In the 1990s, the Regional Transportation Authority (RTA) planned to fund the construction of a personal rapid transit (PRT) system in Rosemont, Illinois.
Five other municipalities in the suburban Chicago metropolitan area had submitted unsuccessful bids to be host to the PRT project.
[6] The system would have seen small computerized vehicles run on elevated guideways, traveling at headways of mere seconds and speeds of up to 30 miles per hour (48 km/h).
[9] The RTA president stated that they did not plan to seek federal funding, in order to avoid related bureaucracy.
[9][12] Deerfield, Lisle, Rosemont, and Schaumburg were selected as finalists in the bid process to host the system, while Addison was not.
[7] Deerfield proposed a 2.75-mile (4.43 km) route in the Lake-Cook Corridor, which would connect a new Lake Cook Road station of the Metra Milwaukee District North Line with office complexes and retail centers.
[7] Rosemont mayor Donald Stephens claimed that the major hotel operators in the city had indicated a willingness to contribute to funding the project.
[7] Rosemont officials declared that the PRT system could supplant the shuttles run by hotels and office complexes.
[13] Rosemont officials, and particularly mayor Stephens, had long desired for the village to have an internal transit system connecting the facilities that would be served by their proposed PRT route.
[7] Schaumburg officials expressed a belief that local auto traffic could be reduced by at least 10% by their proposed PRT route.
[9] Schaumburg's proposal received endorsements from neighboring Elk Grove Village, Hoffman Estates, and Palatine.
[21] A major reason Taxi2000 technology was chosen over the system proposed by Intamin was that use of track switches was feared to be too slow, and potentially unsafe.
[23] The RTA voted to award the partnership of the Taxi 2000 Corporation and Raytheon Company an initial $18 million contract.
The Taxi 2000 Company and Raytheon were to invest $20 million of their own money into the construction of a prototype system to test the technology's safety and reliability.
[28] The system was to operate twenty hours a day, and was projected to see 2 million annual rider-trips, charging passengers $1 per trip.
[26] Additionally, in the mid-90s, Schaumburg, which had unsuccessfully bid for the RTA's project, made its own plans to build a separate PRT system in its community.
[30] The project died in October 1999, when Raytheon announced, to the surprise of the RTA, that they would be exiting the personal rapid transit business.
[33] Shortly after Raytheon announced it would leave the PRT business, they expressed slight interest in still building the system.