six Flags Wild Safari and Six Flags Hurricane Harbor
Although a large portion of the county is the hub of summer activity the county also serves as
the northeastern gateway into the Pine Barrens and is home to several state parks including
Barnegat Lighthouse Island Beach Double Trouble and Jackson State Forest among others
With an influx of people in the summer months going to the shore or Six Flags it is difficult to
say whether a PRT would be profitable year-round Certainly the more rural western part of the
county might not be suitable to a PRT system at least in the early stages of development
2009 ORF 467 PRT Proposal
2008 ORF 467 PRT Proposal
2007 ORF 467 PRT Proposal
2004 ORF 467 PRT Proposal
More Information on Ocean County
NJ DOT Rideshare
182 Placemark Data
To determine whether a PRT system would be advisable in Ocean County we first
needed to input the coordinates of all major locations in the county Fortunately past years
had already compiled a substantial amount of data with latitude and longitude coordinates and
had provided estimates of people patrons per day enrollment etc Before adding additional
locations I scrutinized the existing data and adjusted figures that I felt were exaggerated I
noticed that several of the companies listed would more likely be making house calls than
working on site at the company headquarters and so I drastically decreased the number of
employees listed as working at several locations To compensate for this decrease I assumed
that 1 of the entire population of Ocean County (represented in type 1 housing data) was in
receipt of some service call each day ndash whether it be a cleaning staff a UPS delivery an internet
service provider etc This 1 increase was represented in the type 1 data under ldquoPatrons per
Dayrdquo I used the ldquofloorrdquo function in Excel to ensure that my calculations would all yield integers
After critical examination of all figures I used Google Earth to find additional placemarks
that may not have been considered Google Earth presented all data points in degrees minutes
and seconds so I converted this measure into decimal points to be consistent with the already-
existing CSV file I included several supermarkets Wawas Wal-Marts and commercial banks
and in total I added over 30 placemarks
183 Initial Networks
The first network I developed is along Route 37 beginning at the cloverleaf interchange
with the Garden State Parkway Starting at the Garden State Parkway allows cars to park and
take the PRT to the beach just after leaving the parkway Route 37 runs along the border of
Toms River the county seat and Island Heights and crosses the Barnegat Bay to the Barnegat
Peninsula where summer hotspots like Seaside Heights are located Due to vacationers and
rapid growth in commercial development Route 37 is often congested especially in the
summer Although there is a bus along the road to the shore the vast amount of congestion
makes a PRT network seem like a much more viable solution
I faced two challenges building my first network The peninsula is quite isolated from the
main land with only one bridge on the southern end and the land is so narrow that a ldquostring-of-
pearlsrdquo network is really the only option lest we lose money placing incoming stations too close
to outgoing stations The only option I deemed possible was creating two-way guideway for
both the bridge crossing and the majority of the peninsula Although the shore is a craze during
the summer we would want to be cautious before developing in this area that we wouldnrsquot
lose vast amounts of money for the remaining three quarters of the year
The second network I developed is in Toms River with Route 37 running through it I
found this township to be particularly dense especially with the Ocean County Mall and the
largest suburban school district in the state This network situated on the mainland was far
easier to develop and I connected a series of cycles with interchanges to allow for maximum
mobility Inserting the interchanges I paid particular attention to travel time so that people
would not be going outing of their way on any given trip With the exception of the narrow
bridge in the bottom left corner of the image connecting some residential areas to the main
attractions there is no two-way guideway in this network
Because there are about six million visits to Six Flags Great Adventure in Jackson NJ
each year I wanted my third network to serve Six Flags Unfortunately other than the three Six
Flags sites and Jackson Outlets the northwestern portion of the county is quite rural The
network is not nearly as intricate as the one I created for Toms River however I still attempted
to maintain the cyclic design from before The area also appears to be swampy so I had to use
additional guideway to ensure the PRT would not run through these swamp zones The rural
area required a lot more guideway than I expected
Preliminary financial analysis of these three networks is included in the appendix
Figure 151 Final Network
Figure 152 View of Northeast
Figure 153 View of Northwest
Figure 154 View of South
In the final network I connected a series of cycles using interchanges wherever possible
The networks were rather intricate all along the eastern portion of the county however the
center and western areas were quite a bit more spread out Because Six Flags is located in the
rural western area though I still found it necessary to provide outlets to these less frequented
rural areas As a result there are often several miles of guideway in central Ocean County with
fewer stations
184 Network Statistics The tool indicated that stations serving less than 1000 trips were not profitable and so I
attempted to serve at least 1000 as much as possible Often the rural areas did not reach this
many trips which explains why some portions of the aerial view seem spottier I completed the
network with 702 stations and 287 interchanges totaling 75345 miles of guideway This
corresponds to 1240621 trips per day and we assumed the average trip length to be 5 miles I
reached 8354 service in Ocean County which is shy of the 90 goal primarily because of the
less dense western region The chart below summarizes these network statistics
Table 151 Networks Statistics
StationsInterchange
s
Miles of Guideway
LengthTotal Trip
ends served Toal TripsPeak hour
Trips Fleet sizeAverage trip
Length
Average Vehicle
Occupancy Fare
Vehicle Operating Costs
() () (miles) (per day) (per day) (per day) () (Miles) (Tripsvehicle)702 287 75345 2970141 1240621 186093 20470 5 2 $300 020$
Networks Statistics Ocean County
The trip ends served by day according to ascending station ID number are shown below
Figure 155 Trip ends served per station
Reordering the graph by descending number of trips it is easy to see that the bulk of
stations about 650 make less than 10000 trips per day and that there are only 16 stations that
have trips served in excess of 20000 trips The maximum number of trips made is 42356 trips
while the lowest number of trips which happens to be especially low is 392 trips
185 Network Financials From the network statistics chart above we assumed the average vehicle
occupancy was 2 and the fare was $3ride We also defined the peak period as
carrying 15 of the total trips per day and from this we calculated the fleet size as
(peak hour trips10)11 Recall that it costs $2 million to build each station and
$5 million for every mile of guideway Vehicle costs are assumed to be 010 times
the total fleet size while maintenance costs are 2 of the total cost A few other
assumptions on costs also defined in the chart below suggest that were we to
implement the entire network in one year we would reap a profit of $234 million
Table 152 Costs and Revenues
PampL
Stations Guideway Vehicles Total Cost of CapitaMaintenanc Operating Total Fare
Station lease and naming
rights Total(M$) (M$) (M$) (M$) (M$) (M$) (M$) (M$) (M$) (M$)
1404$ 3767$ 2047$ 7218$ 577$ 144$ 186$ 908$ 1117$ 25$ 1142$ 234$
Capital Costs Annual Recurring Costs Annual RevenueBasic Costs Revenue Ocean County
Analyzing further we see that the break-even fare is about $245 which is
incredibly low And given the size of the county 916 square miles itrsquos likely
people will be traveling several miles to get to a number of their destinations
Thus a fare of even $350 could be reasonable and would reap profits even
greater than expected
-$200
-$100
$0
$100
$200
$300
$400
$500
$600
$700
$800
$100 $150 $200 $250 $300 $350 $400 $450 $500
Mill
ions
of D
olla
rs
Cost per ride (in $)
Ocean County PampL
186 Dijkstrarsquos Algorithm (section written together with Julio) We implemented Dijkstrarsquos algorithm in MATLAB to measure how efficient our networks
are To do this we used the ldquomatriceshtmlrdquo link provided by John and Nathan and followed the
simple instructions to obtain the distances traveled In the gravity method we implemented in
the My City assignment we assumed that distances between two zones were just 12 times the
Cartesian distance of their centroids We see now after applying Dijkstrarsquos algorithm to our
network that in our last assignment we made a gross simplification Although each of our
counties are 916 square miles (Ocean County) and 665 square miles (Monmouth County) the
top ten distances between two stations running along network guideway can reach as much as
10842 miles for Ocean County and 6971 miles for Monmouth
Starting Station
Ending Station
Distance Traveled
657 612 10842 655 612 10841 114 612 10829 108 612 10803 658 612 10791 536 612 10775 115 612 10773 656 612 10746 660 612 10719 657 614 10717 655 614 10716 659 612 10714 114 614 10704 108 614 10678 537 612 10666 658 614 10666 657 613 10666 655 613 10665 534 612 10663 114 613 10653
See appendix for MATLAB code
Looking closely at the above chart it appears that the same cluster of ending stations
cause difficulty and if I had more time I would add more interchanges in the area so that this
subsection would be more properly linked to the overall network
These figures highlight the trade off we made when creating our networks In an effort
to conserve money we purposely avoided constructing stations and consequently guideway
that would produce fewer than 1000 trips per day this cost consciousness caused us to serve
fewer than 90 of trips as per the initial goal Our conservative approach to laying stations
inevitably produced networks that were less efficient
What we deem most advisable would be to begin construction on the conservative end
that we have upheld in our final network design and hold off on investigating technical
inefficiencies until the network has proven itself sustainable and profitable in the long run
Appendix of MATLAB code for Dijkstrarsquos Algorithm
A = csvread(oceanadjmatcsv)
C = csvread(oceanguidewaydistcsv)
LoS = csvread(ocean-loscsv)
[costpath] = dijkstra(AC)
for i = 1length(cost)
for j = 1length(cost)
if cost(ij) == Inf
cost(ij) = 0
end
end
end
maximums = zeros(310)
for i = 120
[r_val r_ind] = max(cost[]1)
[col_val col_ind] = max(r_val)
maximums(1i) = r_ind(col_ind)
maximums(2i) = col_ind
maximums(3i) = cost(r_ind(col_ind)col_ind)
cost(r_ind(col_ind)col_ind) = 0
end
Appendix of Preliminary Financials
(not comparable to ultimate financial analysis)
Network 1 From Garden State Parkway Cloverleaf Interchange along Route 37 to Barnegat Peninsula
Figures assuming 144915 Trips per day
Cost of One-way Guideway $-
Cost of Two-way Guideway $14712000000
Cost of Stations $4600000000
Total Building Cost $19312000000
Upper Bound Total Building Cost $21243200000
Annual Maintenance $424864000
Average Trip Length $1839
Annual Operating Cost $9727202003
Annual Interest Cost $1274592000
Total Annual Cost $11426658003
Annual Fares Revenue $15868192500
Annual Rent $82800000
Total Annual Revenue $15950992500
Anticipated Annual Revenues Anticipated Annual Costs 140
Total Revenue after 30 years $478529775000
Total Cost after 30 years $364042940075
Revenue less Cost after 30 years $114486834925
Number of Trips 144915
Number of Miles of One-way Guideway 0
Number of Miles of Two-way Guideway 2452
Number of Stations 23
Average of Guideway Ridden 075
Cost per mile of One-way Guideway 5000000
Cost per mile of Two-way Guideway 6000000
Cost of Station 2000000
Operating Cost per Mile 02
Maintenance Cost on Capital 002
Threshold Upper Bound Capital Cost 11
Average Number of Riders in Vehicle 2
Average Fare Paid 3
Rent Paid Per Month Per Station 3000
Interest Rate on Bond 006
To justify building the project we would need to be making at least 54860 trips per day which
is considerably lower than the estimated number of trips But we must keep in mind that we
donrsquot currently have information on productions and attractions so the actual trips in the
network are likely quite a bit lower than 144915 In addition this network caters specifically to
the summer season since a majority of the stations are on the peninsula along the beach In
the winter season we would anticipate a drastic drop in trip demand to this area
Network 2 In Toms River traveling to local high schools medical centers the mall restaurants and residential areas
Figures assuming 217180 Trips per day
Cost of One-way Guideway $9675000000
Cost of Two-way Guideway $450000000
Cost of Stations $2000000000
Total Building Cost $12125000000
Upper Bound Total Building Cost $13337500000
Annual Maintenance $266750000
Average Trip Length $1005
Annual Operating Cost $7966705350
Annual Interest Cost $800250000
Total Annual Cost $9033705350
Annual Fares Revenue $23781210000
Annual Rent $36000000
Total Annual Revenue $23817210000
Anticipated Annual Revenues Anticipated Annual Costs 264
Total Revenue after 30 years $714516300000
Total Cost after 30 years $284348660500
Revenue less Cost after 30 years $430167639500
Number of Trips 217180
Number of Miles of One-way Guideway 1935
Number of Miles of Two-way Guideway 075
Number of Stations 10
Average of Guideway Ridden 05
Cost per mile of One-way Guideway 5000000
Cost per mile of Two-way Guideway 6000000
Cost of Station 2000000
Operating Cost per Mile 02
Maintenance Cost on Capital 002
Threshold Upper Bound Capital Cost 11
Average Number of Riders in Vehicle 2
Average Fare Paid 3
Rent Paid Per Month Per Station 3000
Interest Rate on Bond 006
To justify building the project we would need to be making at least 20500 trips per day which
is considerably lower than the estimated number of trips But we must keep in mind that we
donrsquot currently have information on productions and attractions so the actual trips in the
network are likely quite a bit lower than 217180
Network 3 Six Flags Great Adventure Water Park Jackson Outlets Residential
Figures Assuming 129922
Cost of One-way Guideway $14790000000
Cost of Two-way Guideway $-
Cost of Stations $1800000000
Total Building Cost $16590000000
Upper Bound Total Building Cost $18249000000
Annual Maintenance $364980000
Average Trip Length $2366
Annual Operating Cost $11221830859
Annual Interest Cost $1094940000
Total Annual Cost $12681750859
Annual Fares Revenue $14226459000
Annual Rent $32400000
Total Annual Revenue $14258859000
Anticipated Annual Revenues Anticipated Annual Costs 112
Total Revenue after 30 years $427765770000
Total Cost after 30 years $398701525776
Revenue less Cost after 30 years $29064244224
Number of Trips 129922
Number of Miles of One-way Guideway 2958
Number of Miles of Two-way Guideway 0
Number of Stations 9
Average of Guideway Ridden 08
Cost per mile of One-way Guideway 5000000
Cost per mile of Two-way Guideway 6000000
Cost of Station 2000000
Operating Cost per Mile 02
Maintenance Cost on Capital 002
Threshold Upper Bound Capital Cost 11
Average Number of Riders in Vehicle 2
Average Fare Paid 3
Rent Paid Per Month Per Station 3000
Interest Rate on Bond 006
To justify building the project we would need to be making at least 88500 trips per day which
is unfortunately not too much lower than the estimated number of trips
19 Passaic County
191 Introduction Passaic county lies in the northeast region of the state of New Jersey neighbored by
Bergen Essex Morris and Sussex counties of New Jersey as well as Orange and Rockland counties of New York Its total area is 197 square miles comprised of 185 square miles of land and 12 square miles of water According to the 2000 census Passaic has an approximate population of 489049 people thus the average population density is 2639 people per square mile However we can see from the population density map below that the population is not uniformly distributed across the county some urban areas have a density of over 10000 people per square mile while other areas like the West Milford township are much less populated The average household size is approximately 292 and the median household income $49210 The population is distributed as follows 2610 under the age of 18 930 from 18 to 24 3130 from 25 to 44 2130 from 45 to 64 and 1210 65 and older For more information on demographics and population distribution refer to sections 172 and 173 of the report ORF467F08
Due to its mountainous terrain and relatively small population Passaic has a less extensive network of roads than some other counties but thatrsquos not to say it doesnrsquot have any In fact there are several major highways running through the county such as the Garden State Parkway Interstates 287 and 80 and US Routes 202 46 23 21 20 19 4 and 3 Therefore it will be viable and worthwhile to develop this PRT network as a replacement for the majority of automobile traffic throughout the county Passaic is also home to a well functioning system of public transportation Three train lines including the Main Line of New Jersey Transit operate in the county as well as multiple New Jersey Transit bus routes We do not aim to replace these public transportation operations but rather to supplement them
The trips we intend to serve with PRT include travel to and from home work school and recreation Passaic Countyrsquos private sector labor force consists of 240000 people (as of 2007)mdashalmost half of the population There is also a large number of schools throughout the county from nursery schools and child care through elementary middle and high school all the way up to university level education We found most of our trips to be between home and work or school as there are not many commercial or recreational zones in Passaic For more details on employment education and recreation refer to sections 177 176 and 178 respectively of the report ORF467F08
192 Data The main changes we had to make in terms of the data provided by last yearrsquos students
was regarding the number of patron trips at each professional location As it was the number of patron trips had been estimated by multiplying the number of employees at each location by 50 This resulted in an unreasonably high number of patron trips per day in the countymdasharound 8 million In order to fix this and come up with a more reasonable estimate of patron trips I changed the multiplying factor to 10 which resulted in a little less than 2 million patron trips per day With Passaicrsquos population of approximately 500000 that makes approximately 4 trips per day per person which is a much more reasonable estimate Furthermore in order to make the data as accurate as possible I did not use this factor of 10 as a strict rule While going through the data I tried to make sure the numbers made sense For instance for a private practice doctorrsquos office with one employee the multiple of 10 makes sense as it could be expected to have just ten customers a day but a pharmacy with one employee would probably service more people in a daymdashprobably closer to 100
Another issue with the data was school enrollment numbers In last yearrsquos data schools were not separated into their own category with enrollment numbers and instead were given patron numbers that were twice the actual enrollment This along with many schools being listed twice resulted in far too high a number of school trips per daymdasharound 600000 which is larger than the entire population I did my best to correct this data and make it as accurate as possible with a final result of 256972 possible student trips which still may be a little high but is much more reasonable than before
193 PRT Network Proposal As discussed previously the population of Passaic is not uniformly distributed throughout the county It is much more populated in the lower half and then thins out as you move north Based on this we decided to start with an initial network in the lower half servicing one of the most populated areasmdashthe area surrounding Montclair State University The University has an enrollment of 15600 students (graduate and undergraduate) and the area is also home to the MSU train station making it an ideal place to start building a network From there we decided to build out in the second phase covering most of the lower region of Passaic In stage 3 we would start moving up and in the final phase we will build up this part of the network to service more trips in the upper region of Passaic in addition to all of those already served in the lower region Below is an image of our final network
We strategically placed stations to service as many trip ends as possible without too much overlap In terms of guide way we took inspiration from the one way streets of New York City to create what we think is an efficient system These concepts that we used for stations and guide way are displayed in the following close ups of the network
Of course we do not want guide way running through houses golf courses or peoplesrsquo back yards so once we had all of the tracks laid down we went back and inserted shape points to ensure that it will follow the already existing roads of Passaic
194 Network Evolution Initial Network (Phase 1)mdashYear 1 For the initial network we decided to service part of the lower more populated region of Passaic We chose to start with the area surrounding Montclair State University With an enrollment of 15600 and the nearby MSU train station which according to information gathered from New Jersey Transit boards 597 people on an
average weekday this seems like a promising place to start Below is a close up of the immediate area displaying the University the train station and other nearby features
After placing our very first station right next to the University we began to expand outward from there aiming to service a good chunk of the bottom of Passaic in phase 1 This initial network consists of 60 stations potentially serving 1106326 trips already (2482 of total trips) Below is a full image of the initial network followed by in depth data regarding the network trips served and financial information
Table 161 Networks Statistics Costs and Revenues for Phase 1
Phase 1 Passaic County
Trip ends served
home school work patron transit landmarks Total
Total 485120 54028 81138 480640 5432 4 1106362
County Total Trip Ends 1956196 256972 328014 1907192 7676 64
4456114
Trips served (per day) 137344
Networks Statistics Passaic County
Stations
Inter
changes
Miles of Guideway
Length
Total Trip ends
served Total Trips
Peak hour Trips
Fleet size
Average trip
Length
Average Vehicle
Occupancy Fare
Vehicle Operating Costs
() () (miles) (per day) (per day) (per day) () (Miles) (Tripsvehicle)
60 68 7962
1106362
137344
20602 2266 5 2
$ 300
$ 020
Basic Costs Revenue Passaic County
Capital Costs Annual Recurring Costs Annual Revenue PampL
Stations Guidewa
y Vehicles Total Cost of Capital
Maint
enance Operating Total Fare
Station lease and naming
rights Total
(M$) (M$) (M$) (M$) (M$) (M$) (M$) (M$) (M$) (M$)
$ 120
$ 398
$ 227
$ 745
$ 60
$ 15
$ 21
$ 95
$ 124
$ 2
$ 126
$ 31
Phase 2mdashYear 8 In phase 2 we will expand coverage of the lower more populated region of Passaic With 218 stations potentially serving 3315634 trips phase 2 will provide 7438 coverage Below is an image of the expanded phase 2 network along with trip information and financial data
Table 162 Networks Statistics Costs and Revenues for Phase 2
Phase 2 Passaic County
Trip ends served
home school work patron transit landmarks Total
Total 1392420 178232 254910 1482332 7676 64 3315634
County Total Trip Ends 1956196 256972 328014 1907192 9282 64
4457720
Trips served (per day) 1233078
Networks Statistics Passaic County
Stations Interchanges
Miles of Guideway
Length
Total Trip ends
served Toal Trips Peak hour
Trips Fleet size
Average trip
Length
Average Vehicle
Occupancy Fare
Vehicle Operating Costs
() () (miles) (per day) (per day) (per day) () (Miles) (Tripsvehicle)
218 237 29345 3315634
1233078 184962 20346 5 2
$ 300
$ 020
Basic Costs Revenue Passaic County
Capital Costs Annual Recurring Costs Annual Revenue PampL
Stations Guideway Vehicles Total Cost of Capital Maintenance Operating Total Fare
Station lease and naming rights Total
(M$) (M$) (M$) (M$) (M$) (M$) (M$) (M$) (M$) (M$)
$ 436
$ 1467
$ 2035
$ 3938
$ 315 $ 79
$ 185
$ 579 $ 1110
$ 8
$ 1118
$ 539
Phase 3mdashYear 15 In phase 3 we will begin to extend the network north into the less populated area of Passaic At this point we will have 292 stations potentially serving 3782984 trips (8486 service) Phase 3 network image trip information and financials follow
Table 163 Networks Statistics Costs and Revenues for Phase 3
Phase 3 Passaic County
Trip ends served
home school work patro
n trans
it
landmark
s Total
Total 1573
828 1940
70 29213
4 1715
212 7676 64 3782
984
County Total Trip
Ends 1956
196 2569
72 32801
4 1907
192 7676 64
4456114
Trips served (per day)
1605768
Networks Statistics Passaic County
Stations
Interchange
s
Miles of
Guideway
Length
Total Trip ends
served Toal Trips
Peak hour Trips
Fleet size
Average trip
Length
Average
Vehicle
Occupancy Fare
Vehicle Operating Costs
() () (miles)
(per day)
(per day)
(per day) ()
(Miles)
(Tripsvehicle)
292 316 3874
4
3782984
1605768
240865
26495 5 2
$ 300
$ 020
Basic Costs Revenue Passaic County
Capital Costs Annual Recurring Costs Annual Revenue PampL
Stations
Guideway
Vehicles Total
Cost of Capital
Maintenanc
e Operating Total Fare
Station
lease and
naming
rights Total
(M$) (M$) (M$) (M$) (M$) (M$) (M$) (M$) (M$) (M$)
$ 584
$ 1937
$ 2650
$ 5171
$ 414
$ 103
$ 241
$ 758
$ 1445
$ 11
$ 1456
$ 698
Final Network (Phase 4)mdashYear 20 In the final phase we will extend coverage in the upper region of Passaic to service its most populated areas With 369 stations in this final network we could potentially serve 3997614 tripsmdashthatrsquos 8968 of all trips in Passaic county
Table 164 Networks Statistics Costs and Revenues for Phase 4
Phase 4 Passaic County
Trip ends served
home school work patro
n trans
it
landmark
s Total
Total 1703
512 2124
94 30297
6 1770
892 7676 64 3997
614
County Total Trip
1956196
256972
328014
1907192 7676 64
4456114
Ends
Trips served (per day)
1793145
Networks Statistics Passaic County
Stations
Interchange
s
Miles of
Guideway
Length
Total Trip ends
served Toal Trips
Peak hour Trips
Fleet size
Average trip
Length
Average
Vehicle
Occupancy Fare
Vehicle Operating Costs
() () (miles)
(per day)
(per day)
(per day) ()
(Miles)
(Tripsvehicle)
369 381 5500
4
3997614
1793145
268972
29587 5 2
$ 300
$ 020
Basic Costs Revenue Passaic County
Capital Costs Annual Recurring Costs Annual Revenue PampL
Stations
Guideway
Vehicles Total
Cost of Capital
Maintenanc
e Operating Total Fare
Station
lease and
naming
rights Total
(M$) (M$) (M$) (M$) (M$) (M$) (M$) (M$) (M$) (M$)
$ 738
$ 2750
$ 2959
$ 6447
$ 516
$ 129
$ 269
$ 914
$ 1614
$ 13
$ 1627
$ 713
From this plot we can see that the break even fair is approximately $168 With our chosen fare of $3 we will be able to finance the project and make significant profit about $713 million per year
195 Conclusion We think that our proposed PRT network would be very beneficial to Passaic County It would be a monumental step in the future of transportation With PRT we can reduce congestion on roads and reduce air pollution due to automobile use We propose to serve the vast majority (8968) of all current automobile trips in Passaic This network would be a supplement to rather than a competitor with preexisting New Jersey transit linesmdashwe aim only to create an alternative to the automobile With this four phase development plan the development of the network will be a feasible smooth transition The total capital cost of the entire network is $6447 but with the four stage development plan this capital cost will be spread over 20 years Furthermore by the completion of the project we expect it to have an annual profit of $713 million If we follow through with the development of this PRT network it will be beneficial not just environmentally but financially
20 Salem County Jonathan Erlichman and Kexing Christina Ren
Salem County is located at the Southwest most corner of New Jersey and is located next to Gloucester County Cumberland County in New Jersey and Kent and New Castle County in Delaware It was created in 1694 and is considered to be the Garden Spot of the Garden State It is bounded by the Delaware River and the Maurice River to the west and east respectively37 Salem has a total area of 373 square miles with total land area of 338 square miles half of which is used for farming purposes According to the US Census Bureau It has a population of about 65 000 residents making it the county with the lowest population and the lowest density in New Jersey It is apparently also one of the older county in New Jersey
Salem is a relatively rural county with approximately half of its land area used for farming According to the countyrsquos website it has six rivers over 34000 acres of meadow and marshland 40 lakes and ponds bay beaches and numerous streams and important headwaters Municipalities in Salem Table 171 From 2000 Census Data
Salem County
Number Municipality Population Square
MI
37 httpwwwsalemcountynjgovcmssitedefaultaspcontentID=505
1 Elmer Borough 1343 09
2 Woodstown Borough 3136 16
3 Salem City 5857 28
4 Penns Grove Borough 4886 09
5 Oldsman Township 1798 203
6 Carneys Point Township 7684 178
7 Pilesgrove Township 3923 351
8 Mannington Township 1559 394
9 Pennsville Township 13194 248
10 Elsinboro Township 1092 133
11 Lower Alloways Creek Township 1851 311
12 Quinton Township 2786 245
13 Alloway Township 2774 332
14 Upper Pittsgrove Township 3468 405
15 Pittsgrove Township 8893 459
201 Demographic Summary Table 172 Age Breakdown
Demographic Total of Residents of Population
lt 18 16457 256
18 - 24 5014 78
25 - 44 17936 279
45 - 64 15557 242
gt 65 9321 145
Table 1 Age Breakdown
According to the 2000 census there were 24295 households and 17370 families residing in the county with a total of 26158 housing units and an average density of 77 people per square mile The average household size is 260 and the average family size is 308 persons
202 Population Density Map of Salem County
Source 2000 Census Data
203 Economic Summary The median household income for a household in the county was $45573 and the median income for a family was $54890 The per capita income for the county was $20874 Comparing this to the median household income for New Jersey which is $70347 and a per capita income level of $2700638
According to data from 2008 105 of the residents of Salem live below the poverty line compared to 85 in the entire state of New Jersey Because Salem is a relatively poorer state we felt that it was only necessary to build stations in areas where there are higher population densities so that the network would actually be profitable
we can see that Salem is a relatively poorer county
204 Education Summary Salem has 30 to 40 schools each serving around 100 to 600 students each Because of this it was difficult to build stations near the smaller schools as there would not be enough ridership to make it worth operating a station in those areas
205 Transportation Summary There are many roads that serve the residents of Salem County from major country routes such as CR 540 CR 551 to state highways such as Routes 45 and 47 as well as US Routes 40 and 130 I-295 and the New Jersey Turnpike also pass through Salem although there is only one interchange for the turnpike in Salem (where it ends)39
38 httpquickfactscensusgovqfdstates34000html
39 httpenwikipediaorgwikiSalem_County_New_Jersey
Due to the low population numbers in Salem County there really is not a well developed public transportation system Because of this the main method of transportation in the county is by personal car According to the 2000 Census data 12 of the residents of Salem take public transportation to go to work and 933 of residents travel by automobile NJ Transit does not have a train system in Salem Thus we believe that Salem is a good county to put in a (smaller) PRT network
206 PRT Network The following is the entire final network of Salem County Note that there are clusters of stations in the Northwestern portion of the county and two clusters one in the middle of the county and the other on the lower east portion of the county There are only a total of 173 stations in the county with a total of 49 interchanges and 1835 miles of guideway
Figure 171 PRT Network in the Northwest
The network in the Northwest is close to a grid and we chose this so that we could minimize construction costs for the network in the county This is one of the more populated regions of Salem County and is perhaps the most profitable area
For Salem we managed to get 7439 coverage We feel that more work in searching for the smaller stations that arenrsquot necessary is needed as they arenrsquot profitable and it would make more sense to just build in the areas that have more population
207 Years Built Due to the fact that Salem is such a small county we decided that itrsquod make sense to build it over a much smaller time horizon We recommend starting by building in the more populated regions so that we would be able to get an idea of how profitable itrsquod be and then build stations wherever therersquod be enough ridership We chose to build the complete network over 4 years and not over a horizon of 20 years because we felt that Salem could very well become more developed in the next two decades and then it would make more sense to redo the network for the areas that are currently still rural
The following is a table that indicates how many stations interchanges shapepoints and miles of guideway are built for each year Table 173 Evolution
Year Built Stations Interchanges Shape Points Guideway (miles)
1 78 22 46 6867
2 34 6 1 338
3 46 14 9 5135
4 15 7 2873 18389
208 PRT Network Summary The following is a summary of the Network statistics for Salem County Table 174 Network Statistics
Table 175 Costs and Revenues
Graph of Trip Ends served per station in Salem County (Decreasing order)
Figure 172 Trip ends served per station
From these tables and graph we can see that there are again 173 stations in the county (compared to over 400 in Gloucester County) which allows for 7439 of the county to be able to use the PRT network (to be within 025 mi of a station)
Graph of PampL Based on Different Fare Prices
Figure 173 PampL for Different Fares in Salem County
From this graph we can easily see that the breakeven price for the network lies around $280 We would recommend pricing each ride slightly higher than what we have in the summary statistics table because when the costs of maintaining and expanding the network go up it would become much more difficult to raise the per-ride price due to human psychology
209 Notes for future networks As with the other networks we noticed that some of the placemarks had data that was unreasonable We suggest to next yearrsquos class that they pay attention to the placemarks and make sure that there arenrsquot duplicates (which we have hopefully gotten rid of) and look at placemarks to determine whether or not the numbers are reasonable We realized that some numbers were unreasonable after we finished with our network but by then it became somewhat difficult to find where the stations were and to delete them To combat the unreasonable numbers that were given to us we scaled the recreation trips by a constant factor so that wersquod be able to get the expected number trips to be around 5
We also realized rather late that there were some issues with the placement of certain stations (due to the problems caused by the ldquowiggle effectrdquo and thus we built stations when the display