Monday, June 25, 2007

Personal Rapid Transit Proponents Still Spreading Disinformation About Rail Transit

In an earlier post I quoted Advanced Transit Association (ATRA) President Jeral Poskey saying the following on the Transport-Innovators Google Group:

For 30 years, almost all the PRT advocates have done 
the opposite of play nice.  We have been proud of the fact that we're 
"proving the status quo wrong," "showing the ridiculousness of their 
arguments" and showing up at meetings talking about how great PRT is and 
what a waste technology X would be.  We haven't educated ourselves on the 
funding process they go through.  Very few advocates understand and can 
emphasize with the conflicting political environment most agencies operate 
in.  All in all, we haven't been very nice.  Oh, and I'd say that we've been guilty of our own level of ignorance, arrogance and sometimes even misrepresentation, albeit with the best goals in mind.


... Here's ATRA Board member Tad Winiecki commenting recently that LRT is a "well-proven failure":

As a designer and advocate of personal rapid transit I and my fellow Advanced Transit Association members have been accused of being part of the highway lobby because we would prefer new automated transport to the well-proven failure of light rail transit.


Mr. Winiecki is the "designer" of the faith-based Higherway PRT which exists (like all PRT systems) only in the realm of imagination and cyberspace.

Is PRT part of the highway lobby?

You decide!

Here's one example; the Taxi 2000 Corporation was funded by the highway engineering firm Short Elliot Hendrickson (SEH). SEH shares a lobbyist, Ed Cain with Taxi 2000. Here's Michele Bachmann's pal Ed Cain talking about PRT:


Ken Avidor blogs about Personal Rapid Transit (PRT) and other anti-rail transit scams.

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