Recently going into operation after several years in development, the Heathrow Personal Rapid Transport (PRT) system is now up and running at the new Terminal 5, whizzing passengers around the airport in space-age looking pods! Here’s a video of the actual vehicles . It’s unusual to see such innovative transport ideas go from the drawing board to actually being implemented, and indeed Heathrow’s PRT which went live last month is the first anywhere in the world of this type of driverless automated transport pod system.
This video shows a speeded up film showing how it moves 164 pod journeys per hour, and was filmed during the early passenger tests.
The system was developed by http://www.ultraprt.com and their website describes the Heathrow installation and some of it’s benefits:
A single journey in either direction takes about 5-6 minutes and travels along approximately 1.2 miles (1.9km) of one-way guideway. For the majority of the trip to and from Terminal 5, the guideway structure consists of two lanes running in opposite directions separated by a central kerb, as shown on the right. This configuration gives the guideway a very small footprint, allowing ULTra to be installed within the very tight constraints posed by the present airport infrastructure.
The PRT aim to reduce emmissions compared with buses and cars as well as manage passenger flow more efficently. So it’s space age AND eco-friendly, what more could you want!
Well if you get to try these out don’t forget to whizz along to Easirent Heathrow for your onward car hire – you can even rent an eco-friendly if not quite so space age Toyota Prius from us to complete a green and technologically advanced travel experience!
