People Mover

A people mover is a fully-automated, grade-separated rail transit system. The term people mover is generally used only to describe elevated single-rack loops serving small areas such as airports or theme parks, but the term people mover is sometimes applied to considerably more complex automated systems.

Simple back-and-forth shuttles are referred to as hectos, short for hectometric, meaning designed for a few hundred meters.

Multi-station systems intended for mass transit in a city are more formally known as automated guideway transit (AGT) systems. This term is generally limited to rubber-tired vehicles led by a guiding track; fully automated rapid transit lines, such as the Singapore MRT's North East MRT Line, are usually not considered AGTs.

It has recently been suggested that AGT could be used for driverless transit services and potentially for 'dual-mode' automobiles.  A Rapid Urban Flexible (RUF) test track was opened at Ballerup, near Copenhagen in 2000. The track is very short (25 meters) and has one test vehicle. Tests have shown that practical personal vehicles can be developed with dual mode qualities.

Complex APMs deploy fleets of small vehicles over a network of guideways with off-line stations in a dynamic configuration that supplies non-stop service to passengers. These taxi-like systems are referred to as personal rapid transit (PRT).

The term was coined by Walt Disney when he and his Imagineers were working on the new 1967 Tomorrowland at Disneyland as a working title for a new attraction, the PeopleMover. According to Imagineer (and SmartSkyways engineer) Bob Gurr, "the name got stuck," and it was no longer a working title.

The world's first airport people mover was installed in 1971 at Tampa International Airport in the United States. The VAL (Véhicule Automatique Léger) system in Lille, France, opened in 1983, is often cited as the world's first mass transit AGT, but the title is disputed by Kobe's Port Liner, which opened two years earlier in 1981. Lille's VAL is, however, acknowledged to be the first AGT installed to serve an existing urban area.

Driverless metros have become common in Europe and parts of Asia. The economics of automated trains tend to reduce the scale so tied to "mass" transit, so that small-scale installations are feasible. Thus cities normally thought of as too small to build a metro (e.g. Rennes, Lausanne, Brescia, etc.) are now doing so. In the U.S. APMs have become common at large airports and progressive hospitals.