Dear {First Name}, please allow me to explain why your membership of ATRA is important. The focus of driverless technology is on road-based vehicles. Roads take up 30% to 70% of our city space, are unsafe and often congested. The promise of driverless road vehicles will do little to change these problems – probably for decades. ATRA’s focus is on driverless transit. Here we have the opportunity to provide far superior service to buses and trains for much less cost and with much higher ridership. Automated transit networks (ATN) can provide true urban mass transit attracting drivers from cars, boosting train ridership and reducing emissions and congestion. ATRA is the only association focused mostly on ATN.
ATRA was instrumental in recent changes to the Automated People Mover (APM) Standards. The Standards now define ATN as a subset of APM. This have given ATN a boost in credibility because people now understand it is a subset of an existing proven technology and not just an amusement ride. One change removed the “brick wall stop” criterion for ATN. This change could have a significant impact on the speed and capacity of next-generation ATN systems.
ATRA recently sponsored and participated in Podcar City in Atlanta. This conference was very successful in getting our message out and provided a platform for a number of key elected officials to express their strong support for ATN.
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ATRA needs your membership to continue these and other activities. The APM Committee is starting the next round of revisions to the standards. See the story below for a description of the additional changes ATRA is seeking after conferring with ATN suppliers.
Podcar City will be in Lisbon next year and ATRA is sponsoring it and helping with the programming.
The newsletter will continue to be freely available anyone.
We believe these endeavors to be very valuable, but they take time and money. Please support us by joining ATRA or renewing your membership NOW.
As always, enjoy reading!
Best regards,
Peter Muller, ATRA President
