BAA signs agreement to develop innovative transport system
BAA, the world’s leading airport company, today announced that it had signed an agreement with Advanced Transport Systems Ltd (ATS) for the development of the innovative ULTra Personal Rapid Transport (PRT) system. The agreement will see BAA take a potential £7.5m equity investment in ATS, dependent on agreed milestones being achieved. The initial £1.1m investment will be used by ATS to commercialise their prototype vehicles and develop software for BAA. On successful completion of all the milestones a year long pilot scheme will be introduced at Heathrow airport in 2008.
The ULTra has been developed to provide an effective, low cost solution to the problems of urban transport. It uses automatically controlled four passenger vehicles travelling on their own guideway network to provide an on demand and non-stop service from any station to any other on the network, and could have a number of potential uses in the airport environment.
Duncan Garrood, Divisional Managing Director, BAA, commented:
“Managing our airports to make the best possible use of existing infrastructure, whilst planning for airport expansion to meet the anticipated growth of aviation over the next 30 years, presents major opportunities and challenges. One challenge is how to manage the effective transport of passengers, and airport employees, to, and within, our airports. We believe that PRT offers the very latest in innovative, sustainable technology and meets our aim of reducing emissions from ground transportation within our aiports”
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