Monday, September 15, 2008

The Ithaca Podcar Conference

Mark Olson's pals, the PRT Pod People are having a conference in Ithaca, NY this week. Get ready for more PRT hype like the Catherine Burke commentary in the LA Times and the Star Tribune sparking yet another Treehugger blog post about the pods and in the LA Times Bottleneck blog.

If last year's conference is any guide, the Pod People will be dissing traditional transit as much as talking about their non-existent cyberspace fantasy. Here's a video showing two of last years' Podcar Conference speakers bashing conventional transit... Ron Swenson described LRT as "parasitic".

Someone should ask Olson's old friend and legislative colleague Congresswoman Michele Bachmann whether she still supports the pods like she did in 2004.

Here are some questions I put on the Cornell Sun story's comments:

Who are the "generous sponsors" funding this Podcar Conference?

Why are traditional transit organizations not participating?

Why is a conference about the future of Ithaca's public transportation infrastructure charging citizens $90 and students $60 to attend?

Why did the Podcar Conference pick Jake Robert who has little or no expertise in transportation to host this conference? According to a recent Ithaca Journal article, Jake did a heckuva job running the Ithaca Festival (into the red).


Incidentally, Jake's Connect Ithaca website been down for days:

For laughs, watch this old KARE 11 report on PRT featuring Rep. Mark Olson....

They cut out the part where Olson declares PRT "the Microsoft of public transit"... watch it here.

Here's Olson wasting legislators time with one his failed PRT amendments:

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