Overall Specifications
The ULTra system exploits modern computing and information technologies to provide a new approach to transport. Off-the-shelf technology, mostly from the automotive industry, provides mature, well proven and reliable systems and components.
Principal vehicle characteristics:
- Four seats
- 500 kg payload
- 40 kph (25 mph)
The ULTra system uses a fleet of low power, electrically driven vehicles on a dedicated guideway network of routes. The operation of the system and movement of the vehicles on the network is managed by software and systems developed by ATS.
The innovative design of the ULTra system provides unique advantages, notably considerable flexibility in application.
ULTra can operate at-grade or elevated either within or external to buildings, offering the opportunity for significant benefits to the passenger. Low loading footprint means that the system can be carried by conventional building structure with no need for structural strengthening.
The vehicle has a small (5m) turning radius and readily copes with grades of 20%, although operating routes are limited to 10% to ensure passenger comfort.
The ULTra system is highly adaptable. Modular design and construction techniques makes addition of further routes straightforward.
From the user’s perspective, ULTra offers many benefits:
- Immediate service: Passengers rarely need to wait for a vehicle, since the empty vehicle management system ensures that one will already be at the station. Simulations demonstrate that average waiting times, even in peak periods, average around 10 seconds.
- Non stop travel: due to off-line stations, the journey is non stop from start to destination, anywhere on the network.
- No need to plan trips, consider schedules, or transfer between vehicles.
- Your own private cab you only share with your friends and family.
- Faster than other urban transport, typically by a factor of two or three. Although maximum speeds are modest (25 mph)*, non-stop service ensures short trip times.
- Travel is reliable, predictable and congestion free affording passengers greater certainty in their journeys.
- Travel is safe: ULTra’s target is safety levels at least as good as trains, approximately 10 times higher than automotive safety. Also segregation implies less conflict with non-users.
- Accessibility: The system is available to all, including the young, the old, and those with disabilities.
In addition to user benefits, ULTra provides sustainable urban transport with major benefits to non-users and to the community as a whole.
- ULTra is energy efficient: Light, small, efficient vehicles traveling non-stop and only on demand result in significant energy savings. ULTra saves 2/3 rds of automotive energy requirements, and is substantially more energy efficient than conventional public transport.
- ULTra meets Kyoto sustainability targets; providing the required 60% reduction in carbon emissions over the car now, rather than by the 2050 target date of the Kyoto agreement - 35 years ahead.
- ULTra is exceptionally quiet: measurements on the prototype vehicle running at 6m/s give 35dBA at 10 m, around 30 dB less than cars.
- Lightweight vehicles permit ultra-light infrastructure: Automated control allows high utilization. Small vehicles and guideways imply less land take and less visual intrusion.
- ULTra reduces congestion: Studies indicate significant modal shifts away from the car, freeing up both road capacity and parking space.
- Installation flexibility: Small scale infrastructure may be readily integrated into buildings. ULTra provides new ways to reclaim areas of the city now given over to the automobile.
- Rapid installation minimises cost and disruption.
* It is thought that maximum speeds in many applications are likely to be chosen to be below 25 mph, providing further useful gains in energy use and noise