AtlanticCOUNTY
Atlantic is a county situated in the US state of New Jersey. As of 2000 census, the population is 252,552. Its county seat is Mays Landing. This county is part of the DelawareValley area.
As of the census of 2000, there were 252,552 people, 95,024 households, and 63,190 families residing in the county. The population density was 174/km² (450/sqmi). The racial makeup of the county was 68.36% White, 17.63% Black or African American, 0.26% Native American, 5.06% Asian, 0.05% Pacific Islander, 6.06% from other races, and 2.58% from two or more races. 12.17% of the population were Hispanic or Latino of any race. 18.6% were of Italian, 13.0% Irish, 9.5% German and 5.2% English ancestry according to Census 2000.The average household size was 2.59 and the average family size was 3.16.In the county the population was spread out with 25.30% under the age of 18, 8.10% from 18 to 24, 30.60% from 25 to 44, 22.40% from 45 to 64, and 13.60% who were 65 years of age or older. The median income for a household in the county was $43,933, and the median income for a family was $51,710. The per capita income for the county was $21,034. About 7.60% of families and 10.50% of the population were below the poverty line, including 12.80% of those under age 18 and 10.50% of those age 65 or over. AtlanticCounty encompasses 561 square miles has a diverse mix of industries.
Employing 119,759 in a variety of industries, most notably casino and resort services, but also in manufacturing and agricultural sectors.
Index / Name1 / Bernardsville / 12 / Rocky Hill
2 / Peapack and Gladstone / 13 / Montgomery Township
3 / Far Hills / 14 / Franklin Township
4 / Watchung / 15 / Hillsborough Township
5 / North Plainfield / 16 / Branchburg Township
6 / Bound Brook / 17 / Bridgewater Township
7 / South Bound Brook / 18 / Warren Township
8 / Manville / 19 / Green Brook Township
9 / Somerville / 20 / Bernards Township
10 / Raritan / 21 / Bedminster Township
11 / Millstone
AtlanticCounty’s economy and population continue to grow led by a continued expansion of the casino gaming industry. This growth has in turn resulted in the diversification and strengthening of the County’s economy to include a broad array of residential development (single and multifamily, assisted living, and age restricted), retail centers, first class golf courses, and other industries which cater not only to the needs of the casino industry but to all of those people drawn to Atlantic County in search of employment opportunities.
In determining the network on which the most efficient and convenient PRT system will run, it is necessary to consider how PRT’s creation will serve AtlanticCounty’s population and how it will further promote multimodal transportation through integration with current transportation infrastructure.
AtlanticCounty encompasses 561 square miles has a diverse mix of industries.
Employing 119,759 in a variety of industries, most notably casino and resort services, but also in manufacturing and agricultural sectors.
ROAD MILEAGE:
State: 6,671 miles
County: 373.23 miles
Garden State Parkway (toll road): 31 miles
Atlantic City Expressway (toll road): 29 miles
AtlanticCounty has over 7,000 miles of road, with two major toll roads. 791 miles of
PRT track would provide access to the same area, a considerable decrease in miles needed. With over 95,004 households, a very large number of home-school, home-work, and home-shopping trips will occur everyday, most likely around a million a day.
AtlanticCounty has paltry public transportation options. The only universal option is theAtlantic City Line of the New Jersey Transit train system, and this offers no connectivity with New Jersey, going into Pennsylvania before it intersects another transit method. AtlanticCounty
is ripe for PRT, having a large number of visitors from other counties who travel into and out of the county for recreational purposes at an incredibly large rate. For the incredible number of visitors AtlanticCounty, it is hard to believe that the only method of gaining entrance from New Jersey is taking transit to a different state. Adding the connectivity of PRT with surrounding counties would open up the recreational opportunities of AtlanticCounty to all of New Jersey.
Our PRT network in AtlanticCounty had two main focuses in design. The first is ourresidential areas, with a concentric connected circle layout for tracks. The concentric circles connect to others through in going and outgoing links joining different sized circles and the networks that connect to other circular networks.
Stations are placed with an emphasis on destinations needed by those who are either veryyoung or very old, with an emphasis on schools, hospitals, and shopping areas.
HOSPITALS:
Atlantic CityMedicalCenter, Atlantic City
Atlantic CityMedicalCenter, Mainland Division
KesslerMemorialHospital, Hammonton
ShoreMemorialHospital, Somers Point
BettyBacharachRehabilitationHospital, Pomona
Children’s Seashore House, Atlantic City
COLLEGES:
RichardStocktonCollege, Pomona
AtlanticCapeCommunity College, Mays Landing
In dense areas, there is always a station ¼ of a mile away. In less dense areas, the stationplacement can be as far as ½ mile. This network design helps facilitate the movement in aparticular township, and between townships.
The second was for Atlantic City itself. Atlantic City is connected through a two pearl necklace strands that are interlinked every few blocks. The PRT network runs in Parallel paths that move in different directions. These paths come together at transfer points where the PRT vehicle can either continue on its path or turn around and go back on the other way. It operates rather like a freeway or expressway that you may have to turn around if your destination is on the other side of the road.
Our selection of stops in Atlantic City included all of the normal desitnations that wouldbe necessary in a residential setting, but also including stops along the boardwalk at the various Casinos and Resorts. Wherever possible, the PRT network is placed on the inland side of a resort to preserve ocean views.
Because of the large number of vacationers coming into Atlantic City, the demand forPRT vehicles will be no higher than in other counties. The extra needed cars that will be needed come from outlying counties, and stay in the city as long as the vacationer does, which is often only for the day. The system works perfectly for AtlanticCounty, because the county does not need extra vehicle even though it benefits from an incredible increase in accessibility.
As Atlantic County, and Atlantic City tries to reinvent itself as a premiere vacation place,providing an alternative mode of transportation is so important. To increase the number of guests without having to install additional parking, accommodate more day trippers, and make Atlantic City a more easily accessible location for all of New Jersey, PRT is a necessity. In the face of no available public transportation available aside from traveling to Philadelphia, it is difficult to imagine the number of visitors to Atlantic City to increase by a large percentage. Anyone who has been caught in the traffic on the Atlantic City Expressway knows the dire need of Alternative transportation other than a crowded in and outgoing road. PRT in AtlanticCounty, when used in conjunction with other countyPRT networks, promises to be a boom for the county and a boom for New Jersey as a whole.
A multitude of historic, environmental, economic and regulatory factors have influenced current land use patterns and contributed to the development of the County’s 561 square miles. Notably today, the natural environment contributes both opportunities and constraints to the intensity of land development in the County. The proximity to wetlands and requirements of maintaining wetland buffers, as well as, soil suitability all have a profound affect on the ability of the land to support new development. This is particularly critical in AtlanticCounty due to three major river systems and associated inland and coastal wetlands limiting development potential. In fact, approximately 40 percent of the County’s land mass is inundated with wetlands soils, as noted by the Atlantic County Soil Survey. The past land use patterns of agricultural, manufacturing, and tourism industries that portrayed many older communities are now being replaced by service industries, as well as residential development. Also, sophisticated transportation networks andlegislative actions have forever left their impact on the County’s landscape.
The PRT Network: Land Use and Design
The land use considered in determining the structure of the PRT network are housing, employment, shopping, religious, education, and transportation. Population: 271,015 (86% urban, 14% rural).Considering correlation between the type of land use and population density, it is necessary to distinguish between lower and higher population densities when designing the PRT network. In general, in low density areas, ridership will have lower congestion per unit time under typical conditions, so stations can be placed farther away from each other. In contrast, high density areas will have higher ridership per unit time under typical conditions, so it is necessary to place stations in closer proximity to alleviate any congestion that might arise.
The highest density communities are all predominately located around the biggest cities of the county. In general, around each of these cities we have build a sub-PRT network to allow a fluidity of movements around those congested areas making it very easy to provide robust multidirectional transportation throughout each respective community for maximum connectivity.Those sub-networks are concentric rings with nodes along major avenues and roads are integrated into the current automobile transportation infrastructure to make multi modal trips utilizing the PRT network within each respective coastal township as convenient and efficient as possible. Additionally, land use in these areas is predominately saturated with hotels, casinos, recreational facilities, and office buildings, catering to the needs of the seasonal influx of vacationers attracted to Atlantic.
Less urbanizedAtlanticCounty communities, with smaller population densities, are not as spatially structured as the shoreline communities.For the most the most part, non-urban communities are not clearly distinguishable as independent physical entities. Land use in Atlantic is largely shopping, housing, and recreation (gambling mostly, et cetera).
The PRT Network: Service and Trip Generation
Service to Education
One of the largest volume destination locations on the PRT network will be areas zoned for primary, middle, secondary, and undergraduate education. In primary, middle, and secondary education, there are currently thousands of students enrolled in 118 schools throughout AtlanticCounty, averaging about 760 students per educational facility.
Trip Generation
When generation trips for education, the enrollment at each respective school was taken into account as trips to and from the educational facilities. The school faculty was also added to the trip generation by multiplying the enrolled student numbers at each educational facility by the student to faculty ratio. It was assumed in building the network that those in permanent housing would be the sole source of trips provided to the educational locations.
Service to Housing
There are a total of 124,047 housing units in AtlanticCounty. The average number of residents per unit in AtlanticCounty is about 2.6.
The permanent residents of AtlanticCounty will use the network predominantly for educational, employment and public space trips. Of course regular shopping and religious trips are being made by the permanent population, but the proportion of total trips to employment, education and publicspace destinations generated by the permanent population is vastly larger than proportion of temporary resident trip generation to those points of interest.
Trip Generation
When considering the trip generation of the permanent residents we operated under the assumption that in each living unit, there were three residents each making a round trip from home to another destination and then returning back to home. Using the population density for each of the municipalities and by utilizing the graphic power of Google Earth, housing areas were assigned estimates as to the number or units and therefore the number of trips generating from the surrounding housing units.
In addition to the permanent residents, housing in AtlanticCounty needs to be able to support an additional population of a few million seasonal residents (gamblers mostly).Primary housing for the vacationing population will include single family units that are vacant during non-summer periods, apartments, motels, hotels, inns, and any other sort of temporary residence.
In contrast to the permanent population, the trips along the network for the seasonal residents are predominantly for recreational and shopping purposes. Again, the seasonal population will account for some proportion of the generated trips to religious, educational, employment, and public space.
Trip Generation
Building a network robust enough to serve population inflation requires not only forecasting trip generation from the general population, but also for the seasonal residents and gamblers..
Service to Employment/Public Administration
Considering that 73% of commuters in AtlanticCounty use a car to get to work, the appeal of the PRT system must be towards the working population. In order to provide a superior mode of transportation or add the PRT component to the multimodal commute to work, the service to employment locations must be close enough to provide for a brisk walk from the station to the point of interest, but not allocated to the point of having a station at every employment location.
Trip Generation
Starting out with the population of AtlanticCounty in the workforce and operating under the assumption that the labor force of AtlanticCounty serves solely locally and does not travel outside the County for employment, we then took out the percentage of unemployed people within the work force to generate the total number of employed people within AtlanticCounty. Then, we distributed this population of employees throughout the county to each respective municipality, based on the population percentage of each respective municipality as a proportion of the total population. Now with figures for number of employees per municipality, each municipality working population was separated into specific industry jobs based on average employment industry statistics for AtlanticCounty. Although not the most precise method of employment trip generation, considering the general homogeneity of occupations across Atlantic County (86% of employees hold professional, services, or sales type occupations), determining the exact number and type of each employee within an entire municipality is a worthless enterprise, considering the dynamic nature of employment trends over time.
Service to Shopping
The Atlantic PRT system will provide service to major shopping centers, paying attention to building stations near high volume shopping areas, rather than focusing on creating a network on which there is a station at every frequented shopping location.
Service to Recreation
As Atlantic is an ocean oriented community, there are many casinos, golf courts, boat-for-hire, camping, and observatory locations are easily accessible from stations along the network. Unlike in the case of shopping, the aim is to serve every casino Atlantic City along with addressing areas of high volume, with the exception of providing stations nearby golf courses and marinas.
The Benefit of PRT
In joining the fifteen other counties in New Jersey, upon adoption and creation of the State-wide Public Rapid Transit system, AtlanticCounty will have access to within a quarter mile of virtually every point of interest in AtlanticCounty and New Jersey. Providing an environmentally friendly and safe transportation system such as this will alleviate most of the State’s current concerns with automobile emissions while at the same time, providing a solution to the plague of congestion throughout the State. In addition to provided State-wide benefits, Atlantic County locals will also reap great benefits from the construction of this transportation systemand serve the needs of vacationers to and from Atlantic County, cutting down the need for them to contribute to the automobile emissions and congestion by the frequent use of automobiles for transportation within Atlantic County and to adjacent Atlantic County.