Tuesday, October 09, 2007

Letters to the Editor About Personal Rapid Transit in Daventry

Letters About the Daventry Council's plans for PRT in the Daventry Express:

Pod scheme is up in the air

It will be interesting to see how close the test track along Eastern Way for the proposed new transport system comes to reality.
A brief investigation will show that from a safety standpoint any new PRT system will have to be completely separate from existing pedestrian and vehicle routes.

The potential supplier's own web site states that where the track passes over roads there has to be 5.7 metres of headroom and for pedestrian transit 2.5 metres of headroom.

They also estimate that in an urban environment, such as Daventry, over 90 per cent of the system will have to be elevated. So if the system gets approval, much of it including the stations, will be almost 20 feet up in the air!

How much of the test track will be at this level?

Allan Simmonds
Drayton

Living in Disneyland?

I wonder if the people of Daventry share the enthusiasm of the council for the proposed PRT system reported last week.
At an estimated cost of £80 million, which will be inevitably optimistic, the comment "the officers in Daventry have the will and motivation to try something that has never been tried before" raises questions about the council's expertise and judgement.

Coming on top of the proposed marina and canal link, would we be wrong in asking whether the councillors are spending too much time on 'Disneyland' dreams instead of concentrating on the town and county management?

It would also be interesting to hear from them where the funds are coming from for the project; the recent conference and the consultancy firm instructed. Personally, I have considerable doubts about the practicalities of the scheme anyway.

G. Pearse
Highlands Drive,
Daventry

Town is world leader already

Daventry needn't worry about this new pod travel system – as it is already a leader! Leader of the highest petrol prices that is!
For the last four or five months the petrol prices at all garages in Daventry have stayed the same – they do not compete.

The petrol price has gone down everywhere else but Daventry! In the last month I have found petrol in Devon, Somerset, Essex and central London considerably cheaper (up to 5p a litre less) – surprising as the latter two are supposed to be more expensive to live in! Even petrol on the motorway services is the same as Daventry's or cheaper.

Why are we allowing ourselves to be ripped off?
Lets see some competition between the local garages!
G Bottomley
Elder Drive
Daventry

Tackle the real issues

Well done Daventry District Council, yet another brilliant idea...not!
Pods – well at least the kids will have something to do surfing, shooting, burning and wrecking the pods as they go round.

If there's £80 million on offer why not develop something for them to do, bin these crazy ideas and stop this town going completely down the toilet.

There is too much housing, too many people and so very little to do. I've lived in this town for 39 years and watched it slowly be destroyed by the local council who don't have the town's real population at heart. No police, broken roads, run-down estates, feral kids – these are the issues that need addressing not some hare-brained scheme like pods.
Wake up and smell the coffee DDC.

Name and address
supplied

Nice idea but wrong scheme

I have no wish to run down everything Daventry District Council comes up with and indeed it should be applauded for its forward thinking because, like it or not, oil will run out eventually and we must look for alternative soloutions to the car as we know it.
But I have to say I can not really see the pod as a realistic answer because if you think about it a horse and cart, although a lot slower, would be a better form of transport taking you closer to your home and using or causing very little carbon emission.

The pod system is bound to fail while there are still cars giving the public door-to-door conection and if you try to stop the entrance of cars to our shopping centre, people will simply go else where thus killing the town centre.

Leslie Weatherley
Via email


PRT, what a joke.

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