Comparable Capacities Under Different Operating Assumptions


Provided below are some the vehicle and people-moving capacities for a single freeway lane, a light rail transit (LRT) line and a Personal Rapid Transit (PRT) line. There are no buses, carpools or vanpools on the freeway lane and it is not a HOV lane. It is operating under ideal "free flow" conditions which are often degraded by accidents, incidents and other capacity-reducing events.

As shown, PRT has an advantage over a  freeway lane and LRT line if it is operated with minimum headways of 1 second or less and all the other assumptions for all three modes are valid.

  Maximum Vehicles/hour past a point Min. Headway % Empty Vehicles Avg. Occup. of Used Vehicles (persons) Capacity: People/hour PRT Advantage over Freeway PRT Advantage over LRT  #1 PRT Advantage over LRT #2
One Freeway Lane 2,200   0% 1.1 2,420      
LRT Line #1 12 5 min. 0% (all seats filled, no standees) 152 (2- 90' cars) 1,824      
LRT Line #2 12 5 min. 0% (all seats filled, no standees 304 (4-90' cars) 3,648      
One PRT Line 7,200 1/2 second 30% 1.5 7,560 3.1 to 1 4.1 to 1 2.1 to 1
One PRT Line 3,600 1 second 30% 1.5 3,780 1.6 to 1 2.1 to 1 1 to 1
One PRT Line 1,800 2 seconds 30% 1.5 1890 0.8 to 1 1 to 1 0.5 to 1

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Last modified: March 28, 2001