Personal rapid transit and the future city with sustainable mobility

The concept of personal rapid transit (PRT) has been proposed for over 70 years since 1953, and the practice of PRT has been advancing slowly worldwide. This paper analyzes advantages of PRT and applicable scenarios of PRT in the future city. The future city has a new functional structure, spatial form and public transportation system, and the era of autonomous driving is coming. This paper analyzes the reasons why PRT is suitable for future urban planning and design. With the advancement of various technologies and the decline of costs, through good multi-discipline planning and design, this paper focuses on how PRT can be perfectly integrated into the future urban space, architecture, landscape environment, and the road network. The PRT guideway could highlight the characteristics of future urban space landscape, avoiding existing visual invasion and other issues. As an important part of the public transport system in the future city, PRT can help achieve the goal of sustainable mobility once there are more practices. The next step for PRT is most likely to be the connection of urban medium- or large-carrying-capacity public transport. The paper takes Suzhou Taihu national tourism resort, China as an example for the recent expansion of PRT's practice.