Source: Bay Area Rapid Transit
As I mentioned yesterday, the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) agency announced on Thursday that the Oakland Airport Connector would be a Cable Propelled Transit system. This was a major breakthrough by a cable technology as it competed head-to-head with two other self-propelled transit technologies and won.
One of the reasons cited by BART for awarding the contract to the Parsons/Flatiron group was that their bid came in $60 million dollars less than the initial estimate of $552 million. That’s 10.8% below estimates for anyone whose counting. Considering most transit projects are completed significantly over budget, that’s impressive, assuming of course they can stay on budget.
Cost, however, was likely not the only motivating factor. Increasingly, transit agencies are noticing cable for what it is: A simple, cheap and effective method of transit compared to other more traditional technologies. Consider a recent report by the American Society of Civil Engineers in their publication, Automated People Movers, 2009 (you can find a limited preview of it at Google Books).
In it, the authors investigated people mover systems by method of propulsion. What did they find? Lots:
“It is observed that technologies that use external propulsion, for instance by means of
cables, currently offer the best efficiency indicators when compared to other technological solutions for propulsion and power transmission.” Page 245
“The interest for a technology also marked by the use of an off-vehicle propeller system strengthens the potential of simple but smart technologies, hopefully cheaper than that dominated by the market until nowadays.” Page 248
“Three (of the five most efficient systems studied ) are cable-propelled from Doppelmayr, one not specified and one is the (untested) pneumatic Aeromovel. The systems with lower efficiency scores… are based on self-propelled vehicles.” Page 252
“From the seven least efficient systems, under this analysis, six of them are based on rubber-tired self-propelled vehicles and one is not specified.” Page 254
“Technologies based on alternative propulsion methods, for instance by means of cables or pneumatics, represent a strong potential to become benchmarks.” Page 255
Things are changing. Maybe we should pay attention.
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