Automated People Movers

by Lou Cohn, Ph.D., P.E., F.ASCE
President, Transportation and Development Institute of the ASCE

One of the great things about T&DI is the wide variety of transportation activities we cover, as well as the worldwide reach of our involvement.  For example, in the last newsletter I discussed the Conference on Context Sensitive Solutions held in Atlanta in November, sponsored by our Committee on Environmental Issues.   Elsewhere in this newsletter, our Past President Eva Lerner-Lam gives details about our First International Symposium on Transportation and Development, to be held in Beijing, China in April, 2008.   This Symposium is designed to involve all nineteen of our technical committees.

In this letter, I want to highlight another major international event, the eleventh International Conference on Automated People Movers, to be held in Vienna, Austria April 22-25 of this year.  The conference, called APM07, will address state of the art technology, policy, design, construction, and operation issues, with emphases on automated mobility, safety and security, and passenger movements, with secondary consideration of freight.  The theme of the conference is “The Sound of Moving People”.  The conference website is www.apm07.org.

Jack Norton, chair of the T&DI APM Committee, and his the Conference Steering Committee led by Ortfried Friedreich of the Academy of the Chamber of Architects and Engineers in Vienna have done a superb job of developing the conference into the top venue in the world for information on APMs for 2007.  Tom McGean, one of the T&DI Governors, is a major player in the APM field and is also making the conference a success.  Special thanks go to Ortfried Friedreich, who has been phenomenal in putting together the sponsors and exhibitors, and generally handling local arrangements from the Vienna office of his firm, Axis Ingenieurleistungen, which I think means “Engineer Achievementsing”.  Also at last count, there were 15 sponsors, including some of the biggest names in the industry.  There are also at least 25 cooperating organizations involved.

Another effort related to Automated People Movers where T&DI has the lead is in the development of standards.  Tom McGean is chair of our Automated People Movers Standards Committee, which has the mission to “develop the minimum set of requirements to achieve an acceptable level of safety and performance for an Automated People Mover system. These requirements cover the planning, design, construction, and operations of an APM system.” 

To date, the committee has completed and put into practice Parts 1 through 3, which cover: Operating Environment, Safety Requirements, System Dependability, Automatic Train Control, Audio and Visual Communications (Part 1, ASCE 21-9605); Vehicles, Propulsion and Braking (Part 2, ASCE 21-98), and Electrical Equipment, Stations, Guideways (Part 3, ASCE 21-00).  In addition, the Committee has Part 4 out for public comment.  It concerns Security, Emergency Preparedness, System Verification and Demonstration, Operations-Maintenance-Training, Operational Monitoring.  Parts 1 through 3 can be purchased from ASCE at www.pubs.asce.org.

The development and implementation of standards is a very important activity undertaken by these T&DI volunteers.  They certainly deserve our gratitude for taking on this task.  We especially thank Tom McGean for lending his considerable expertise in APM to the endeavor, even as he tries to enjoy retirement on the water in Virginia.

It is safe to say that T&DI is a world leader in the APM field, as it is in so many other transportation specialties.  We thank our nineteen committees and their hundreds of members for their leadership in making this happen.