In a recent court filing, the New Jersey Turnpike Authority asked the NJ Appellate Division for sanctions against the Tri-State Transportation Campaign, which is suing the Authority and the NJ Department of Environmental Protection over the widening of 50 miles of the Garden State Parkway. The Campaign claims that the DEP should not have approved the project because the NJTA had not made a case or followed public notice requirements for the massive highway expansion.
The Authority alleges that Tri-State Transportation Campaign’s suit is “frivolous” and thus subject to sanctions under NJ law, potentially amounting to thousands of dollars in legal fees. The Campaign has countered that such claims are baseless and calculated only to delay a hearing on the merits. The case, which was originally filed in February, is still in the pre-trial stages.
“This attempt by Governor Corzine to silence his critics,” says Kyle Wiswall, General Counsel at Tri-State Transportation Campaign, “is a chilling example of intimidation by state government and something that should be of concern for everyone in New Jersey, whether or not they support the project.” (Another state agency, the NJ Sports and Exposition Authority, employed similar tactics last year, filing a SLAPP — “strategic litigation against public participation” — suit against the Sierra Club that was thrown out.)
“The state’s claims simply don’t hold water,” continued Wiswall. “Their allegations are serving only to delay and dissuade public access to the court system.”
“The fact remains that Governor Corzine plans to spend nearly $1 billion on a highway widening project that is going to fill up with traffic shortly after it’s finished and that is going to increase sprawl development and congestion throughout the corridor,” said Kate Slevin, Executive Director of the Campaign.
The New Jersey Turnpike Authority’s own documents show that portions of the new lanes will be filled with traffic shortly after construction is complete. As indicated in Table 3-12, on page 3-40 of the environmental impact statement, one-third of the project area will be over capacity by 2025, the year for which the engineers designed the project. Specifically, the widened road will accommodate 52,200 cars per day. But by 2025, five sections of the 15 to be widened will have more than 52,200 cars per day. In other words, traffic will be worse on the widened road than it is today.
[…] Turnpike Authority Motion; Allows Parkway Suit to Proceed Last week Tri-State issued a press release stating that the New Jersey Turnpike Authority had made a motion to sanction Tri-State in its suit […]
“If the PRT vehicles are the same size as cars then the energy consumption will be about the same.”
PRT systems that are well-designed are not the same size as cars, they are smaller. They are also lighter than even a car of the same size because they carry neither fuel nor batteries but run on an electrified guideway. The switch patent I posted before shows a wheel and guideway design that results in much lower rolling resistance than does a simple tire-on-roadway design, further increasing efficiency. Also, much of the bulk of automobiles is for safety reasons, but the risk of impact is much much lower for PRT (the risk of head-on impact is essentially zero, for example, and the risk of a side collision is exactly zero), and since all vehicles are equally lightweight to begin with, there is not the same degree of danger as there is for, say, an SUV impacting a compact car.
“PRT means grade separated infrastructure which is tunnel, open cut or elevated.”
Yes.
“If elevated the line will have to be 15 – 20 feet off the ground.”
Yes, but this can be done relatively cheaply with small and lightweight vehicles (on the order of a few tens of millions per mile).
“There will have to be storage tracks for at least some of the stations.”
Trains require storage yards as well, as do automobiles. But because PRT vehicles are shared throughout the day, unlike private automobiles, you need fewer PRT “parking spaces” than you do automobile parking spaces (some estimates are around 1/10 as many), and spaces can be smaller because the vehicles are smaller and do not need room for access by humans while they’re parked in storage. And since average speeds are higher than conventional rail, and total capacity needed for a given throughput is inversely related to average speed, you need less total capacity for PRT than you do for rail.
By the way, the reason PRT vehicles are as large as they are is for ADA compliance, which means being able to fit a wheelchair facing forward in every single vehicle. If this requirement were relaxed so that only a certain percent of all vehicles needed to be ADA compliant (which would be much more in line with the wheelchair-accessible capacity requirements of conventional transit systems), then the average vehicle size could be much smaller.
“As someone who keeps up with transit world-wide, I have yet to read of such a system being implemented other than some airport systems.”
There was no sustained manned heavier-than-air flight before Orville and Wilbur.
“I would be happy if PRT was workable because it would be a nice transition from car ownership and having to drive.”
Me too.
“I suspect that a normal car version of KITT of Knight Rider fame would actually be more feasible although I am not expecting wide scale implementation of that in the next 30 years.”
There are many advocates for driverless cars. I’m not sure why you think they are more feasible, as it’s much easier to control a vehicle in one spatial dimension when the environment is highly controlled, as it is in PRT, than it is to control a vehicle in two spatial dimensions when the environment is much more unpredictable, especially if you plan on allowing these vehicles to operate alongside human-driven vehicles. The AI technology which is necessary for, for example, allowing such vehicles in an urban setting with a high degree of reliability and safety is indeed years and possibly decades off. Finally, driverless vehicles still lack most of the efficiency and travel time improvements that PRT provides, as the vehicles will still be heavier than necessary and be operating on the same congested roads that we drive on today. The control systems needed for PRT are comparatively simple, especially for vehicle control which consists of little more than acceleration, deceleration, detecting obstructions (already deployed in commercial automobiles today) and communicating with regional and central control systems. All the technology necessary for PRT, hardware and software, exists already. It’s just a matter of putting it together and testing it.
Jimmy, I looked at the NJ Turnpike Authority’s numbers online and it seems like the wider road won’t solve the traffic problem. So what are we paying for? I don’t get it.
Here‘s the patent for one type of vehicle-borne switch. Other systems use magnets.
I hope they take you obstructionists for every penny you have! Go Turnpike! I am so sick of wasting my weekend afternoons in traffic because of you creeps.
If the PRT vehicles are the same size as cars then the energy consumption will be about the same. PRT means grade separated infrastructure which is tunnel, open cut or elevated. If elevated the line will have to be 15 – 20 feet off the ground. There will have to be storage tracks for at least some of the stations. Each guideway or track will be at least 4 feet wide and stations have to be large enough to accomodate the peak number of people expected to be waiting plus the peak number that can be getting off. As someone who keeps up with transit world-wide, I have yet to read of such a system being implemented other than some airport systems. Indeed, I am not certain if any of the airport PRT systems are still running. The Morgantown, West Virginia system uses larger vehicles than are claimed for PRT. I would be happy if PRT was workable because it would be a nice transition from car ownership and having to drive. I suspect that a normal car version of KITT of Knight Rider fame would actually be more feasible although I am not expecting wide scale implementation of that in the next 30 years.
[…] NJ Turnpike Authority to TSTC: How Dare You Try to Prevent Highway Widening (MTR) […]
If I recall correctly, NJTA applied for Federal stimulus funds for this project. Projects eligible for these funds need to have completed the EIR process to be eligible – this is why the Tappan Zee project could not access stimulus funds. Despite this, NJTA filed anyway. This breach of procedure could be enough to get the SLAPP off of your back – though you are probably way ahead of me on this.
Keep fighting the good fight, TSTC.
“Show me the reaction time of the switches, how you are going to monitor for muggers, provide wheelchair access, locate the stations, etc. before I will believe in PRT.”
The vehicles are ADA compliant, stations are monitored by remote video (or by on-scene private or public security if you so choose), stations are located wherever is convenient and cost-effective. I don’t know the exact switch response time but multiple demonstration systems have been built that seem to have no problem switching reliably (here and here, for example). The switching mechanism is on the vehicles rather than in the track, if you were wondering. All this info is at the website I linked to, and lots of technical documentation is available here. Believe it or not there has actually been a lot of thought put into the issues you raised and many others in the forty or so years PRT has been in development. The video at prtinternational.com is a good overview of both rationale and technical aspects, and you can contact them directly if you have more questions.
The rationale in a nutshell: cars are bad for a variety of reasons, but people often prefer driving to public transit because it is faster and more convenient. If however we are able to provide a public transit system that is as convenient as the car but still as efficient and environmentally friendly as conventional transit, then we’ve really got something good. PRT attempts to do just that.
PRT on the Parkway. Problem solved.
Show me the reaction time of the switches, how you are going to monitor for muggers, provide wheelchair access, locate the stations, etc. before I will believe in PRT. Note that those are just some of the interesting technical problems in designing any transport system.
As to the SLAPP suit, if the TSTC can show that the authority did not follow appropriate state and federal rules, the SLAPP should get the heave-ho. If the authority followed the rules and gave a defensible response to objections, then the TSTC is in trouble. Personally, I believe that expanding rail capacity (BUT NOT THE Trans Hudson Tunnel as currently designed) is the far better public investment. Note both expansions I mentioned may run out of capacity within a projected period but that is not a reason to oppose them. One good reason to oppose either might be the strain they would put on other components of the system such as feeder roads to the Turnpike and Parkway.