Shiny PRT?

(Updated) Regarding incidents at Streetsblog LA and Daily Kos

Editor's note: We continue beta-testing the change to one of the oldest editorial policies of "PRT is a Joke" IS A JOKE. For a limited time, The Name of the Minnesota anti-PRT propagandist will be shown -- although special formatting will be used.

Time for another installment of: What We Learned!

1. Multi-cartoonist Kena Wei (Ken Avidor) didn't know the difference between policy and advocacy -- until I told him. I say it here:

"advocacy of any transportation technology, by anyone, does not determine how a government would use it in the real world. Advocacy outlines the stakes, but does not decide, public policy."

and it comes out here:

"Nothing but rail" is not my "position".

But, it doesn't matter what my "position" is.

It's up to citizens and public officials to decide what transportation is right for their community.

2. Ken doesn't know the difference between advocacy and engineering.

If the PRT guys were really intent on creating their "revolution in sustainable transport", they would put more time into proving it could work instead of arguing at transportation forums and blogs or putting out tons of hype and CGI videos on the web... just do it already. [ellipsis in original]

PRT engineers don't have time to blog and go to transportation forums in the USA. They are doing "it" -- at Heathrow, Uppsala and Masdar. And Ken is not cheering them on every step of the way.

3. He likes how "straw man" sounds, but may not know what one is.

Wow... that big heap of straw men keeps getting bigger and bigger. [ellipsis in original]

Whenever anyone tries to inject some reality into a discussion about PRT, the handful of PRT true believers attack the messengers

Asking him to explain things he wrote are straw men??? And Ken has attacked so many messengers, there's a Wanted poster of him at every UPS Store in America.

4. Ken thinks he is clairvoyant.

And the argument that a city can be served better by PRT than conventional transit could be tested with a peer-reviewed computer model... but, the PRT guys won't do that because such a model would prove that real world circumstances (vandalism, weather etc.) would make a complex system such as PRT infeasible in an urban area. [ellipsis in original]

In order to know this, wouldn't Ken had to have already run such a model himself? That's rhetorical.


5. You be the judge! Here are remarks Ken made about a number of PRT systems, in context.

Zoom

Now take the poll!


Seriously: if Ken Avidor meant "Polish PRT?" as an innocent comment, why is he evading giving any explanation?

History: What Ken once said about a different place in the world -- "Strange place Dubai... lot's [sic] of weird stuff happens there" [ellipsis in original] (sneering at a plan for an indoor ski slope -- that was actually built!)

Plus, he got Dubai mixed up with Abu Dhabi.

gPRT