NEWS RELEASE
District 19 Legislators to Host Transportation Town Hall Meeting
(ST. PAUL) Representative Bruce Anderson (R-Buffalo Township), Representative Mark Olson (R-Big Lake) and Senator Mark Ourada (R-Buffalo) will host a town hall meeting on Tuesday, March 20 to discuss transportation issues for Wright and Sherburne counties. The meeting will be held in the Big Lake High School Auditorium at 7:00 p.m. Informal questions will begin at 6:30 p.m.
Among those attending the meeting will be Dr. Lynn Woodward and Dr. J. Edward Anderson, a Professor of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Minnesota from 1963 to 1986. Dr. Anderson will address the transportation option known as Personal Rapid Transit (PRT).
"We want to keep area residents informed as to the technological developments of transportation systems," said Rep. Olson. "The public should be made aware so that all options are considered. I hope many citizens will turn out for this important informational meeting."
That's just one year after the Raytheon boondoggle went bust:
Raytheon pulls out of rapid transit plan
By Ross Kerber, Globe Staff, 3/29/2000
It may take a bit longer to catch Taxi 2000.
Some transit planners still swoon over the design, an ambitious monorail-like system that would send three-seat cars zipping around urban areas at up to 80 miles an hour on elevated tracks. In 1993, Raytheon Co. said it would invest $20 million to build a test track in Marlborough, in a partnership with the Taxi 2000 engineering firm. At the time, defense contractor Raytheon touted the deal as part of its effort to diversify. But the firm has renewed its military focus since then, and yesterday said it has exited what it calls the ''personal rapid transit'' business.
In a filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, Raytheon also said it has taken a $6 million charge to ''dispose of'' the test track, a one-third-mile outdoor loop built near a company parking lot. A spokeswoman couldn't be more specific about the track's fate, though she said it was part of a number of cost-cutting steps Raytheon took after a series of financial warnings and slowing sales. Executives were not immediately available to discuss the move, she said.
The end of Raytheon's support might be seen as a setback to Taxi 2000 president J. Edward Anderson, a retired mechanical engineering professor who taught at Boston University and the University of Minnesota.
But Anderson, reached at home near Minneapolis, says he's glad for the chance to seek new partners and is in discussions with another company, which he declined to name.
... because it probably didn't exist ...
The electric-powered, computer-controlled system Anderson proposes would be cheaper than light rail and environmentally cleaner than building more freeways and automobiles, he said.
Anderson estimates Raytheon spent nearly $45 million developing and marketing the project since 1993.
... 45 million freekin' dollars!!! ...
He said the three test cars it built, at 5,000 pounds apiece, were far too heavy. ''We lost eight years'' working with Raytheon, he said. ''But we're going to recover.''
One supporter is Ed Porter, a member of the Santa Cruz, Calif., planning commission who says he will urge that a personal rapid-transit system such as Taxi 2000 be included in a mass-transit study the city is now preparing.
Some oppose the idea because it would involve building elevated tracks down city streets, but Porter is unfazed: ''As much as you could improve bus or rail service, it doesn't look like they're going to get the job done alone,'' he said.
Now Porter worries Raytheon's move could harm his case.
''I was hoping to come visit,'' he said.
Raytheon's PRT still exists in this online cornucopia of Gadgetbahn concepts... and on Google maps:
I expect more Gadgetbahn scams in response to growing public concern over Global Warming and Peak Oil.
Here's a good article on a gadgetbahn project in Alameda.
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