Heuristic Scheduling Procedures for PRT System

This paper is a summary of the research conducted to develop a vehicle scheduling approach for a personal rapid transit system. The basic goal was to develop a vehicle scheduling routine that would permit the real-time launching of vehicles, and in turn, result in improving the efficiency of the system's operation. A number of heuristic rules were tested by an interaction with a simulation of the Morgantown PRT system. Each rule was evaluated to determine its effectiveness in providing an efficient operation of the system resulting in the accomplishment of the system objectives. It was found that peak-period operation of the system should be considered and handled separately from off-peak operation with different heuristic rules being used in these cases.