[Mpls] Fwd: Dean Zimmermann in the news - PRT

[Michael Jensvold]

Fortunately, personal rapid transit is already
available today, in Minneapolis.  It's called a taxi
cab.

The point of mass transit is the shared infrastructure
and operating cost and increased capacity of persons
per lane-mile.  Personal rapid transit wouldn't do a
very good job of any of this.

A much better compromise solution is the car sharing
program being started up (www.hourcar.org) in the twin
cities.


-Mike Jensvold
Ward 10

--- Steve Nelson <snelson104 at mn.rr.com> wrote:

> > Barbara Lickness wrote:
> 
> > In reality PRT has never worked despite over 30
> > years of research and development.
> 
> PRT has never worked because PRT has never been
> tried.  Every time a system 
> was to be built those who were going to fund it
> called in the "experts" from 
> mass transit who made the same mistake time and
> again.  They were hooked on 
> the "capacity" issue and so they would demand
> changes in the size and, 
> consequently, the weight of the vehicle and what
> came about was closer to an 
> El but definitely NOT PRT.
> 
> >Combining the small
> > carrying capacity of a small car, with
> > the expensive infrastructure of mass transit, PRT
> > offers the worst of both worlds.
> 
> Both assumptions are in error here.
> A) It is not the "capacity" that is important
> DESPITE the fact that PRT is 
> perfectly capable of matching bus or LRT capacity,
> it is the FLEXIBILITY 
> combined with the fact that it interferes with no
> ground traffic and no 
> ground traffic interferes with it along with the off
> line stations that 
> permit freeflow from destination to destination.
> B) Because TRUE PRT is lightweight the
> infrastructure is very INEXPENSIVE 
> compared to LRT and it can be manufactured right
> here in Minnesota creating 
> much needed jobs.
> 
> > Plus, it's the
> > brainchild of Ed Anderson's private corporation
> Taxi
> > 2000, who has already made a bundle of cash by
> > convincing city and state governments that it is
> in
> > their best interest to hand over phat research
> checks.
> 
> Utterly wrong!  PRT grew out of research at the
> University of Minnesota. 
> Taxi2000 was formed by investors who believe in the
> technology and continue 
> to believe in the technology.  Unfortunately they
> have been doing battle 
> with the oil companies of mass transit--bus
> companies and LRT backers with 
> massive amounts of public subsidy money to throw
> into lobbying to keep a 
> real PRT system from being set up.
> 
> > Although Los Angeles and Santa Cruz California
> have
> > voted down proposals to allocate money to study
> the
> > futuristic transit system, New Jersey, which has
> > already appropriated $75,000 to PRT, plans to up
> that
> > by $100,000 this coming year.
> 
> $100,000?? OOoooooo!!!  That would have been
> what---5 minutes of lobbying 
> time for LRT?
> 
> > The state of Illinois and Raytheon, the maker of
> > "Bunker Buster" bombs, Tomahawk, Patriot missiles,
> and
> > other assorted weaponry -- has invested
> > over $38 million to study PRT in the Chicago metro
> > area.
> 
> Raytheon.  Interesting choice.  One of the companies
> intent on building a 
> heavyweight El instead of lightweight PRT.  They
> could never get their heads 
> around a small capacity vehicle capable of handling
> high capacity movement. 
> A problem that seems to be evident in this post as
> well.
> 
> > "Though it all sounds very gee-whiz innocent, PRT
> is
> > a major scam," writes Naparstek in NY Press. "In
> > Minneapolis, Cincinnati, Seattle, Chicago and
> > elsewhere, PRT has burned through tens of millions
> of
> > dollars of public and private investment. The only
> > tangible result has been to clear the way for
> highway
> > construction and make legitimate mass transit
> projects
> > more difficult to build. In at least a few cases,
> > after finally running PRT out of town, citizens
> > learned that the public officials most
> enthusiastic
> > about PRT had financial stakes in the companies
> > developing it.
> 
> In spite of the fact that Cincinatti rejected PRT
> based on Raytheon's 
> erroneous figures, many of the local luminaries who
> actually looked at what 
> PRT is SUPPOSED to be became and continue to be
> investors in Taxi2000. 
> INFORMED investors that is.
> 
> Steven M Nelson
> Willard Hay
> http://citizenshipchronicles.blogspot.com/
> Get UP! Get OUT! & GET INVOLVED!!! 
> 
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