Saturday, February 25, 2012
Friday, February 24, 2012
The reason it's called TWITter
I would call this one really unbelievable if not for having been documenting all this crap for the last *mumble* years.
You know when you're planning a local transit trip, or waiting at a stop or station, and you decide to check Twitter to see why your bus or train is late?
All the big transit agencies have a Twitter presence. New York MTA has one. My home town King County Metro has one. My favorite Portland Trimet has one. And even Ken Avidor's Metro Transit in the Twin Cities has one.
Having these Twitter accounts is part of the public service. It's a new social media way of letting people know where the bus is. It's designed to reduce the number of surprises for transit riders. It makes transit more convenient.
But not if you're Ken Avidor. To him it is proof of techno-infeasibility -- if the transit system status being tweeted is that of a PRT system:
That's right. West Virginia U is doing what so many transit agencies do, informing its students when and where the PRT system might be up or down. But in Ken's brain it's support for his argument that it's "Time to pull the plug on the WVU PRT." And replace it with - ? He has never said.
What a Luddite.
I am reminded of a recent back-and-forth that took place on Twitter between myself and one @JCTRambler, a Follower of @Avidor who, in addition to not reading linked material, essentially called me a liar:
No further response. An apology would have been nice.
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2/24/2012 06:54:00 PM
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Labels: Twitter, WORST EXPERT IN THE WORLD
Sunday, February 05, 2012
Important question marks - UPDATE 1

The Deconstruction
Conclusions
Feb. 4: Nathan Koren states his opinion (see first Feb. 4 post) that bureaucracies plan and purchase transit systems without much regard for public input.
Feb. 5: Ken Avidor claims Koren dismisses the importance of public involvement in decision-making.
gPRT
* I suppose I have to note that I would not date Marilyn, lest Ken try to imply something.
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2/05/2012 12:00:00 PM
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Labels: Politics, The Smears, Twitter
Wednesday, February 01, 2012
Yet Another Luddite Veto - UPDATE 1
A unique operational feature is that the vehicles will keep moving slowly through stations without completely stopping. This operation has proved successful when tested with handicapped passengers. Passengers alight as soon as the vehicle enters the station while others board just before it leaves the station. If no one boards, or if boarding is incomplete, the vehicle will stop in the station. Stations are arranged so as to keep boarding and alighting passengers separate (even to the point of having separate staircases).
Source
Personal Rapid Transit Pod People Invade MexicoMore locomotion lunacy from the PRT Consulting blog about a Mexican PRT project called Modutram
Source
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2/01/2012 10:00:00 AM
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Saturday, January 21, 2012
Business Plan - UPDATE 1
The Cherrypick. This is where he only uses facts favorable to his claims, discarding the rest. Examples: repeating 'Bachmann's PRT boondoggle' while ignoring the 13 Democrats who supported PRT in the Minnesota Senate; blaming a Minnesota High Speed Rail Commissioner's separate support of PRT for cancellation of Ohio and Wisconsin HSR, ignoring that Governors Kasich and Walker just want President Obama to fail.
Far And Away. He lies about places he thinks would be difficult to verify. Blaming a few years of PRT planning for over a decade of neighborhood decay in England is an example of Far And Away. Others include: claiming to be from Alameda; depicting PRT in locations where no one is proposing putting it (1, 2); making a big deal about Amritsar merchants protesting pod transit with a dharna fast, when dharnas are actually very common in India.
Hail Mary. This is when Ken says something prima facie wrong, or a misquote, and hopes to get away with it. Examples: A PRT system for one city "would be in the trillions of dollars"; a dropped sentence fragment turns an anti-oil tweet into a pro-Keystone pipeline tweet.
The Hidden Ball Trick. He states something as fact, tries to camouflage it with bluster or under a layer of narrative, and hopes no one factchecks it.
So was his claim that one guy used PRT to "stop rail transit" in Minneapolis in the 1970s -- but bureaucratic infighting was the more believable culprit.
Taxi 2000 Document Reveals Safety Concerns Can Make PRT Systems "Unworkable"....The following are excerpts that show that Taxi 2000 itself believes that PRT is a very risky investment."Federal and State safety regulation of automated transit systems can make PRT systems unworkable. Since there are no examples of our technology currently in operation, we cannot predict what sort of state or federal government safety regulation might apply. At this juncture, the Federal Transit Administration - which would exercise whatever regulation might apply at this level - has left the matter up to the states. Management believes the states will look foremost to the work of a committee of the American Society of Civil Engineers, which has developed a set of safety standards for "Automated People Movers" (APM's). We have been following that work and think at this point it will pose only one problem: eg., "brick wall stopping" requirements for the control system (borrowed from railroad signaling practice). The requirement is that if one vehicle stops instantaneously, the next vehicle must be able to stop before hitting the stopped one. That requirement would inhibit the sort of minimum vehicle headway used in our design, but it would not affect operation of the first, lower density systems. In the context of PRT, "headway" means the nose-to-nose time spacing between two sequential vehicles. Setting a minimum allowable headway determines the maximum carrying capacity of the guideway. We will work to have the headway requirement amended, since we believe it is inappropriate to PRT technology, but there is no guarantee we will be successful in that regard....The above paragraph is not some earth-shaking secret admission of a fatal flaw. In fact it is a fairly standard "safe harbor" statement, something all companies that offer stock are required to do, to apprise prospective investors of every conceivable risk, no matter how remote...Every public company has safe harbor statements in their prospectuses, annual reports and 10-K filings. So if everyone gave full, literal and equal weight to everything in safe harbors, no one would ever invest in anything.
[Source]
...Here the "Business Plan" includes the lengthy bios of J. Edward Anderson, A. Scheffer Lang and Raymond A. MacDonald. Then it gets around to... the money:The Taxi 2000 business plan requires funding of twenty-five million dollars to be raised in successive rounds over a thirty-six month period. The funds will be used for completing specifications, building of the test track facilities, world-class procurement and marketing.
Exit Strategy
The opportunity for investor exit should occur between months 54 and 72. At this juncture, Taxi 2000 should have a strong backlog of booked sales, as well as a substantial number of highly interested potential customers. Initial system installations should be complete and operating, with other systems under construction.
Two potential opportunities for investor exit will be an IPO or a strategic acquisition by a large corporate interest. The strategic acquisition of the investor position would be the more likely scenario but this would be determined by the climate of the public equity markets at that time.
Interesting - a business plan with an "Exit Strategy"?.... [ellipsis in original] anyways, according to Mpls/St. Paul Business Journal:The firm has raised $2 million in a $24 million fund-raising effort to pay for the testing facility and other corporate needs, according to SEC filings and city documents.
Are you aware that Claude Pepper is known all over Washington as a shameless extrovert? Not only that, but this man is reliably reported to practice nepotism with his sister-in-law, he has a brother who is a known homo sapiens, and he has a sister who was once a thespian in wicked New York. Worst of all, it is an established fact that Mr. Pepper, before his marriage, habitually practiced celibacy.
"If those people want to pursue PRT with their own money, that's okay with me"
The Exit Strategy - Strategies for Investor Exit
The majority of Business investors will be looking for a planned exit strategy worked out at the time of investment. It will be very beneficial to work out the ideal exit strategy for potential investors before you seek funding. Investors will need to know when they can realise a return on investment so this is a crucial area of the pitch to get right.
Investors want a maximum return on initial investment and a well thought-out exit strategy provides them with the incentive to invest in your venture.
Therefore when Ken Avidor writes “Interesting - a business plan with an "Exit Strategy"?” his interior monologue is screaming, 'Don't bother reading this, because I am an ignoramus. I don't know what I'm talking about. I really just don't know.'
Posted by
Mr_Grant
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1/21/2012 04:18:00 PM
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Labels: Blogging, Debunking, Meta, Wall Street Weak, WORST EXPERT IN THE WORLD
Friday, January 20, 2012
He's green until he's not
Indian cities are not maximizing the density influence to reduce the emissions. International research shows that the dense areas usually have fewer emissions. In India’s case, many cities which are dense are showing high emissions because of insufficient public transport and high influx of private vehicles....Then again, why do cities like Bhopal and Amritsar have higher per capita emissions than Chandigarh? Why do cities like Hyderabad and Jaipur have high travel activity than a city like Kolkata? The Indian cities analysis shows that having public transport facilities (e.g., Mumbai and Kolkata) and land-use transport integration (e.g., Chandigarh) can not only better transport be provided but also emissions and economic activity can be decoupled.(Guttikunda, S., Estimated Air Pollution and Health Benefits of Metro System in Delhi, 2010)
...there are other, less expensive ways to go from the train station to the city's main attraction:An auto-rickshaw from the train station to the temple should cost around Rs 20, while a cycle-rickshaw will run about Rs 30.
There is a free bus service from the train station to the golden temple run by Golden Temple trust.
Archives:
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1/20/2012 12:00:00 PM
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Labels: Blogging, Environment, India, WORST EXPERT IN THE WORLD
Wednesday, January 11, 2012
Fire Bad - UPDATE 2
Investigators were working on Saturday to determine the cause of a transformer fire that caused a power outage at an El Cajon mall, fire officials said-
...This is what I wrote back in 2010 about the so-called WVU PRT:The PRT hucksters will often cite the so-called West Virginia University's Personal Rapid Transit in Morgantown as a successful example of PRT "technology":A heavy weight PRT network opened in Morgantown, WV in 1975 and has delivered 110 million injury-free passenger miles.But the WVU PRT is neither PRT (it's really an ordinary, automated people-mover similar to what you see in airports) or successful.
WBOY-12 Morgantown Jan. 11, 2012
West Virginia University officials responded to an electrical fire at the PRT, Personal Rapid Transit, substation on the Evansdale WVU campus Wednesday afternoon.A mechanical malfunction which resulted in an electrical fire has interrupted service to passengers.WVU officials said passengers were in no immediate danger and no injuries have been reported.The system is expected to be operational by around 5 p.m. Wednesday.
Avidor's panic-bashing of the Morgantown PRT is sort of like the time a car crashed into a power pole in a snowstorm, causing a power outage affecting the PRT, and Ken blogged "a snowstorm shut down the PRT."
Avidor's blog headline promises description of "chaos" caused by electrical fire -- then he quotes the Daily Athenaeum article that shows the emergency was handled in a calm, orderly and professional manner.
Students were evacuated, and no one was harmed, according to University officials.At the opening of his post, Ken re-treats us to part of his conspiracy theory about the Morgantown PRT, that evil transit "concept" that relies on electricity:
The PRT service was restored by Wednesday evening.
Students, faculty and staff were able to use the Mountain Line bus service and WVU shuttles while the PRT was out of service.
"Normally, when the PRT shuts down for an extended period of time, shuttles are used to transport between stations," Mazzella said.
Max Carozza, a senior finance student, said he was stuck on the PRT for 30 minutes on the track along Beechurst Avenue.
"The lights flickered, and it shut off," he said. "It slowly died. The PRT voice told us to hang tight."
PRT workers then located the car and led the seven people on the PRT tracks to the Beechurst PRT station.
Devin Novak, a sophomore nursing student, said she waited on the PRT for an hour before she was rescued.
"They said it took so long because a girl was claustrophobic and they needed an ambulance for her," Novak said.
Novak asid [sic] that before being rescued, another student on the PRT tried to pry the door open herself, but was quickly told over the car's intercom not to proceed.
"You could tell something bad was happening," she said.
...the WVU PRT was created to monkey-wrench conventional modes of transit and will be expected to function as a paragon of "gadgetbahn" for as long as they can keep it going.The FTA and Recovery Act are supporting the PRT's modernization program, so by "they" Avidor must mean the Federal Government. Can we quote you, Ken, that you believe the Obama Administration and USDOT Sec. Ray LaHood are anti-transit?
Posted by
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1/11/2012 03:12:00 PM
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Labels: Facepalm, Fact Check, WORST EXPERT IN THE WORLD















