ACT was a contender in the Urban Mass Transportation Administration's plan to deploy three or four systems in cities in the United States, as well as the GO-Urban project in Toronto, Canada.
Most mass transit systems, even today, utilize set routes and stops, generally requiring the rider to change vehicles to reach their destination.
A series of bills passed through the 1960s and 1970s created the Urban Mass Transportation Administration (UMTA), with funding to develop new systems to match the needs outlined by the earlier reports.
John Logan became interested in the people mover concept and invited fellow engineers Richard Skruch and Denny Colovas to join him in designing what would become ACT.
They presented their ideas to management, and in the fall of 1970 they agreed to provide funds to develop a prototype car and a short guideway to test it.
One end of the new track connected with one station attached to the exterior of the new Hyatt Regency hotel and the other inside the Fairlane Town Center shopping mall, where the vehicles were stored outside their hours of operation and serviced.
Although the ACT system was later removed, the Fairlane mall's layout retains several vestigial signs of its former presence, notably the bisection of its central interior court.
It was one of three Phase II contenders for the GO-Urban project in Toronto, but Ford withdrew after the plans evolved into a higher-speed system for inter-urban movements, not the slower short-haul routes ACT was intended for.
[6] A deal was signed for a system at Bradley Field in Hartford, CT,[7] but fell through due to budget cuts after basic installation and state acceptance tests were completed.
[8] A 2.1 mile long loop was considered for El Paso, TX to connect the city with Juarez across the Rio Grande,[9] but also fell to budget cuts.
[11] Since the system was centrally controlled and used hydraulics, there was a minimum actuation time that required headways to be around 30 seconds at the normal operating speed of 30 mph.
ACT's unique feature was the embedded bypasses, which allowed bi-directional service on a line consisting primarily of a single track.