In the sidebar on the right, you will see an incomplete list of cities that have a history that includes the Personal Rapid Transit boondoggle. Until now, I saw no reason to include Indianapolis because I did not have access to primary source material. Thanks to the wonderful librarians at the Indianapolis Public Library, I was able to access a few articles (scroll down past the video) about an attempt by PRT promoters in the Indiana State Assembly to fund the planning and building of a German version of PRT, Cabinentaxi in the late 1970's in the Circle City. The story is a bit murky after all these years, but it appears there were two prominent PRT promoters in the Indiana State Assembly who were able to leverage funding for the project.
In the late 1970's, through vigorous efforts of two Indiana legislators, Dr. Ned Lamkin and Richard Doyle, the Indiana Assembly appropriated $300,000 for a study of automated transit in Indianapolis including PRT. This study has been mentioned above in the discussion of Cabinentaxi.
I haven't been following the PRT Boondoggle as much as I used to, but this popped up on the Transport Innovators forum last summer:
Dear Shareholders:
This e-mail is being sent to let you know that the Taxi 2000 Corporation office at 8050 University Avenue NE, Fridley, MN 55432 is being closed and that all
operations will cease June 30, 2017. Our angel investor decided last year that it was no longer in a position to continue investments into the company in view
of their being no immediate prospects of a system contract. We have been unsuccessful in finding other investors, licensees or purchasers of the company assets
and we are now out of funds.
We thank the investor for supporting Taxi 2000 Corporation for more than a decade. We also thank all of the individuals that have supported the Company over its
entire history, whether that support has been through your labor, your financial contribution or your moral support.
While we still believe that it is a superior technology, in the history of inventions that has often proven to be insufficient to bring an idea to the
marketplace.
Sincerely,
Morrie Anderson,
Chairman
Taxi 2000 Corporation
8050 University Avenue NE
Fridley, MN 55432
"This is a company that's been around for a while and it's not produced a single pod system anywhere," Avidor said. "How do they produce a profit?"
This "moribund" company that injected itself noisily into nearly every public meeting about transit in Minnesota and elsewhere, that lobbied for taxpayers' dollars in city after city, now appears to have quietly and stealthily given up the ghost. But Taxi 2000 lives... on the internet, confusing citizens about reality-based transit policy forever. Here's one of many You Tube videos featuring Taxi 2000:
State Fair. Interest from another city, Cincinnati, was sufficient to enable Taxi 2000 Corporation, when I was its CEO, to raise about $800,000 to design, build and demonstrate one auto-mated, linear-induction-motor propelled, three-passenger vehicle that operated on a 60-ft length of guideway. It ran flawlessly for thousands of rides during the 2003 Minnesota State Fair. Citizens for PRT assisted in more ways than I know by providing displays and people to manage the crowds and answer questions. A reporter asked me: ―What was the most surprising thing about it? After a moment of thought, knowing that it worked technically exactly as designed, I said that the most surprising thing to me was the thrill people got out of riding only 40 feet. I could only imagine the reaction to riding around the loop of the first pilot system and subsequent applications. Seeing a comprehensive display of what it would be like to live in a city served by PRT and appreciating the way concerns about PRT would be treated produced an overwhelmingly positive reaction.
What happened to us after that, though, was awful. A clash of interests caused three board members including me to resign from Taxi 2000 Corporation in January 2005 and to go on to form PRT International, LLC....
2005... terrible year for PRT in Minnesota... there was that lawsuit... and... and... and...
Let's forget all that and try to recapture the "thrill" by watching former Representative Mark Olson traveling down 40 feet of guide-way in a pod:
