Apparently it's not long enough

Mock Journalist, Part X

Ken Avidor has made a really amusing addition at the PRT Moondoggie to his anti-personal rapid transit Luddite Catechism -- that's the list of so-called "PRT flops and fiascos" he posts again and again and again and again and...

So anyway, after spinning a quote by Councillor Chris Over of Daventry District (Avidor says it shows Over isn't 'excited' about PRT. The reality: as holder of the Council's Economic, Regeneration & Employment portfolio, Over has been a supporter of pod transport) he re-posts the Catechism.

But I'm guessing he's insecure about the length, because he's extended it, with the additions of:

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The Columbia article is by a Peter Tocco, a former employee at Rouse, the eponymous firm of the late urban planning visionary James Rouse who founded Columbia. It was a "planned new city," envisioned by Rouse to be non-autocentric and rely on bikes, walking and transit. Construction began in the Sixties, the first constituent village opening in 1967. Mr. Tocco's first sentence reads:

[Rouse's] early plans for Columbia called for innovative forms of transit that looked beyond automobile usage. But he couldn't fight the rising tide of automobiles, and his plans were abandoned, one by one.

"Early plans."

One of my sources actually visited Columbia during the period when it was interested in PRT. It was way back in the 1970s. And what was the Nixon (BOOOO!) Administration's involvement in PRT? Answer: the UMTA project, which grew out of the HUD transit reports, which in turn led to Sen. Robert Byrd's Morgantown PRT project. That is, every grant request was being turned down if it wasn't Morgantown.

Update: Tocco himself (because I ask questions like a real journalist!) confirms: Columbia's grant application was made in 1968)

So much for Ken Avidor's idea of "recent," he keeps it at his house in Alameda, CA. It's yet another example of his poor research, and his willingness to publicize anything he can spin into a negative about PRT technology.

Update: Avidor claims Columbia item is 'new to him' (http://bit.ly/aLEP87) -- so why remove it (shrinkage!) from the Luddite Catechism on Aug. 9? (http://bit.ly/czH2QA) hey Ken - coverup much?

His Accidental DumpIn other Avidor nooz, the following Google News alert recently landed in my inbox:

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But the link leads, almost literally, nowhere: Page not found. What gives?

A post that just-so-happens to be titled "Bachmann Promotes Her Next Tele-Townhall Stunt on Breitbart's Website" went up at the Dump Bachmann blog* later on August 5. Significantly, PRT is mentioned nowhere in the story. Meaning that smearing PRT by guilt-by-associating it with Bachmann (and this time the scumbag Breitbart too) is so automatic for Avidor that his first instinct -- with even 100% irrelevant material -- is to post at PRT Moondoggie.

* Motto: "Dumping Bachmann since 2005"



gPRT