Another smart way to go
I would like to join the IJ in thanking Supervisors Judy Arnold and Charles McGlashan for inviting Unimodal to share its vision of personal rapid transit with the citizens of Marin on Dec. 5. I also appreciated the public's insightful and at times critical questions. However, an important point went unmentioned in your editorial (Dec. 12, "Public transit and Buck Rogers").
Personal rapid transit is not in some distant future. PRT is here today. And has been for 30 years. As we noted in our presentation, the federal government built the Morgantown, W.Va., PRT system in the 1970s and it is still delivers the best transit service in the United States. Unfortunately, for political reasons, Morgantown remains the best system you've never heard of. In Europe, politics has been swept aside and a second generation of PRT is being deployed in the at London's Heathrow Airport and in Uppsala, Sweden. These systems can be ordered today.
Next generation PRT builds on these proven first- and second-generation systems and will deliver a level of service and performance unmatched by automobiles or transit. As such, Unimodal's SkyTran PRT system is the middle way to the sustainable transportation future the Earth needs today.
Because the stakes are so high, all options should be on the table for Marin, the United States and the world. Planning our future in these dangerous times is not a zero-sum game. The old and new can co-exist and work together side by side.
That would be the smart way to go.
Christopher Perkins, chief executive officer, Unimodal Systems
Chris uses the word "smart" because the proposed rail transit line the local anti-transit group Marin Citizens for Effective Transportation opposes goes by the acronym S.M.A.R.T.
Maybe Perkins is confused by the existence of PRT in "Second LIfe"?
It's interesting that PRT always seems to pop up in places where rail transit is being proposed.
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