Seattle Transportation Examiner.com Reporter Not Reporting His Opposition to Recent Seattle Personal Rapid Transit Proposal

Not reporting on it, but quietly whispering his opposition on his personal blog.

David Gow, the Seattle transportation reporter at Examiner.com has not reported on the recent proposal by the Century Transportation Authority for an PRT Project for Seattle (reported HERE, HERE and HERE). David Gow wrote a 6-part "primer" on podcars (PRT) for Examiner.com including this article about PRT in Seattle.

David Gow has several websites promoting Personal Rapid Transit. The Seattle "Get There Fast" PRT website - gettherefast.org seems to be slow in reporting on the new proposal for PRT in David Gow's backyard. The news page at Gow's "kinetic" PRT website is also silent about the CTA PRT Seattle project.

The moribund Seattle PRT forum is also silent on the new development.

However, David Gow is quietly attacking the Seattle CTA PRT proposal on one of his many blogs called "This Week in Precipitation" in a March 24, 2012 post titled "Not another agency":

I have been aware for a few months that this organization -- 'CenTran' -- has been in the works. However I had been under the impression what it's about is Son Of Green Line.

Instead, it looks like they're intending a 16-mile monorail+PRT (pod transit) system in the West Seattle to Ballard corridors.

Gow goes on to address the pod aspect of the plan:

However, there are a number of practical issues here. By the time we are ready to do a technology screening (let alone select a design for installation), will these vendors be ready to deliver and operate what could be the largest pod system to date? Will their systems be sufficiently proven in regular operation?

Most of all, I personally object to this local effort being mounted by a small group, out of the public eye, creating yet another transit bureaucracy.

If PRT is going to be done here, it needs to be part of the existing decisionmaking structure. It needs to be done by Seattle or King County, or even Sound Transit. The latter had planned to do a PRT project as part of the Link program ( http://bit.ly/GN66Yg ), but the expected Raytheon PRT program was cancelled.

Raytheon? Gow is citing ancient history - from the last century. Sound Transit has no current plans for PRT.

Gow then wades into the recent pod people controversy about which imaginary pod concepts should be promoted by ATRA and even how PRT is defined.

I have misgivings that High Capacity corridor service might be too much too soon for a flavor of PRT (HCPRT) that hasn't yet been implemented, anywhere.

Apparently, Gow doesn't have any faith in J. Edward Anderson's PRT International, the would-be PRT vendor mentioned in the CTA proposal (CTA board member Jake Solomon is Manager of Marketing and Business Development at PRT International) . It seems that ATRA doesn't have any faith in PRT International's ability to deliver the goods either, leaving PRT International off its preferred member/vendor page and relegating J.E. Anderson's Fridley company to a lower tier "conceptual" category.

Gow concludes that the problem with the CTA pod/monorail plan is really institutional:

It's OK to hypothesize something that ambitious. But set up a whole new bureaucracy? Really?

Furthermore, local planning for circulation PRT and collector-distributor PRT have been done in SeaTac and Issaquah. We should look first at those service niches.

Will David Gow report his opposition to the Seattle monorail/PRT project at Examiner.com or his PRT promoting websites?

Developing...

UPDATE: David Gow has finally acknowledged the existence of the PRT proposal for his city on his Get There Fast website's news page, with this comment:

Get There Fast takes no position on this proposal.

Also read: Pod People & Monorail Fans Join Forces in Seattle.

Pod People & Monorail Fans Join Forces in Seattle

Way back in 2005, the Seattle Post Intelligencer published my opinion piece about Personal Rapid Transit (PRT) titled "Personal transit still a techno-dream". Eight years later the techno-dream is still alive - this from the Century Transportation Authority website:

Creating a transportation system that utilizes train cars running on a guideway, together with the necessary passenger stations, terminals, parking facilities, related facilities or other properties and facilities necessary for the system - including passenger and vehicular access to and from people-moving systems such as High Capacity Personal Rapid Transit (HCPRT) that has multiple off-line stations to collect and distribute riders to and from the monorail system, including fixed guideway light rail systems (which include any tram and trolley systems such as the waterfront trolley or the streetcar in the South Lake Union area of the city, and high capacity personal rapid transit.)

This is the PRT plan (PDF):



UPDATE: Jake Solomon is on the board of CenTran:

Jake is an entrepreneur businessman passionate about advancing mobile technology and mobile marketing services. He also is a strong proponent of high capacity personal rapid transit (HCPRT), as a "Green" 21st Century efficient and cost effective transportation solution.

Since 2001, Jake has been involved in political and community work related to City of Seattle, King County and Washington State government, advocating for cost effective transportation solutions and for "transportation legislation" that advances 21st Century transportation systems that are suitable for urban environments.

Education: Central Washington State University
Bachelor of Arts Business Administration
University of Washington
Bachelor of Science Forestry

Websites: http://www.cprt.org/CPRT/Home.html

http://www.prtinternational.com/cms/about-itns/itns-history

Jake Solomon has a Fridley, Minnesota pod connection - PRT International - J.E. Anderson's would-be PRT vendor PRT International:

In January 2005, he found it necessary to resign from Taxi 2000 Corporation and soon, with two other of its Board Members, founded PRT International, LLC through which he has developed from basic principles and available public-domain material a PRT system under the name “Intelligent Transportation Network System (ITNS),” which was coined by his Manager of Marketing and Business Development, Jake Solomon. He continues the challenging task of determining how to fully commercialize ITNS.

Recent article about that other Fridley, Minnesota would-be pod provider Taxi 2000 in the Fridley Patch.

Jake's been involved the Seattle monorail fiasco of the previous decade:

In the past few months, however, the idea of a freeway monorail system has been resurrected by a half-dozen advocates who are running a Web site, meeting in cafes and lobbying political and business officials about the reasons to construct a regional monorail along I-5, from Everett to Seattle-Tacoma International Airport.

“Our system is a trunk-line system,” says Jake Solomon, outreach coordinator for the Freeway Monorail group. “We want it to be a high-speed — I’m talking 60, 70 miles per hour — mass rapid-transit system connecting the cities of Puget Sound.”

Freeway-monorail advocates seek to answer a question on the minds of many taxpayers these days: What would happen if the $2.1 billion required to build a downtown-to-Tukwila light-rail line and the $1.7 billion for a Ballard-to-West Seattle monorail were combined to assemble a really, really long transit line?

However, there is not much political clout, and no funding source, for freeway monorail.

Advocates are banking on a collapse of Sound Transit’s light-rail plan, and after the apocalypse, freeway monorail would fill the void. “We have to kill Sound Transit,” says Solomon. Well, not actually kill it, but pack the Sound Transit board with monorail sympathizers, or force the agency to study the freeway monorail plan in depth, he explains.

As I always say, PRT and other gadgetbahn concepts are often used as monkey wrenches to stop, delay or defund reality-based transit - for more about this, see this post: Personal Rapid Transit Has Always Been a Bogus Excuse to Defund Rail Transit

Personal Rapid Transit in India Not Happening

Another much-ballyhooed PRT project fizzles - Times of India:

JAIPUR: The possibilities of Pink City witnessing a new mode of public transport in the form of Personal Rapid Transit System (PRTS) seem to be dim. Reason -- the company that had earlier given a presentation of the project, has now asked the state government to first sign a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) before it submits a feasibility report on the project.

According to official sources, the state government has refused to do so as all such projects have a certain procedure where it first looks into the feasibility report and then invites tenders. "As per the norms MoU cannot be signed with a single firm directly as objection can be raised that the project is awarded to benefit a particular company." said an official source. He added, "Still, we have asked the company to submit the feasibility report. If they submit it we will consider the project. It was never mandatory for the firm to submit a feasibility report."

Well, there will always be China:

PRT Promoter Compares Politicians Skeptical of Personal Rapid Transit to Hitler

On the Transport Innovators forum, PRT advisor and CPRT board member Dick Gronning tried to make the case for using a scale model of a pod system to convince people PRT could be feasible:

It would have to look and act like a real PRT system. If it had features like a number of systems, we wouldn't be promoting just one system. Set up in a mall, it would certainly draw attention. Politicians couldn't say that it wouldn't work.

The ever-klassy Jack Slade, would-be PRT vendor responded with this comment:

Politicians couldn't say it won't work? Of course they will. Politicians will say anything stupid that serves their purpose. They learned a trick from "Mein Kampf".....namely, "if I tell a lie, tell it often and loud enough, eventually 85% of the people accept it as true". Not an exact quote, but close enough.

Keep it Klassy PRT dudes!

My favorite Jack Slade quote from the Transport Innovators forum:

I have always thought that Avodor was being paid by somebody to "prove" that PRT won't work, and now we know.

The very fact that he thinks Morgantown is PRT shows how little he actually knows, and that statements like "all PRT systems to date have been failures" shows that also. Here is a message from me to him:

Hey, Stupid, there have not been any PRT systems actually tried, so how can they be failures? The first is being tested now at Heathrow, and first reports indicate that it will be a success. Aren't you going to have a lot of Crow to eat when it begins to spread elsewhere? Who is going to pay you anything afterwards? Maybe you can get a job cleaning toilets somewhere.

Jack Slade

Here's Klassy Jack's PRT model:

Minneapolis Community Leader and Taxi 2000 Shareholder Still Promoting Personal Rapid Transit

Sarah Sponheim, President of the East Calhoun Community Organization, daughter of the late Taxi 2000 CEO A. Sheffer "Shef" Lang and scion of Theodore Hamm, founder of the Hamm’s Brewery has an interview in the Hill & Lake Press this month (PDF). Sponheim talks mostly about the many laudable environmental community-based projects she works on, but at the end of the interview, the specter of PRT rears its ugly head:

On another subject, what is Personal Rapid Transit and why are you an advocate for it?

I inherited an interest in a local Personal Rapid Transit (PRT) company called Taxi 2000 when my father died in 2003. I served on the board of Taxi 2000 for four years and maintain the conviction that this form of elevated public transit in small, automated vehicles could effectively replace automobile use in numerous applications. I believe PRT has global potential to slash transportation-related greenhouse gas emissions.

On her blog, Sponheim stated the following:

On a bigger front, I will promote Personal Rapid Transit (PRT) through a letter-writing campaign to business-people and legislators. It is high-time this inherently green transit technology got off the ground.

In the last few years, it seems there's been an effort by a few of the original shareholders in the Taxi 2000 Corporation to once again promote PRT in Minnesota. But, there's been a lot of water under the bridge since 2004 when a PRT bill managed to get attached to an omnibus bonding bill in the Minnesota House. PRT was later stripped from the bill in committee. Since then, the Taxi 200) Corporation has tried and tried again to get taxpayers to fund a testing facility, most recently in Winona and failed (more of the dismal history of Taxi 2000 here.).

In a recent article in the Fridley Patch, another more realistic shareholder had this to say about Taxi 2000:

“They exist but they’re kind of moribund in Fridley,” he said. “I don’t pay any attention to Taxi 2000.”

Since 2004, the Hiawatha Light Rail that Sheffer Lang and other PRT advocates at the time vehemently opposed has proven to be a phenomenal success. LRT, streetcars and commuter rail projects like Northstar and other reality-based transit initiatives need the support of environmentalists and community activists like Sarah Sponheim. I encourage Sarah Sponheim to learn more by going to the Transit for Livable Communities website (TLC does not support public funding for PRT).

Perhaps, after Sarah Sponheim educates herself about reality-based transit she may look into the idea of restoring the route of the streetcar line that once existed in her neighborhood. It would connect Linden Hills to Uptown with the existing, legacy streetcar line.

And why would Sarah Sponheim want to be a part of the anti-LRT, pro-PRT bunch like this guy?

Will Cardiff, Wales Fall for Another Gadgetbahn Flim Flam?

Years ago, Personal Rapid Transit was supposed to debut in Cardiff, Wales.. but, they backed off when reality set in.

Seems they haven't learned their lesson:

An advanced railway could soon be whisking passengers from the centre of Cardiff to the Bay – over the heads of people walking below.

Plans for an elevated railway were discussed yesterday by representatives of Cardiff City Council and Monometro, a Blackwood-based company that has developed the state of the art system with the help of Saudi investors.

A little Googling came up with this:

Digging into MonoMetro finds a couple of things – it’s run by a bloke called Gareth Pearce, from Blackwood, Caerphilly, Wales. It’s, so far as I can tell, not been built anywhere yet, although there are stories of Saudi interest leading to a scheme in Mecca opening in 2012. There’s a lot of accusations that TfL and the Government have deliberatly ignored the scheme, including a comment...

The comment quoted in the blog:

The enire London MonoMetro project, painstakingly planned and meticulously designed through cooperation across a raft of private UK and US companies, it took ten years of effort. And while MonoMetro stands as a magnificant transport achievement it has been resisted since 2001 by the politburo style Transport for London, backed by the Stalinist Mayor Ken Livingstone.

The blog goes one with a look at the Wikipedia article on MonoMetro (go to the blog to follow the links):

Mr. Pearce, who I’m sure is a lovely fellow really, is mentioned in less than glowing terms here and here.

I then had a quick look at Wikipedia’s entry on the MonoMetro scheme, and the page reads like a mixture of advertising and complaints about the treatment of the scheme by the Government and ‘orrible old Ken, neither of which is exactly in keeping with Wikipedia’s neutral tone rules. In fact, comparing revisions here and here shows exactly what happened; a user from IP 87.114.135.103 greatly enlarged the previously perfectly acceptable article on the 15th December 2007, in two editing sessions. The revised article subsequently got marked for style cleanup in June 2008, but nothing’s happened since apart from some minor edits, including one by London transport-and-other-stuff blogger D-Notice (at least, I presume it’s him), who, I note deliciously, has also been doing man’s work on Andrew Gilligan’s page.

Looking at IP 87.114.135.103, I see that he made one further edit immediately after his 15/12/2007 marathon, which was on the page for … Blackwood, Caerphilly, birthplace of Gareth Pearce. The edit added an unexplained link to www.monometro.com, which, so far as I can see, doesn’t have a great deal of relevance to Blackwood, Caerphilly other than that the founder was born there. This was duly deleted as linkspam on 11/2/2008.

So, we have an apparent irascible Ken-hating architect with a new transport system to sell, who was told to stuff it by TfL and hasn’t been taking it lying down. He gets two favourable articles on LondonUnlocked, then *someone* rewrites the Wikipedia page on MonoMetro to render it a biased mess, adding a link to the system’s website to Pearce’s home town’s page to round it off.

The blog has some great observations about gadgetbahn, read the whole thing.

For more hilarious UK gadgetbahn flim-flammery read my post about Maglev Movers.

For laffs, read this bizarre screed from Gareth Pearce circa 2005 - here's a quote:

The Mayor of London and some GLA members have made statements that TfL carried out assessment of MonoMetro. Other GLA members have questioned the Mayor requesting a copy of TfL's alleged assessment. TfL in response further dismiss MonoMetro sLRT making no disclosure of any assessment material. In the national press TfL continue to make statements that MonoMetro sLRT is "an anorak's dream" with further statements of misinformation to the GLA that MonoMetro sLRT is unworkable, cannot be introduced into the urban environment and that MonoMetro Limited have no technical expertise. These statements have had a deeply damaging influence on the perception of MonoMetro from other regional authorities in the United Kingdom. Glasgow City Council terminated their assessment of MonoMetro for a city wide network because of adverse opinion publicised by TfL. A study requested by Thames Gateway was abandoned because of the biased opinion of TfL and while Portsmouth City Council commissioned MonoMetro to undertake a study for an urban network which was carried out and delivered they withdrew because of the adverse statements by TfL taken as authority. By contrast MonoMetro sLRT is the preferred technology for a 38 mile project in the United States and is being assessed by the French Government for urban implementation.

For more laffs, watch this video about the Monometro:



UPDATE: Jerry Schneider posted a hilarious letter from Gareth on the PRT-pod-loving Transport Innovators forum:

Jerry ,

We have made good progress with Cardiff City Council agreeing the most difficult part of the route. There are elections in May so the outline planning has to be held back till then but planning has agreed to work through all the necessay difficulties with us so that outline planning will be a foregone conclusion. The environmental assessment can also be submitted at outline planning stage. It's a two stage process outline first and full planning some time later maybe a year, in time to start construction on site.

We have two potential investors wanting to buy the entire £122mm Private Debenture shares with a 5% stock option. Its a bit of a frenzied fight.

I think its very important we complete the development of MonoMetro, the world needs it now. Its a simple railway and no technology to worry about. New system old technology. Metal to metal wheel rail interface proven in bearings applications, rolled rail section where the rolling "patch" contact geometry renders such an effectively low rolling point load that threshold of excitation leading to Hysterisis is never breached thus eliminating wear significantly over conventional rail.

We also have the high speed test track route in early stage of planning negotiations. We presented the route and we are waiting to hear from the County Council planning department. Mech Engineering informs me their design criteria for the bogies will be 140km/h. So with both high speed and urban test track routes in place we can tender for a wide spectrum of projects. Easy as she goes.

Best regards,
Gareth

Personal Rapid Transit Has Always Been a Bogus Excuse to Defund Rail Transit

The PRT promoters are attacking reality-based transit again:

Opinion: Forget light rail, bring in the personal pods

BY CHARLOTTE VANDERVALK

WHY is there so much recent focus on an extension of light rail into Bergen County? It is not state-of-the-art transportation. It is not an inexpensive system to build, and there is no funding for it.

Wherever such a system is operational, it merely adds to the existing traffic congestion on the ground, to say nothing of the potential liability from intersection with vehicular traffic.

Whatever...

Years ago, when I started exposing the anti-transit, pro-PRT antics of Michele Bachmann, Mark Olson and Dean Zimmermann, it was common to hear PRT promoters call reality-based transit and particularly Light Rail Transit (LRT) "old fashioned", "19th Century", even "antebellum":

Mayor Greg Nickels' South Lake Union streetcar proposal is the most ludicrous transportation nonsolution I have heard in quite some time. The streetcar record in city after city is clear: high construction costs, high subsidies and no significant effect on congestion. How can streetcars be part of an intelligently designed new biotech district, when streetcars guarantee its streets will be congested?

I find it hard to believe that the best our civic leaders can offer us is this antebellum transit technology. Why is Personal Rapid Transit (PRT) not on the table for exploration? PRT is a "horizontal elevator" system that offers automated, on-demand, mass transit service.

For the same amount Seattle is planning to invest in trains, a grid of lightweight, unobtrusive, elevated PRT rail can be built covering the entire city.

PRT could even be deployed in South Lake Union, serving both as an efficient local circulator and to feed people to and from future train stations. And it could be done at a fraction of the cost of a streetcar line.

So why aren't Seattle's leaders looking at PRT?

Is it because the transit consultants giving them advice make an excellent living going around the country recommending trains?

David Gow, Seattle

Problem is PRT isn't new. For at least half a century, PRT has flopped over and over again wasting millions of dollars- how many chances do these losers get? I recently found an old book in a county library with pictures of extinct PRT projects I've only read brief descriptions in other old books or J.Edward Anderson's history of PRT.

From a website history (no direct link) of Rosemount Inc., a Minnesota company:

Uniflo was a computer controlled, air pressure levitated and propelled personal rapid transit (PRT) system. A Honeywell researcher, who had worked on and then purchased the rights for the project, interested Frank Werner in pursuing its development. Rosemount had hoped to fund the project with public financing or equity participation by another firm, but even with renewed federal interest in public transportation Rosemount had trouble funding Uniflo. A joint effort with Northrup Corp. to win a Department of Transportation (DOT) contract for a demonstration mass transit system at Dulles International Airport failed. The DOT passed over the Uniflo project for more conventional mass transit systems. Uniflo later received two other federal research grants but made no sales. The project, which was abandoned in 1973, cost Rosemount about $1 million.

This was the pitch, sound familiar?

A personal rapid transit system has been developed, capable of providing urban areas with public transportation service that is competitive with the automobile in speed, availability, accessibility, and comfort. The system contributes no pollution in terms of air, noise, or vibration; it is relatively small in size; and it can be installed elevated, on grade, or below grade. These qualities make it an acceptable addition to a community. Because this personal rapid transit system is highly automated, a significant reduction in the amount of labor required to provide transportation service is anticipated. This could mean that it would again be possible to make money moving people.

This is from a University of MInnesota News Service newsletter from 1965 (click on the text to make it bigger):



Here's what Uniflo PRT was supposed to look like - nothing looks more dated than futuristic design from the 1970's (click on the picture to make it bigger):