Download Cape May Ariel Sternberg, Sun-You Park “Cape May is a peninsula

Cape May
Ariel Sternberg, Sun-You Park
“Cape May is a peninsula, the southern tip of which is the southernmost point of the state of
New Jersey…. It runs southwards from the New Jersey mainland, separating Delaware Bay from
the Atlantic Ocean. The cape is named for Cornelius Jacobsen Mey, a Dutch explorer who was
working for the Dutch East India Company. “ (Wikipedia-“Cape May”).
Cape May has a nationally famous birding site. It has numerous nature preserves and wildlife
refuges and it is home to large concentrations of birds. Although Cape May is home to “The
Cape May Bird Observatory”, the observatory is not a great source of income and is not a large
attraction in terms of visitors when compared to even the least visited casino in Atlantic City.
Cape May is a mostly residential county. It does not have more business than the average
county and does not enjoy a healthy gambling culture.
PRT Network of Cape May
The networks of Cape May are in general different than those of other counties. Most of the
population of Cape May lives on strips along the cost. PRT networks in Cape May are often one
dimensional rather that two dimensional and this makes them more expensive since links
between two adjacent arcs are often two way (which brings up the cost of building the tracks).
However, they look better as we use fewer stations. Also, in real life, a two way link does not
take twice the space as a one way link. We plot as few stations as we can to save the
environment and save money. We plotted our stations such that people who are at a certain
location can only be served by one station. We do not have two stations close by as this would
be a waste of money (to build the station) and would damage the environment. We are aware
that we are not serving as many trips as we could have if we had built stations closer to each
other, but since we assume that there is no upper bound on the number of trips served by a
single stations, we did not allow stations to be close enough such that a person could walk to
both of them. The networks in the east side of Cape May put more of an emphasis on esthetics.
We try to keep all the tracks on existing roads and avoid building tracks through blocks. The
networks in the west side of Cape May try to be more cost efficient and easier on the
environment as we use less tracks. There are much fewer two way links (if at all).
As to our ultimate network, it is hard to say. It is really simple to just install more stations
everywhere where we can find more that 2000 trips that would be served per day. However, we
must also consider the cost of building the tracks, the costs of holding the tracks and so on. The
question is what we are trying to optimize. Obviously we want to serve as many trips as possible
and therefore need as many stations as possible, but we are also trying to minimize damage to
the environment, which is not easily quantifiable. Ultimately, Cape May’s network would also
connect with networks from other counties.
Number of stations
113
Number of interchanges
9
Number of total trips
604286
Number of trips served
274904
Total guideway length (in mi)
166.68
% trips served
45.492%
Average trips per station
2432.779
Average guideway length per station (in mi)
1.475044
Cost of building a station
$2,000,000
Yearly station maintenance cost
$17,500
Cost of building a one-mile guideway
$10,000
Yearly guidway maintenance cost (per mile)
Total initial cost
Total yearly maintenance cost
Total yearly cost for the first 20 years
(assume 5% of initial cost paid)
Total cost per trip
Total yearly cost after 20 years
Total cost per trip (after 20 years)
$1,000
$227,666,800
$2,144,180
$13,527,520
$49.21
$2,144,180
$7.80
Networks:
Cape May:
*We could not provide an image of the links only as requested by Daphne, as there is no tool
that enables this (confirmed by John).
Anecdotes about our network:
Huge efforts on our hand to minimize damage to the environment, building our tracks only on
existing roads and bridges. We are not only minimizing damage to the environment, but also to
our pockets. We do not force residents out of their homes and we do not build new bridges and
other infrastructure.
The distance between two adjacent stations equals to one diameter. This is genius because each
user of the PRT system can only use one stations for their trip (only one station is within a
walking distance). The reason why this is genius is that we are covering maximal area with
minimum amount of stations. Of course, this can only hold if we assume that there is no upper
bound on trips that we can service per station that we meet.
Despite efforts from above to try and dictate the use of interchange/station ratios, we tried to
use judgment as much as we could. At the bottom of the image you can see the use of an
interchange. Users of the PRT get to this interchange from below (you cannot see the direction
of the link in the image) and from there they can get to any of those other three stations that
connect to it. This saves both tracks and time. The right most station has a two way track
connected to it. At the top part of the image, you see a different part of the network that does
not use interchanges at all, simply because the because you can get from each station to any of
its close ones through other stations.