Personal rapid transit - A sustainable urban transport system

High urbanisation process and population growth in cities, altogether with the desire of city residents to own a car, has led to present situation, in which huge trafficrelated problems occur. The rapid growth of private cars is not followed by appropriate road infrastructure supply. The energy efficiency also drops behind the number of private cars in the world. This has produced problems such as congestion and excessive energy consumption – both of them are serious threats to urban environment. Therefore, the urban transport has entered so-called „vicious circle“, in which the increase of private car usage leads to reduced travel speeds and higher travel times for each traffic participant. There have been many efforts to change people's travel habits and encouragements to use other modes of transport. Urban transport planners recommend cycling, walking and public transport as alternatives to private car. The greatest disadvantage of walking and cycling is the impossibility to cross longer distances, the influence of weather conditions and issues with luggage. From the traffic participant's point of view, public transport lacks flexibility in terms of both travel times (fixed timetable) and travel routes (pre-defined routes of public transport). However, walking, cycling and traditional mass transit do not fully comply with the mobility requirements in progressively growing cities. Solutions to problems mentioned above are sought by introducing new technologies. Personal Rapid Transit(PRT) is a solution to transport problems of the future, providing many benefits for not only passengers (safety, speed, privacy, comfort and low transport costs), but the entire cities (low introduction costs, low operation costs, low noise production and negligible impact on the environment). The emphasis of this article is given to the description of PRT systems, and not to its technical details.