U of M's Center For Transportation Studies Wants MnDOT to Waste $1.4 million on PRT Study

The Humphrey School's Ferrol Robinson is calling it ART, but it's the same old PRT. You can download the silly report at the CTS website.

Bottom line:

The budget to complete a feasibility study and related outreach and education efforts is estimated at $1.4 million, and the anticipated study duration is two years.

This would be a total waste of money.

Other states have wasted money on feasibility studies for PRT. MnDOT can just look up these reports:

New York State (PDF) 2011

New Jersey (PDF) 2007.

OKI Central Loop project - 2001

Here's the conclusion of the OKI report on PRT (PDF):

Personal Rapid Transit

Due to the uncertainty of the technology and costs, Personal Rapid Transit (Taxi 2000) is not recommended as preferred technology for the loop circulator. The Committee encourages Taxi 2000 to continue to develop the design and construct a full-scale test track to address critical questions regarding engineering design, operational feasibility and cost.

Of course, all the "critical questions" remain unanswered because they cannot be answered without a true PRT system in revenue service. But many of the critical questions could be answered by a peer-reviewed study - this study should not be done by MnDOT, but by experts in the urban studies, transportation and engineering fields.

UPDATE: There's also this 2010 study for PRT in Ithaca, NY.