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Personal Rapid Transit is Totally Bogus!
By Ken Avidor
Currently, there's a lot of public discussion and debate about Personal Rapid Transit, or PRT — particularly in Minnesota, where promoters are once again trying to procure public funding for a starter project. PRT proponents are masters at making extravagant claims and promises for their techno-dream. However, it's important to recognize that PRT does not currently exist in successful public operation, and, in all likelihood, never will.
PRT has a solid 30-year record of failure. Its main purpose in recent years seems to have been to provide a cover enabling its proponents to spread disinformation about real, workable transit systems. Except for the occasional laboratory-scale prototype, PRT actually "exists" largely in computerized drawings, in promotional brochures, and in slick, animated simulations on the Internet.
The unsubstantiated claims of PRT proponents are always presented in the present tense as if the system is a proven success ... which, of course, it certainly is not. Promoters never seem to fail to bash real transit, such as light rail or bus rapid transit, as "old fashioned technology." Sadly, the media rarely check the veracity of PRT publicity and propaganda.
But the truth is out there. For example: the 2001 OKI Central Loop Study for metro Cincinnati, the OKI study's engineers (Parsons Brinkerhoff) found many serious flaws in the PRT design. That study cost the taxpayers a cool $625,000.
There have been several attempts at building a PRT system over the years. ... All have failed to live up to the claims of being "faster, cheaper, better" than conventional mass transit.
So if it doesn't work, why does it keep coming back for taxpayer funding year after year — as is happening in Minnesota and New Jersey? What is PRT's real purpose?
Basically, PRT is a stalking horse for the highway construction industry. PRT proponents can say things that the highway boosters could never say, such as "people don't like to ride with strangers." This anti-transit propaganda divides and conquers the opposition to highway projects.
If this bill and its companion bills, HF1366 and HF 1173, are enacted PRT could be used to effectively block light rail and bus rapid transit on 35W and elsewhere in Minnesota.
... It is time to end the PRT vs conventional transit debate. The phenomenal success of our new Hiawatha LRT Line has proven the PRT propaganda wrong. LRT is fast, comfortable, convenient and modern. all the things the PRT proponents said LRT wasn't.
Most of all, Minnesotans are learning how much fun it is to ride in a train with other passengers. They aren't "strangers" as the PRT fearmongers call them but neighbors, friends, tourists, Twins and Vikings fans fellow citizens.
If the PRT system was as good as Taxi 2000 and proponents claim, they or the two new PRT companies should take their system to Wall Street and raise their venture capital there. With the venture capital in hand, they could build yet another testing facility and in time test a prototype and perhaps acquire the necessary certification they need.
Then if they find a city full of people who want to cut down half the trees on their streets for a monorail with a clear view into their bedroom windows, I think we should exercise our famed Minnesota generosity and let them be the first to buy it.
http://miva.sctimes.com/miva/cgi-bin/miva?Web/page.mv+1+opinion+803885
Personal Rapid Transit – Cyberspace Dream Keeps Colliding With Reality
http://www.lightrailnow.org/facts/fa_prt001.htm
Conventional Rail vs. 'Gadgetbahnen'
http://planetizen.com/oped/item.php?id=73
Professor Vucan Vuchic:
http://faculty.washington.edu/jbs/itrans/vuchic1.htm http://faculty.washington.edu/jbs/itrans/vuchic2.htm
"The Road Less Traveled: The pros and cons of personal rapid transit. " by Troy Pieper