Pod People Wage War on Light Rail, Other Reality-Based Transpo Projects
Writer, cartoonist, cyclist and transit advocate Ken Avidor points us to this video, which he used in a recent Daily Kos diary entry. Writes Ken:
The Personal Rapid Transit (PRT) Pod People are always challenging me to prove that PRT promoters are anti-Light Rail Transit (LRT). Here is a video by one of these libertarian, "free-market" guys claiming LRT is old and expensive and PRT is more modern and won’t cost the taxpayers a dime. The fact is PRT is a Nixon-era concept and there is no evidence to prove it can pay for itself.
PRT, Avidor says on his "PRT Is a Joke" website, is often used as a "stalking horse" to undermine the funding and build-out of real-world mass transit projects. Its supporters include Congresswoman Michele Bachmann of Minnesota, who, among other transgressions, opposes the expansion of that state’s Northstar commuter rail line.
Judging from the above video, trashing new light rail service in Phoenix, the thrust of the pro-PRT argument goes something like this:
Dude! It goes like a hundred miles an hour! You wouldn’t have to read books or sit beside weird people — AND you could listen to AC/DC!
On your iPod, of course.
Hmm, interesting name, “SKYRAIL”.
Now ask yourself what kind of complex computer system would be required to calculate the safe arrival and departure of hundreds of thousands of these Pods?
You bet your tin-foil beanie.
“Now ask yourself what kind of complex computer system would be required to calculate the safe arrival and departure of hundreds of thousands of these Pods?”
You’re presuming a sufficiently large system would be designed around the outdated notion of a centralized control system. While possible that this design choice could be made, it would be an unusually bad choice to make and not a necessary design element. It’s far more likely a system would have a high degree of localized control and navigation with systemic monitoring and possible emergency override capabilities – not unlike a subway system.
Mark Walker said:
“You build anything, there are cost overruns..”
Sure but when your base cost is $20 million a mile those overruns have a lot less impact than when your base cost is $120 million a mile.
For those following at home, PRT costs about $20 million a mile & light rail costs about $120 million a mile
“…Please feel free to ride the Broadway Local in New York City …”
New York & Chicago and a few other Eastern cities are probably the only places in America that have the density required to justify full-blown rail.
They are the exceptions, not the rule. However, even in Chicago & New York, smaller elevated trains do a significant amount of the people-moving. Why? Because those cities can’t spare the real estate footprint of so-called “Light” Rail (which is only “Light” in its passenger-carrying capacity – the cars are usually heavier than “heavy” rail cars).
Think of PRT as smaller, lighter, less intrusive El Trains, if you like. El’s that don’t need big, heavy train tracks & that dont need to be confined to dense urban areas like New York & Chicago.
” … massive operating subsidies.” Like every other form of transporation ever invented. ”
Not every form. PRT has been shown to be able to recoup its operating cost from the farebox (depending on what fare is set) & to even be able to generate a profit.
Buses & Trains typically require subsidies of $5-$8 per rider on top of the $1.25-$2.50 fares each rider pays. When ridership goes up (as during the recent gas price hike) so does the amount that comes out of your taxes.
This, I think, is the main reason you get Republican support for these projects. The promise of public transit that could turn a profit.
“My neighborhood, the Upper West Side of Manhattan, was farmland before the subway came through.”
So you took farmland, paved it over & made a suburb out of it. That misses the point.
What happens when you run Light Rail thru an existing community? Houses & neighborhood businesses are bulldozed & a 50 yard wide fenced off “no mans land” is created for the tracks.
What used to be a neighborhood becomes “North of the tracks” & “South of the tracks” (or “East” & “West”, you get the picture).
Traffic disruption goes on for years – small businesses go bankrupt as their customer base finds it difficult to impossible to patronize them anymore. Railside blight sets in & for what? A single digit percentage decrease in the use of cars.
Boondoggle – an unpractical government project that is financed to earn political favor – is a word used by PRT opponents that perfectly describes 90% of LRT projects ever planned & executed.
That being said, I’d love to see LRT live up to its promise & I’d love to reduce automobile congestion & the slaughter that occurs on our highways.
PRT has the potential to do that in ways that dedicated Rail & Bus have shown over the last 50 years they are incapable of doing.
“What happens when you run Light Rail thru an existing community? Houses & neighborhood businesses are bulldozed & a 50 yard wide fenced off “no mans land” is created for the tracks. What used to be a neighborhood becomes “North of the tracks” & “South of the tracks” (or “East” & “West”, you get the picture).”
That’s not really true. Plenty of light rail systems go right down the middle of existing roadways for at least part of a given route. Heavy rail and commuter rail tend to be more a “side of the tracks” thing.
Ken Avidor,
I was reading all of the comments on this post with interest. I am very pro transit but I really had no opinion either way regarding PRT. As soon as I read your comment:
“Ian, is your dad, Minneapolis 9th Ward City Council candidate Dave Bicking still saying former Mpls Councilman Dean Zimmermann is innocent of accepting gratuities (bribes) while in office?”
I immediately decided that anything you post cannot be trusted. This sort of personal attack has nothing to do with the discussion. Only someone who feels that they cannot rely on the facts of their argument posts this sort of comment.
So from now on I (and probably many other people as well) will totally ignore anything you post.
Nate – Hey, what’s that at the door? Oh, yeah it’s a T1000.
And it’s at that point that you’d realize that if you’d only listened to the bike advocates there wouldn’t be machines out to extinguish the human race. Because the bicycles are statistically proven to be less likely to rise up against us.
“complete with several real-world analogies which validate their assumptions”
This statement leads me to believe that A Transportation Enthusiast is in fact a joke and trolling, not trying to make a serious argument. If I were posing as person in favor of this PRT, and making a flawed argument in order to undermine its merits, this is exactly what I would say.
I should support PRT because people make assumptions, and then find analogies to validate it? You mean like this:
Not a personal attack… it’s a question.The last time there was a municipal election, Dave Bicking was anti-LRT and pro-PRT… I was interested to know if he maintains that position.
Dave Bicking also claimed that another prominent Mpls PRT promoter, Dean Zimmerman was a “political prisoner” and not guilty of accepting gratuities (bribes).
Speaking of Zimmermann and PRT…
Zimmermann was at a transportation meeting in North Minneapolis today. Here’s a video of Zimmmermann dissing LRT and praising PRT. Zimmermann also refused to sign a waiver to release the tapes shown at his trial.
Are the PRT guys outspoken in their opposition to LRT? The answer is yes and I have the videotape to prove it.
first off i think prt is a better alternative to taxis than bus or subway, essentially prt is an automated taxi. i could almost see prt in manhattan replacing all the taxi trips within the island with maybe with two spurs outside manhattan to laguardia and kennedy airports. taxi trips within manhattan and from manhattan to the airports is probably 70+% of the nyc taxi trips. of course this would require elevated track on every street in manhattan but considering the density of manhattan and amount of use taxi and transit get in nyc i think it could be doable.
youre gonna have get one commercially operating prt system open to get anyone to buy into it. and no morgantown and the heathrow systems are not prt, they are people movers with small cars.
figure out how to both make an elevated system attractive at street level and ada accessible and you’ll be onto something.
lastly poo on seats is a big deal
“lastly poo on seats is a big deal”
Yes, and I’m sure meteor strikes are as well, which are of equal likelihood. You were already informed what would happen in that extremely unlikely scenario.
You know, there’s a certain form of “skeptic” one sees when discussing transportation issues. They relish in concocting absurd scenarios that are either rare or simply not plausible, and despite that, still solvable with a rational answer. More often than not, the “gotcha” is misguided as, one would rationally expect, plenty of people have already thought these things through and have figured out how to deal with them.
I recall one recently where a gentleman objected to transit buses because they either don’t have child car seats or would have them all filled and he’d have to wait in the freezing rain with his sick baby for another hour for the next bus.
Child car seats on buses… sigh… one can’t make these things up.
Poos on seats are bad, but aren’t you more likely to find pees in a pod?
I can’t help wondering how long this fight has been ongoing, and how many web-sites it has rolled through… When it’s time to move on, will you at least clean up your mess and straighten up the chairs and tables?
“This statement leads me to believe that A Transportation Enthusiast is in fact a joke and trolling, not trying to make a serious argument.”
Then obviously you misunderstood my argument. I didn’t elaborate in the original post, but the debate I was referring to was about reliability of aluminum vehicles, and especially aluminum wheels. Setty claimed (with no supporting evidence) that aluminum vehicles could not be built to withstand the 8 years of service life that ATS claimed for its ULTra vehicles.
ULTra engineers responded by comparing ULTra to the increased use of aluminum in automobiles. He specifically mentioned some European auto manufacturer (can’t remember which one) which had aluminum wheels and frame components, yet was known for its durability on the open road. Certainly, if aluminum components can withstand the rigors of automobile travel, with sharp turns, hard stops, and impacts with potholes and curbs, an ULTra vehicle composed of the same materials can withstand the very controlled environment of PRT, in which vehicles are NEVER subjected to such conditions.
THAT is what I was referring to with “real world analogies”. See, PRT opponents can’t attack technical feasibility anymore, because that argument has been made moot by the multiple test tracks that have demonstrated the technology with years of continuous system testing without a single fault. So now they focus their attacks on esoteric things like vehicle strength and aesthetics. Reliability is a particularly shrewd tactic, because they can say “those vehicles won’t last” and it is VERY difficult to disprove their assertion until 8 years from now when the vehicles are still running near the end of their predicted service life. So reliability is becoming a frequent thrust of the opponents.
“Poos on seats are bad, but aren’t you more likely to find pees in a pod?”
Heh – good one.
“I can’t help wondering how long this fight has been ongoing, and how many web-sites it has rolled through…”
You have no idea.
Having lurked on many PRT discussions, I can tell you that if you decide to use the acronym “PRT” or “personal rapid transit” or “pod cars,” or mention the names of any of the prominent firms or people involved in promoting them, and if Google indexes those discussions, I can assure you that within very short measure the cartoonist will leap in with guns blazing with his routine. (He obviously sits by his computer 16 hours per day waiting for Google Alerts to fill his inbox.)
Shortly thereafter, his nemeses will find him there and will take him apart in a predictable fashion.
I agree that it’s rather tiresome, but it has some marginal entertainment value.
There’s a number of sites on the Web that discuss the subject with more maturity, as they aren’t really open to flame exchanges to the extent an open forum like this is.
Steve, that’s just how it goes. I’m sure all the participants know what they’re in for when they chase the ball across the web to the next site of their endless debate. I would ignore the Death Becomes Her scene upthread and digest Ken’s PRT primer, it’s got a lot in it for Streetsblog readers:
http://www.roadkillbill.com/PRT-Cult.html
” digest Ken’s PRT primer, it’s got a lot in it for Streetsblog readers:”
If people want an actual, useful primer on the subject, the wiki entry for Personal Rapid Transit is fairly informative and comprehensive and free of childish bombast and conspiracy theories.
Please ignore my earlier message. I retract what I wrote about personal attacks.
After doing some further research on the matter, and reading some of Mr. Avidor’s web site, I can see that the bad apples in this barrel on the ones who have been attacking Avidor for years.
Dean Zimmermann did spend over a year in prison after being convicted by a jury of his peers, but that didn’t stop his supporters from attacking the messenger. In comparison, Mr. Avidor’s questions on this forum are quite mild.
I can also see from Avidor’s web site that PRT really is a joke, as he claims. People would be wise to pay attention to his criticisms.
FWIW, the Heathrow PRT system is a toy: It has just 3 stations and 17 vehicles.
source
The wiki entry on Neo-Luddism is useful as well.
When rail travel emerged as a form of transportation in the 19th Century, there were many people who feared that going at the breakneck speed of 15 or 20 mph would be fatal or at least cause insanity. The resistance against lighter-than-air travel was equally absurd before it was developed and mainstreamed.
Some people just fear change and technological advancement. It’s always that way.
As usual, uber-PRT evangelist “A Transportation Enthusiast” gets it wrong.
My last post bashing PRT required about an hour to read the paper I critiqued, and about an hour to write the critique itself. In other words, about the time typically needed for a blog post.
The real problem for A Transportation Enthusiast and other PodPeeple is that I know a lot more about PRT than they would admit, and fail to understand the three major reasons I gave why the odds are very high that PRT will fail. In their responses, the ATS/ULTra people argued in favor of their vehicle design based on comparisons with automobiles, while I argued from the basis of the durability required in a transit operating environment, the severely limited capacity of PRT (and ironically confirmed by the Andreasson paper posted at http://faculty.washington.edu/jbs/itrans/whatsnew.htm (under June 2009), and the inherently horrible economics of PRT.
Obviously, A Transportation Enthusiast and other PodPeeple may be “smart” in their ability to generate fancy computerized graphics and still not proven simulations, but the real world gives them major problems.
“PRT is the future of transportation and ALWAYS will be the future of transportation.”
I adore the “technologically infeasible” argument. I’m hard-pressed to imagine what exactly is so esoteric about the concept that somehow some people conclude it can never work.
Take a look at the new Prius and its “Advanced Technology Package” for example. It includes the standard Navigation Package – navi system with real-time traffic info, the audio system, hands-free phone capability, Bluetooth, and backup camera. On top of that, it has what’s called “dynamic radar cruise control,” a “pre-collision system,” “lane keep assist,” and “intelligent parking assist.”
So, in a consumer vehicle available for sale now at affordable prices, we have a vehicle, operating on a paved roadway (which is a substantially more complex modality than single-direction, single-track rails or guideways), which can sense obstructions in front of it and change its velocity (which is also set and operated automatically by the cruise control system) accordingly.
It can also keep itself righted within its lane, at times with a degree of user assistance, and can park itself with very limited assistance as well.
The navigation system is obviously also capable of routing the vehicle in the most efficient manner to its destination, incorporating real-time data about the traffic system its driving in to choose that route and adapt on the fly if necessary.
Couple that with much of the telematics technology widely employed in carsharing fleets, and it’s hard to imagine which technical obstacle people thinks actually exists for PRT systems, given that they basically use these same technologies, but in a much, much simpler context.
If people who engaged in these exchanges had actually had a wide interest and been following transportation technology over the years (in all modes), then this would be common knowledge to them. Each of these advances have been developed over a long period of time and only now are coming together in mass market automobiles.
The perils of an open forum. In my original post, #55, I stated that I that because of Mr. Abidor’s comment in post #24, from now on:
“I (and probably many other people as well) will totally ignore anything you (Mr. Abidor) posts.”
My personal opinion and my habit is to discount and ignore any comments from people who engage in personal attacks instead of using reasoned arguments to support their opinions.
Mr. Abidor can state that he was just asking a question, but his question had absolutely nothing to with either the merits or drawbacks of PRT. Thus, I still consider it a personal attack and will continue to ignore his posts.
However, in post #67, someone posted a comment supposedly from “Steve” telling people to ignore my previous comments about personal attacks. I DID NOT post this comment. While I realize that this is the nature of the beast, I resent being flamed in this manner. I cannot say with certainty that this was posted by Mr. Abidor, but since my original comment was directed at him, I can only assume this fake post was written by him.
Again, when I started reading this post, I was neither pro or anti PRT. But after this, my first reaction on seeing anything posted by Mr. Abidor is that whatever he says, the opposite must be true. At this point, if he was to say “the sky is blue”, I would insist on looking out a window before agreeing with him.
Let PRT in Heathrow and Masdar play out, so we have some real-world data. If PRT is a success, then we can switch over our rail lines. If the UAE wants to foot the R&D bill, be my guest.
In the meantime, let’s keep building our cities around human-powered transport, so people can walk to various stores in the neighborhood, with a subway on the side for long trips. Look, PRT is is a thousand times costlier than building good sidewalks, so if the desire is truly to minimize infrastructure costs, then that why not focus on that?
its really not that difficult to go poop on a prt seat, theres no one around to see you do it and its assured the next person will find a warm surprise when they enter the car, meanwhile youre long gone laughing your ass off.
in the same vein you could hotbox one of those cars real easy.
Michael Setty, if you know so much, why don’t you debate the experts from ULTra on an open forum? You were invited to respond on a PRT mailing list but you refused, sticking to your publictransit blog where you could control the debate. Then you weaseled out of the reliability discussion when it was clear that your “aluminum is unreliable” thesis was going nowhere.
The fact is, Mr. Setty, you know very little about PRT. I can tell from the way you talk about it. For example, your original gadgetbahn paper lumped PRT in with monorails, but PRT is really nothing like monorails except for the elevation and slim guideway. In every other way PRT is completely different than monorails, which are basically just an elevated train.
That’s why you were afraid to debate the real experts from ULTra, and why you ducked out with the “no time” copout.
Now let’s examine the “capacity” argument. You and other PRT opponents have been using pseudo-physics to “prove” that PRT could not operate at close headways. At one point, you and the rest of the anti-PRT crowd claimed that PRT couldn’t operate at less than 16 seconds separation! SIXTEEN seconds! Now that real systems have been approved at less than THREE seconds, you are still trying to make the infeasibility argument fly, even though your original “hard physical limit” was off by a factor of FIVE! How can you guys be trusted when your original “expert opinion” was so wrong? That would be like believing a financial advisor who predicted the Dow would hit 60,000.
The problem is that you really don’t understand the physics and engineering behind the PRT safety design. You point to safety regulations that were designed for trains, and conclude that PRT is infeasible. But a PRT pod is not a train! As regulators study the PRT safety design, the rail-specific regulatory barriers will fall away, as they have now in the UK, Sweden and Germany – all three of which have approved PRT running at less than three seconds separation.
Furthermore, 1-second headways are feasible in the long term. If you don’t think so, then you’ve never driven on a highway during the rush hour. People drive their automobiles bumper-to-bumper at 30mph all the time – news flash Mr. Setty: that’s less than ONE SECOND HEADWAY, and with unreliable human drivers whose reaction times are on the order of two seconds. PRT’s automated collision systems have reaction times measured in the milliseconds, and can almost immediately detect when it needs to stop. With the quick reaction time of PRT sensors, one second headway is QUITE SAFE even in a catastrophic scenario. The regulators are catching up to that fact.
But three seconds is certainly a nice starting point. Regulators and PRT vendors are wisely keeping it conservative at three seconds until they gain some experience with these entirely new types of systems, but I guarantee that after a few years of operation, the headways will drop and capacity will improve. It’s just a matter of time and experience.
So, Mr. Setty, you keep on putting out your pseudo-skeptical nonsense. The people who matter – the regulators in Europe who have approved PRT – know the truth.
All this stuff is hilarious as we’re midst of a personal rapid transit revolution using networked bicycles otherwise known as public bicycle systems with more advanced systems to follow spearheaded by dramatic improvements in safety, practicality, ease of use, convenience, performance, hands-free automation, etc., etc., etc., . . . aka bicycle rapid transit (BRT).
To Steve in #73 – the language in #67 sounds like Avidor himself – particularly the line that goes “… the ones who have been attacking Avidor for years…”.
I wouldn’t be surprised if it was him as he has represented himself as be a resident of Alameda, CA when he actually lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota somewhere. And, again, judging from language, I’ve read other “supportive” posts that seem to be him in another alias.
Michael Setty – It seems to me that traditional transit vehicles are designed like bridges – make em really big & heavy & then increase that by a factor of two for a “safety” factor.
I’d call that design by “we dont know what the heck is gonna happen”.
That approach may acceptable for bridges that are expected to last in changing conditions for a couple of hundred years, but it’s the wrong approach for designing a transit system that gets people out of their cars.
I don’t know who you are, except that you coined the term “gadgetbahn”. That reminds of a car commercial of several years ago where the American car company mocked a Japanese car company by having their spokesman say “We got gadgets”.
Today, the American car company is bankrupt & the American people have voted with their wallets for “gadgets” (which weren’t really just gadgets at all, but exactly what was needed).
I believe that people will eventually vote for “gadgetbahn” as well, because it will do what people really need out of a transit system.
Self professed “Transportation Enthusiast”–your ability to portray people who are at least open to supporting your ideas, if you get them close to implementation, as enemies must be very helpful to your cause.
Congratulations.
#72 nate, re:
Take a look at the new Prius and its “Advanced Technology Package” for example. It includes the standard Navigation Package – navi system with real-time traffic info, the audio system, hands-free phone capability, Bluetooth, and backup camera. On top of that, it has what’s called “dynamic radar cruise control,” a “pre-collision system,” “lane keep assist,” and “intelligent parking assist.”
Comment:
This is really great stuff you describe much, if not all, strictly limited to hybrid gas-electric vehicles; but, some will have limited practical importance in hybrid human-electric recumbent tricycles running on standard roads; and especially, when they travel on much more efficient, safe, sustainably green monorail highways.
Sidewinder: “Me, I will wear the badge of PRTista proudly.”
Avidor: Usually, people who are proud of something use their real names.
Check out this wacky video of would-be PRT inventor Bill James talking about Jpods.towards the end Bill James says the PRT industry will employ “two million people over the next three years”…. almost as wacky a prediction as Mark Olson predicting PRT would be the “Microsoft of public transportation”.
The money quote from the woman interviewing Bill James:
“Pimp you own Jpod!”
Another excellent reference is here.
http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/guilt-by-association.html
to Avidor #82 – the tradition of making posts on Internet boards using “handles” is well-established.
As is your tradition of fallacious argument.
“Now ask yourself what kind of complex computer system would be required to calculate the safe arrival and departure of hundreds of thousands of these Pods?”
Ever heard of packet switching?
?ar?chitect, I and other PRT supporters are 100% in favor of continuing to build conventional transit solutions, as well as things like bike lanes and, yes, sidewalks. We are 100% pro-transit. We just aren’t ideologically opposed to investigating new forms of transit.
Speaking of bike lanes, those probably provide just as fast, if not faster, travel as LRT in many, though not all, cases (I’m thinking of Newark Light Rail, for example), and require much lower capital investment and little or no operational cost–people bring their own zero-emission vehicle and supply their own motive power. Yes, not everyone can ride a bike or wants to, but you can always have a bus or jitney for the disabled or bike-averse. Paths can be covered for comfort and safety while biking in bad weather, and there can be card-access bike lockers placed at intervals along bike routes. Yes, those lockers are expensive, but not nearly as expensive as light rail cars, and they have very low operating cost. Bike lanes also take up less space than LRT tracks and stations. What’s more, it’s an existing, well-worn soluton rather than a pie-in-the-sky transit dream.
Lol, sixteen second headway? But I only need a two second headway between my 2 ton automobile and the 2 ton automobile in front of me on the Parkway?
Observations from the real world:
1) Mass transit currently accounts for only a tiny percentage of all trips in the US; the vast majority drive their car most places they go.
2) People prefer cars to mass transit, generally, because they go more places and faster.
It follows that if we want transit to be the prefered mode of travel (which I assume most of us do), we must make transit more attractive to people than driving. That means reducing travel times and increasing availability. PRT attempts to do this. It may not be the perfect solution, but at least it’s trying. If you have a better plan to decrease car dependency in the vast suburbia where half of all Americans live, please inform us.
There are a number of things one can do to improve the desirability of any transit system:
1) Make it grade-separated, so that transit traffic and auto, bike and pedestrian traffic do not interfere with one another, resulting in both higher speeds and increased safety.
2) Run more direct/express service to reduce average (or median) trip time.
3) Make it available 24/7.
4) Make it available in more places (higher station density).
5) Reduce the cost per passenger mile, both to the taxpayer and to the ticket purchaser. This can be done with a) lower vehicle-to-passenger weight ratio, i.e. lighter vehicles, b) filling vehicles to capacity as much as possible, c) replacing human drivers with computers, and d) running service only when customers need it, i.e. on-demand.
Any or all of these improvements can be made to existing transit systems. If you do them all, you get PRT.
Nuff said.
“If you have a better plan to decrease car dependency in the vast suburbia where half of all Americans live, please inform us.”
My goal is to avoid paying for any such plan, having already paid for highways.
This is why I want the federal government to take over health care costs and get out of transportation entirely. You pay for what you want, we’ll pay for what we want.
Another entertaining aspect of transportation wailing walls is the insistence of many that they have the “one true mode” that will save us all and that all competing modes must be demonized. The added entertainment comes when such zealots project this onto others when they have the audacity to enter unfamiliar ideas into the predictable mix of progressive solutions to problems.
Smacks of dogmatic religion, not thoughtful conversation.
“Someone suggested that they don’t have the courage to stand by their work with real names, and that might be true.”
Actually Steve – that argument is a canard, as suggested by my “Mark Twain” remark in #34 above.
Those of us who are pro-PRT may use handles, but we are consistently known by the same handles, or variations of them when required by the boards we post at.
We make the point that we want transit solutions that work, not expensive failures. We are convinced that PRT will work when given a chance and we tell you why we think the way we do.
We don’t imply that our opponents are dirty commies or terrorists, nor do we resort to Nixonion dirty tricks. We don’t smear LRT by digging up scandals that occurred during the development of one project or another (though I’m sure we could find those if we went looking).
Instead we ask you to look at the design of the actual viable systems like ULTRA, VECTUS & TAXI 2000 & decide for yourself.
I think you also forget to cybertran or did that version of anonymous forget to Google search transit today and spam as many blogs as possible for cybertran. Also I love that there are so many anonymous supporters of PRT. I enjoyed my PRT(bicycle) all day today.
Also @ #16
Hi, how are you?
Are we all supposed to include an @ comment number? cybertran ftw… I mean prt ftw! … wait no briefcase hover cars ftw!!
To those of you who criticize us for not using our names, take a look at this search result. The search term is “Sheffer Lang”, and the top FOUR hits are Ken Avidor SMEARS. Shef Lang was a respected civil engineering professor who devoted his life to transit. His only “crime” was supporting a new transit system that violated Ken Avidor’s dogma.
Lang died of cancer in 2003, and every single smear from Ken Avidor came after his death. when he couldn’t even defend himself! How do you think Lang’s 4 children or 8 grandchildren feel when they search their respected grandfather’s name and all the top hits are attacks from some anti-transit zealot?
Sorry, but I don’t need a true believer like Ken Avidor posting smears about me. I mean Jesus, it’s freaking TRANSIT, not RELIGION! What happens when a potential employer googles my name and sees a page full of smears? Or when my kids google me and want to know why I supposedly support some whackjob politician from Minnesota?
No thanks. I’ll stay pseudonymous. Ken will just have to put away the ad-hominems and actually debate the arguments for once.
Here is the search result I alluded to in my last comment:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=“Sheffer+Lang”&btnG=Google+Search&aq=f&oq=&aqi=
This one should work, finally 🙂
http://tinyurl.com/obvbxf
This video is the best thing since sliced bread. I can’t stop watching it, I am mesmerized. (And I warn you that is not a good thing…)
Ugh, PRT. Even if everything with a PRT system works, and it might (although I seriously doubt it), every PRT system I have seen is elevated. How big does those elevated guideways need to be? Well, that is determined by how much they can carry. Let compare the Ultra PRT to Skytrain. Both are systems in “revenue” running, the former at Heathrow and Skytrain in Vancouver et al. They are also both elevated systems (or at least grade separated) and are driverless.
Ultra: (all numbers from ultraprt website)
Vehicle weight: 820 kg + 450 kg for 4 passengers and baggage = 1270 kg
Max pax: 4, all seated
Headway: 3 seconds
Total pax throughput/hour while travelling: 4800/hr or 1200 trains/hr
Skytrain ( http://www.scanbc.com/wiki/index.php?title=SkyTrain )
Vehicle weight: 22,300 kg (Mark II) + 14625 kg for 130 passengers (based off Ultraprt weight per pax #)
Max pax: 130, 80 seated
Headway: 75 seconds
Total pax throughput/hour while travelling: 6240/hr or 48 trains/hr
All this looks good. PRT even looks ok at these numbers, especially once you compare estimated cost per mile. Then you need to look at loading times and loading space. Each UltraPRT vehicle is 3.7m long. A Skytrain Mark II vehicle is 16.7m. This means that an 80m long platform holds 4 car trains quite easily, for a total capacity of 520 pax. 80m would get you 40 PRT car end to end, for 160 pax. Of course, that wouldn’t work as the holdup if a front car takes longer. Angling them ala Heathrow would probably allow you to fix those 40 cars in without holding them up. Except then they have to backup, stop and then move forward. Lets see how long until that gets congested.
It doesn’t take much of a genius to see that it would take a much bigger station to accomdate the same numbers of passengers, especially given that in that hour, those 6240 are loading through 144 doors as where as the 4800 are loading through 1200 or 2400 doors, depending on station configuration.
Given that PRT cannot do “last mile” operation into somebodies garage and its much lower capacity, then I fail to see how it can compete. Yes, it might be cheaper per mile, but that will likely end up with false economy due to its inability to scale.
#98 Corey Burger, ” . . . Given that PRT cannot do ‘last mile’ ”
I usally keep my PRT vehicle in the hall.
“It doesn’t take much of a genius to see that it would take a much bigger station to accomdate the same numbers of passengers”
Or, more stations. Whereas a rail line might have 5 big stations, PRT covering the same area might have 20-30 (or even more) small stations in a dense grid pattern. PRT can do this because the station itself can be very small, and can also be located within buildings themselves. Stations can be small because passengers don’t have to gather and wait – they arrive at the station and leave immediately.
So if PRT has 4-6 times the number of stations, then the individual station capacity doesn’t need to be so great. Masdar City will have 83 PRT stations when completed, with every point in the entire city within 100 yards of a station. Not only is that convenient for passengers, but it provides the necessary capacity for the city to be fully car-free.
“Small and lightweight” doesn’t just apply to PRT vehicles, but stations as well.
One more point: the ability to do small stations doesn’t mean PRT can’t do large stations as well. A stadium or convention center can still have a long line of PRT vehicle bays that looks more like a rail station than a PRT station. The difference is, the PRT station(s) can go anywhere within the stadium, whereas the rail station has to be located at a spot along where the rail line passes the stadium. I envision a large stadium having maybe 4-6 medium-to-large PRT stations scattered within the stadium itself, some even located on different levels. But that kind of thing is a long way off – PRT vendors are wisely focusing on more moderate capacity applications in the short term. I bring that up only to illustrate that PRT’s small stations are a capability, not a requirement.
I wonder sometimes: do you really believe the engineers haven’t thought of these issues? Masdar City’s engineering firm is C2HM Hill – whose “other” current project is rebuilding the Panama Canal, a colossal engineering feat. I think they can handle the concept of station capacity.