Analytical Review of Guided Transit Systems

The need for providing high-performance transit services has been increasingly recognized in most cities in recent years. The most important elements for obtaining such services are separate rights-of-way for transit and guided technology. The basic transit system features, such as transit unit size, service frequency, degree of automation and stopping patterns are described and their impacts on performance are analyzed. Rail rapid transit and light rail modes are found to retain clear superiority in high and medium capacity mode categories, respectively; various rubber-tired automatic guided systems are increasingly replacing steered (highway) modes in applications of lower medium capacity range where high performance is needed. Individual automated guided cabin systems (personal rapid tranit) do not represent a viable concept under any conditions.