Priority rule strategy for managing a Personal Rapid Transit system

This paper considers the dispatch of driverless electric vehicles in a Personal Rapid Transit (PRT) system. The characteristics of PRT are presented, and different online solution techniques are developed. We present two simple management strategies and a priority rule-based approach that use the concept of availability of PRT vehicles while dealing with the issue of battery constraints. A simulation model is presented and developed to test the different strategies, and their performance is analyzed under different scenarios.