PRT Station Design & Art Contest

LoopWorks and Milpitas High School teacher Paul Okoye (Green Design, Architecture) are offering students an opportunity to compete for an electric bike, a digital graphics device, and a 3rd prize of $200. The subject of the students’ work is any of the 12 stations proposed for the LoopWorks Personal Rapid Transit (PRT) system planned for the Metro Area of Milpitas.

Like a horizontal elevator, PRT will transport people quickly and quietly from any of the 12 neighborhood stations to any of the others. The dual-loop system serving the area near the Transit Center is accessed through those stations. As such, it’s important that the stations reflect a style or motif welcoming to people living in the area—and in Milpitas generally. Designs created by students will serve the community in choosing station appearance as the project materializes.

Contest Rules

Each contest submission shall depict a PRT station in 1 of the 12 locations shown on the LoopWorks map. Representations of the guideways and cabs shall approximate styles shown on this website. Each station is off-line, elevated, and must have stairs, a roof, and an electro-hydraulic elevator. (That elevator type has no hoist-way/cable structure above the elevator like the LRT elevator shown in the upper right-hand corner here). Minimum guideway turning radius is 20 feet (diameter = 40 ft). Stations may be outdoors or inside a building. PRT Hardware = guideway+chassis+cabin+station.

Prizes and Judging

Judging for the 3 prizes (1st prize is an e-bike, 2nd prize is a Wacom tablet, 3rd prize is $200) will be accomplished using ranked-choice voting by people involved in the project (art students, teacher, and LoopWorks liaisons). All contest submissions shall be considered as legally conveyed to LoopWorks with the understanding that any and all submissions may be licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International Public License.

First prize is a 350-watt, Smart Step folding e-bike from SONDORS Premium Electric Bikes, a company based in Malibu, California, that offers a range of high-quality, high-performance e-bikes. Second prize is a Wacom Intuos Pro—Medium pen tablet, and 3rd prize is $200.

Stations to Design

Station #1 is the BART Transit Center west entrance. It serves both BART and bus hubs.
Station #2 is the south Great Mall entrance (Entry 2). The station footprint can be 20' x 40', or the area of 4 parking spaces.
Station #3 is the Trader Joe’s Market on the west corner of Great Mall Pkwy and McCandless Drive.

PRT Station Design and Art Contest Winners

50 of the potential 105 voters actually voted. The ranked-choice voting (RCV) results can be found here. Below, we display the top-ranked entries plus others with innovative ideas.

1st Prize Winner: Jericho de Guzman

Note: although the glass elevator in the center of the station (surrounded by the spiral staircase) is not obvious, every PRT station will have an elevator.