Driverless, battery-powered pod-cars will soon zip passengers around part of London's Heathrow Airport. The manufacturers of the Ultra personal rapid transit (PRT) system say it is the world's first public transport to balance the convenience of a taxi with the efficiency of a bus or light rail – albeit only for business passengers arriving at the world's third busiest airport.
Personalised rapid transit has been an elusive dream of engineers and city planners. Since the mid 1970s, many schemes have been proposed at sites around the world, and a PRT-like system has been built at Morgantown in West Virginia. But Ultra is the first PRT system to give passengers control over their destination.
Ultra has been in the works since 2005, when BAA – the company that runs Heathrow – ordered a pilot project from Advanced Transport Systems (ATS) of Bristol, UK. Four years later, Ultra is undergoing final tests before its opening to the general public, planned for later this year.
The Heathrow Ultra system will initially carry passengers between the business car park and terminal 5. Each pod-car holds up to four passengers and can travel at speeds of up to 40 kilometres per hour on 4.3 kilometres of dedicated roadway, stopping at any of three stations. The journey takes around 3 minutes, non-stop, with wait times of no more than a minute for the next available car. A central computer system monitors demand and controls traffic.
Jed Davis
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