Brian Berkowitz (Partner Adam Nassr Monmouth County)

Ocean County

Brian Berkowitz (Partner Adam Nassr Monmouth County)

1. County Summary

Ocean County, founded in 1850, is located along the Jersey Shore in the state of New Jersey and has been one of the fastest growing counties in the state since the 1990s. The county is located 50 miles east of Philadelphia, 70 miles south of New York, and 25 miles north of Atlantic City. The total area of the county is 916 square miles (636 square miles of land, 280 square miles of water) which makes it the second largest county in New Jersey by total area. Much of the county is flat and coastal, and possesses many beaches. According to the 2007 Census estimates, the population of Ocean County is approximately 558,531 with a density of 803 people / sq mile. The county consists of 33 municipalities, the largest being Toms River Township.

The main attractions in Ocean County are its many beaches and Six Flags Great Adventure, the largest Six Flags in America. The county’s “Jersey Shore” is a buzzing area of tourist activity (it now even has its own TV show), especially during the summer season. Because of this, during the summer beach season, the local roads often become clogged due to the high amounts of traffic. The main source of transportation in the county is the automobile, with very limited public transportation systems. Ocean County’s official website even warns tourists of the limited availability of public transportation. This offers a great chance for a PRT system to be successful in Ocean County. Serving greater than 90% of trips in the county with a PRT system is certainly fathomable for the right price. A PRT system could help lower the county’s dependence on oil, lower pollution, decrease congestion, and increase tourist activity.

Below are links to more information on Ocean County and Previous PRT proposals:

Ocean County, New Jersey (Wikipedia)

2008 ORF 467 PRT Proposal

2007 ORF 467 PRT Proposal

2004 ORF 467 PRT Proposal

2. Initial Network

2.1 Design

Before we began designing the initial network, we first had to locate the data needed to insert place markers into Google Maps from last year’s data and other census reports. We also found the latitude and longitude of each data point so that the markers could be placed on a map. The design team then created place markers to represent different forms of trip end and placed them on the map, as seen to the left. The design of the initial network was to approach the two most unique sections of the county first. The initial network was broken down into two sub networks, each located on a very narrow strip of land surrounded by water on each side. The difficulty of this network was that these strips of land were less than a quarter mile wide, so it was hard to find places to put stations that were cost efficient.

The first sub network, shown below, was the harder of the two to construct. This was due to the face that there was only one bridge along the entire strip of land connecting this island to the rest of Ocean County. I first had to decide whether or not it would be time and cost efficient to build additional bridges to carry the cars from this strip of land to the main part of the county. With the high cost of railways and low trip ends on both sides of the water separating the two, I decided to build only on the existing bridge. There is still some uncertainty here since this strip of land includes high tourist volume, so during the summer season trips may drastically increase and lead to a lower percentage of trips served.

After making this decision, the rest of the networking was fairly straight forward. Because of the short width of the land strip, very few shape points or intersections were needed.

The second sub network would then be constructed much like the first. The only difference with this sub network was the land it was built on was a peninsula instead of being on an island like the first. It was connected to high density areas of mainland Ocean County by two bridges and land at the top of the peninsula. It was much easier to service coast line traffic on this strip because of a substantially higher trip density. Again, the same worries arise in both of the initial sub networks. With these two strips of land housing very few permanent residents and mostly being a seasonal vacation spot, it is hard to define the optimal cost strategy. These 38 stations may find very little demand during most of the year and consistently lose money quarter after quarter. And then when some tourists arrive, the lack of stations may not be able to handle the rapid influx, causing substantial waits and very unhappy customers. If this proves to be the fact, the loss of tourists to these areas may lead to enough revenue loss that Ocean County decides that a PRT system is not the right fit for their county. Since the PRT system would be so valuable to the rest of the county, they could explore the idea of making golf cart only communities like many other islands in the United States.

2.2 Summary

Summary statistics for the initial PRT network are shown below, along with a plot of the daily trip ends served by each station sorted in decreasing value of trip-ends served:

Although this network has only 38 stations, 3 interchanges, 62.34 miles of guideway, and only serves 4.63 % of the Ocean County trips, it is vital to the county because it contains most of the county’s tourist attractions. The summary statistics show that it is a relatively cheap network to construct and will turn a $15 million annual profit. The entire initial capital costs could be paid off in five years which is a quick turnaround for a project of this magnitude.

3. Final Network

3.1 Design

The final network covers all of Ocean County with a connected personal rapid transit system. It originally consisted of 660 stations, but after performing cost analysis 32 stations were deemed cost inefficient and removed. Although the cost of guideways is fairly expensive, I decided because of the size and setup of Ocean County, that two way guideways would be much more beneficial than trying to connect multiple one way guideways into a functional network.

A picture of the entire network can be seen in the picture above. As can be seen, the thin handle shape of the county is not conducive to making a network of only one way guide ways. I instead took the approach of a tree and branch network, with the main guideways following the major highways up the county. The main guideways consist of mostly interchanges with only a few actual stations located on the “trunk.” The branches were much more specific having to use multiple shape points and extra guideways to reach all the stations. This was partially due to the large neighborhood structures that were hard to navigate and only had one or two exits, which can be seen in the picture on the left below.

The sparse areas of Ocean Country, mostly the upper left most area, also caused some problems. Small areas were extremely dense with thousands of trip end, but large amounts of guideways had to be used to connect these areas to the rest of the county. This dilemma can be seen in the picture to the right above.

Since Ocean County is located on the coast, extra challenges were faced. As seen in the picture above on the left, many communities in the county are constructed to mirror marinas. This led to the fact that even though a person may be located within a quarter mile radius of a station, they would still have to walk a greater distance than allowed unless they were planning on swimming to a station. Although this problem was not taken into account for any of our trip calculations, I decided to eliminate this problem on my own. This led to there being a couple of overlapping stations in these types of neighborhoods, where in reality the trips would not overlap because of the water. The picture above on the right shows why the tree and branch method made more sense in Ocean County because of the large bodies of water weaving their way throughout the country. Overall the PRT system served almost 88% of the trips and collected a profit of over $300 million dollars a year. With a country so spread out over a large area and an admitted lack of a public transit system, the personal rapid transit system could be a perfect fit for Ocean County.

3.2 Summary

Summary statistics for the initial PRT network are shown below, along with a plot of the daily trip ends served by each station sorted in decreasing value of trip-ends served:

The final network consists of 632 stations, 459 interchanges, and 1075.46 miles of guideway. The networks serve 3,364,108 out of the 3,846,064 trips which correlates to 87.47% of total trips serviced. The initial capital costs are extremely high, finishing at $9.308 billion. The system’s annual costs total to $1.173 billion, while annual revenue totals to $1.447 billion dollars. With a three dollar fare, this correlates to a yearly profit of $304 million. It would take over 30 years of profit to pay off the initial capital cost which is a little prolonged. Cost benefit analysis would need to be performed to see whether ticket prices could be increased. A two dollar increase per trip could result in a profit increase of over a billion dollars per year. Also, there are certainly miles that could be taken off of the final network if costs needed to be reduced.