The Antiplannidor

Hey peeps, guess which anti-transit gadfly also opposes Personal Rapid Transit? It's Randall O'Toole.

That's right. The unshakable opponent of planning -- who calls himself "The Antiplanner," and whom every light rail-or-nothing opiner has a voodoo doll of in their sock drawer -- has a new piece in which he vents gallons of sniditude on podcars.

I've read comments by PRT-haters who just assuuuume O'Toole's anti-LRT stance means he's a PRT-lover. But as O'Toole himself notes:

Pretty Ridiculous Transit

...I've argued since 2003 that driverless cars are the reason why PRT, short for personal rapid transit, will never happen.

...PRT has attracted a fanatical following. Even though no PRT system has ever been built, they are convinced it is cheap, fast, convenient, energy efficient, and everything else that ordinary transit is not.
...
While [ULTra PRT] may save Heathrow the cost of bus drivers, this is hardly cheap considering freeways cost as little as $2.5 million per lane mile plus right of way (which probably isn’t included in the $41 million Heathrow cost).
...

While ordinary PRT vehicles are captive to the system, the PRT cultists attracted to my driverless cars article focused on a variant known as dual mode... The problem is that every dual-mode (and PRT) proposal requires a massive investment in new infrastructure.

"Fanatical"! "Cultists"! Klassy. Hey, who does that remind me of? Oh yeah: Ken Avidor.

Yeah, the Ovendoor has been calling us those very names, and others, for years.

So it's especially delicious to also read whom O'Toole turns to as a supporting reference: Avidor himself!

According to users (as reported by an intense PRT skeptic who also happens to be anti-auto), it frequently breaks down.

Ken and Randall sittin' in a tree / s-m-e-a-r-i-n-g! Yes, schadenfreude makes me immature.



gPRT Ken will probably claim O'Toole's PRT hate is phony, and part of The Conspiracy