“PRT Is A Joke” IS A JOKE !

Three little words

2012-05-04T19:28:00.000-07:00

In which I report on a City of San Jose memo about its Automated Transit Network study, and correctly predict what words Ken Avidor would focus on.

Related:

The 6 Surrenders Of Vukan R. Vuchic

gPRT

Possibly the funniest Laffable Luddite post...

2012-03-31T17:01:00.001-07:00

...Since the last one! Ken Avidor's headline BLARES --

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

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

The Laffable Luddite says:

"He's covering monorail!"

"He's NOT covering monorail!

He then goes on to breathlessly quote all the stuff I reported - a week ago - at PRTJJ's sister blog, "This Week In Precipitation" (TWIP, The Editor's Blog of The PRT NewsCenter™). And what does "quietly whispering" mean? How is posting something in a normal size font 'whispering'?

For some reason, Ken has a bug up his butt about my not reporting it at Examiner.com, as though some massive pipeline of Seattle Transportation News has been filtered to omit mention of the Great PRT Conspiracy.

News Flash -- I don't report anything on Examiner.com anymore, not in over TWO years, which was when I decided Examiner to be pretty much a joke as a citizen journalism umbrella.

My material is still there, it's still damn good stuff, but I haven't been adding to it, and I won't be.

Examiner doesn't really vet anything anyone writes. Content-wise there is no difference reading an Examiner-branded blog as opposed to something on Blogger or Tumblr -- quality depends on the author, being part of Examiner adds no value. And so in the last couple of years Examiner has become, in my opinion, a home for a lot of right wing nutjobs. Why would I want to be part of that brand?

I wouldn't, so I don't and I'm not.

Why has Ken Avidor decided to obsess about Examiner? I don't know and really don't care -- although I am amused.

If you want to know you could ask him -- if he allowed "PRT Moondoggie" readers to post comments.

* * *

Ken also writes

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.

revealing (yet again) that he has absolutely no idea what he's talking about. I'm designer and admin for GetThereFast.org, but it's not 'mine.' It is run by a Seattle-area committee as an advocacy/community outreach website about PRT. Therefore MY editorial voice is not present on the page of news links. That GTF takes no position on the CenTran monorail proposal (again, I covered it here) is simply a statement of fact, and we want to stay out of what is, essentially, a political campaign.

As for "finally" acknowledging the existence of the "PRT proposal," I want to extend my apologies to Ken. New posts of news on GTF can lag because it often takes me a while to get to it, since I give PRT NewsCenter most of my time.

Although, Ken, my not having enough time for GTF is really your fault. All your anti-PRT idiocy creates tons of work for me here at "PRT Is a Joke IS A JOKE."

Update 1:

I suppose I should acknowledge the possibility that Avidor thinks he is Valiantly Taking The Fight To The Enemy On His Home Turf. But the way he's gone about it comes across as 'Don't cover PRT your way, cover it MYYYY way.'

Ken, I'm telling you this as a friend -- get some help for the OCD.

Allow comments, Ken! Cluck cluck bawk bawk BAWK!
gPRT

A Certain Demeaner

2012-03-13T22:23:00.000-07:00

Ken Avidor served himself up for us to write about today, with the following tweet. Apparently he just couldn't resist the opportunity to conflate Bachmann's 2003 PRT bill with the current St. Croix River Bridge project.

The one thing has nothing to do with the other -- unless you equate the bipartisan support for the bridge in the MN congressional delegation with the 13 Democrats and 5 Resmuglicans who were pro-PRT in the 2003-04 state senate session.

We'll leave behind the matter of the bridge, since Ken's handlers seem to have helped him find the correct side of that issue. But what of this 'promotion' of PRT by Minnesota Public Radio?

It was a story in MPR's News & Features section. Got that? Not Opinion or Editorial.

In Ken's eyes, if a news story doesn't agree with his propaganda it must be enemy propaganda. That's how author Dan Olson is turned from a reporter into a promoter.

You know, this reminds me of the time Ken Avidor took issue with an article about a possible PRT project in Dubai:

"Personal Rapid Transit" PRT Disinformation Part II and III (Ye Olde PRT Skeptic Blog, 11/5/05)

"Fun"? There was nothing fun about it. Ken wasn't satirical, there was no irony, he employed no pun or other wordplay.

Nope, it was just Ken Avidor suggesting you Google sexy pictures of Zoe Naylor while thinking of a an accomplished business reporter who happens to have the same name.

Far from fun, it was demeaning. Ken Avidor might as well have told journalist Naylor to hold an aspirin between her knees.

Ken makes MPR sad

gPRT

Achtung

2012-02-25T21:29:00.000-08:00

You boys play nice, now.

Archive

Missed Again (2/14/2010)

gPRT

The reason it's called TWITter

2012-02-24T18:54:00.001-08:00

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.

Let's apply the same logic to Metro. Every time the Minneapolis Hiawatha line goes down it means that light rail line is a boondoggle! The Avidor Rule says so!

Also today:

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.

gPRT

Important question marks - UPDATE 1

2012-02-05T12:00:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I answered a tweeted question from @JN_Seattle ("John Niles") about Vectus PRT:

Pretty straightforward.

Yet this a.m. the Laffable Luddite ignores the question marks in Niles's tweet, and jumps to the conclusion:

Which is a good example of the basis of the Hail Mary (Business Plan, Jan. 21, 2012): Ken Avidor needs the reader to NOT click the link, read the referenced tweet, and learn that Niles is just asking me questions, and reveals nothing about his position on pod transit.

The only ways Ken can know Niles's position on pods is -- a) ask him or b) read his mind. We know he hasn't asked him.

The actual purpose of Ken's tweet is a Hidden Ball (ibid): he is repeating his phony linkage of PRT with the Discovery Institute (Today's Provocation, Apr. 15, 2006).

The Deconstruction

1. I don't know John Niles except by reputation. He worked at the Cascadia Center, the Urban Issues think tank housed at Discovery.

2. Wacky Discovery promotes Intelligent Design; wonky Cascadia promotes high speed rail, commuter & DMU rail, Portland-style streetcars, and plug-in cars.

Where Discovery is The Munsters, Cascadia is Marilyn.*

3. We can make an educated guess about Niles: he is either conservative or doesn't care a whit about politics. Political contributions by him in federal or Washington state elections are: zero.

Today Niles is working on an EV-based project at CATES, another Puget Sound-area think tank -- hardly what a drill-now/drill-here Republican would do. And the number of writings on the Web by John Niles on subjects not related to transportation politics is exactly: zero, plus or minus zero.

4. Niles's position on light rail is well known. He's been openly against it, based on the size of the investment and operating subsidy. This can be researched at his website, Global Telematics. Instead, he is for Bus Rapid Transit.

On these stands we part company, since I believe the public nature of transit means The People ought to be able to authorize and subsidize anything it wants, if an electoral majority decides it is worthwhile. And readers of This Week In Precipitation know my distaste for BRT.

5. Niles's only connection with PRT is that his site archives papers written in the 1990s by then-State Rep. Dick Nelson (D-Seattle, an engineering PhD) and Berkeley economist Don Shakow, funded in part by the Bullitt and Medina foundations (extremely reputable Seattle foundations). Nelson and Shakow mention PRT along with a host of noncontroversial proposals.

Ken will say this is enough of a connection. But that 1990s activity did not arise from a vacuum. The concurrent Raytheon PRT program had created expectation of availability of a PRT system to act as a circulator-feeder for light rail. So much so that Sound Transit nee RTA brought PRT under its umbrella, culminating in a $30 million Innovation Fund which, among other things, was to conduct a PRT demonstration. This is the landscape in which the Nelson-Shakow work took place.

6. It is true that Cascadia, and therefore Discovery, sponsored a 2005 public workshop in which PRT was discussed (no policy statements resulted). But if that makes Niles a 'pod person,' then he is also a commuter rail person and a passenger ferry person, since those were the subjects of other meetings in the series. Hardly disreputable.

Conclusions

Update 1:

ALSO TODAY:

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.

Yet Another Luddite Veto - UPDATE 1

2012-02-01T10:00:00.000-08:00

Where is the Minnesota anti-PRT propagandist sticking his nose today? The experimental Modutram personal rapid transit test system in Guadalajara:

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

Why do they do it that way? We don't know, their reasons will come out in due course.

The point is that Ken Avidor doesn't know either. He just ridicules it on Twitter:

And despite Modutram being a design that has been conceived, designed and built by a Mexican university and funded by the government of Mexico, Avidor blogs:

Personal Rapid Transit Pod People Invade Mexico

More locomotion lunacy from the PRT Consulting blog about a Mexican PRT project called Modutram

Source

"Invade"? Right, Ken -- those Mexicans couldn't possibly engineer something high-tech all by themselves.

"Polish PRT?"

Ken Avidor (@Daily Kos)
read the PRTJJ coverage

Update 1:

Don't tell Avidor about this other transport technology that also moves slowly in stations without completely stopping!

gPRT

Business Plan

2012-01-21T16:18:00.002-08:00

One of the most useful things to know when playing defense against Ken Avidor is that his playbook only has a few pages. He has four basic moves:

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.

Avidor's mainstay is the Hidden Ball. Remember when he portrayed the PRT option at Alameda Point as 'environmental regulation-busting', but the 'environmental regulation' turned out to be an anti-density law -- and therefore anti-Smart Growth? That was the Hidden Ball.

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.

Or the time Ken tried to link an Ultra board member's company to responsibility for a multi-fatality train accident, but in reality another company had been found culpable? That was the Hidden Ball too, as was "recently a snowstorm shut down the [Morgantown] PRT."

What is great -- I count on it -- is that Ken runs these same plays over and over even though they never work.

One of the earliest examples of Hidden Ball was 7 years ago. Read this 2005, pre-PRT Is A Joke IS A JOKE writeup at the NewsCenter, "See How They Distort". In it we took apart Ken's phony claim:

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]

It's as if Ken thought no one would think to look up "risk factors" investment on the Internet and see there are over 25 million hits.

Return of the Hidden Ball

So when Ken Avidor posted this yesterday at The PRT Moondoggie blog, I immediately recognized the play:

Ten Years Ago: Taxi 2000 Corporation's Business Plan

...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.

This is a variation of Hidden Ball I call The Smathers, after the possibly apocryphal story of the politician who smeared Sen. Claude Pepper by relying on the audience not knowing the meaning of words:

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.

The story here isn't the Taxi 2000 business plan decennial, Avidor is keying on the words "Exit Strategy."

Avidor's oldest talking point is that PRT is a scam, a taxpayer ripoff. So even though he is on record as saying

"If those people want to pursue PRT with their own money, that's okay with me"

here he is calling attention to "the money," the search for investors, and to "Exit Strategy," to distort the meaning of "Exit Strategy" in order to make it sound suspect.

I get Ken's subtext in full, he means: Taxi 2000 planned to get taxpayer dollars to build a PRT system, and the original private investors would cash out and run, leaving the public holding The Bag.

It's as if Ken thinks anyone couldn't just Google investor exit strategy definition and get over 62 million hits, such as:

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.

That is to say, investors in startups want to know when they'll realize a return on investment -- which, like it or not (and I don't really), is the whole point of venture capitalism as now practiced.

What we know: Every 'good' startup business plan includes an investor exit strategy.

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.'

gPRT Wall Street Weak

He's green until he's not

2012-01-20T12:00:00.000-08:00

My fellow environmentalist and bicycling enthusiast Ken Avidor (Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA) is still trying to exercise his Luddite Veto on the Subcontinent (Amritsar, Punjab, India) -- all because the local authorities worked with an Indian consultant to select a transit system that is right for community needs.

Not surprisingly, those needs are like those in cities all over the world, and have been defined:

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)

This is the lack of transit investments problem.

Two And Three Wheelers in India reported Amritsar had 9,903 auto rickshaws, which is 913 per 100,000 population. It's the third-highest in the whole country (iTrans, New Delhi, June 2009). This is the local point-emissions problem.

Amritsar is also a city where streets are dominated by, in addition to auto rickshaws, pedicabs and other types of paratransit. All together they constitute a 94% mode share of all passenger travel in the city (Arora, A., Jawed, F. and Jarnhammar, M., Green and Pro-Poor? The Case of Informal Transport in India, 2010). This is the congestion problem.

Furthermore, the community is acting to ban vehicular traffic from the area of the 18th Century Golden Temple, in order to protect the historic structure's marble and gold walls from exhaust fumes. This is the pollution/emissions and historic preservation problem.

An electric mass transit system is what the local authorities have decided should be a step in addressing these problems, and they have chosen pod transit. There is too much congestion for expanded bus transit, which would also mean emissions, and there is not enough right of way for rail.

But Ken Avidor doesn't care about letting Amritsar make their own decisions. This is what he says:

...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.

Source

Ken wants Amritsar to maintain its dependence on rickshaws and buses -- he doesn't care if they have congestion and emissions. And in his PRT Moondoggie blog he uses it as an excuse to write -- yet again -- about the Cincinnati "Skyloop," which he continues to think was an actual PRT project rather than a technology screening and study that was part of an official public planning process.

Avidor also takes the opportunity to imply Skyloop (which, again, did not go past the 2001 study phase) is to blame for the current lack of progress in Cincinnati installing streetcars. Apparently electric transit is OK for America, not Amritsar.

It's a new chapter in an old, old story -- Ken (white American) thinks he knows what's better for the people of Amritsar (Sikh, Arora, Khatri, Saini, Kamboh, Sansi, Charzati, Punjzati, Dhaighar, Sarin, and Bharin Punjabis) than their own democratically elected officials and highly educated planners.

Of course, in the past Ken has confused Dubai with Abu Dhabi, and went looking for the Arab Times in Texas.

So maybe he thinks Amritsar is in Indiana.

Archives:

1. "Polish PRT?"

2. Another Luddite Veto (2011)

3. Short & Stout! (2010)

4. Against it before he was for it (2008)

gPRT Policy analysis beats art college YET AGAIN!

Fire Bad - UPDATE 3

2012-01-11T15:12:00.003-08:00

Like OMG there was a big gigantic malfunction today involving the Morgantown PRT! Let's go to the coverage:

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-

--oh hold on. That's not the story about Morgantown. That's one of the other 3,690 hits for 'electrical fire' currently being returned by Google News.

Courtesy of Laffable Luddite Ken Avidor, the Morgantown story is:

Another WVU Personal Rapid Transit Electrical Fire

...

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.

While the crackpot-free version goes something like this:

WBOY-12 Morgantown Jan. 11, 2012

Electrical Fire Interrupts PRT Service at WVU

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.

Etc. etc.

The point, of course, is that electrical fires are common throughout the world and not inherent to Personal Rapid Transit. Today's fire was in the substation, the vehicles and track were not involved.

Ken Avidor is basically criticizing PRT for relying on electricity.

Update 1:

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."

Update 2:

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.

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.

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 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?

Google News: Trains get stuck all the time.

But Ken never attacks them as 'infeasible' or 'dangerous'; #ModeBigot.

Update 3:

(3/14/12) - 21,000 in Boston lose power due to transformer fire. Hey Avidor, maybe this is connected to the Raytheon PRT test center that used to be in Marlborough!

gPRT

Wahhh

2011-12-31T22:00:00.000-08:00

What's that sound? No, not Baby New Year approaching -- it's the PRT Is a Joke IS A JOKE archives, ringing with the echoes of the past 12 months of Ken Avidor's hysterical, often paranoid crackpottery.

So take another look at his 2011 babblings as exposed herein, and have another chuckle.

Let's close the year, however, by putting Avidor's rantings in perspective. The zeitgeist was protest, in which The 99% of many nations began to push back against corporate and military thugs.

Not only does Avidor's laffable Luddite propaganda pale in comparison, his ongoing claim of a vast PRT-based anti-transit conspiracy is as Opposite as Wall Street's delusion that Poor People somehow tricked the banks and Alan Greenspan into giving them bad mortgages.

Ken is so extreme that he tried to interest the Occupy movement in joining his Luddite holy war.

With that said -- have a Happy and Propaganda-Free New Year!

Please consider a gift to help PRT NewsCenter

and Wiseline Institute defray basic web expenses

gPRT

It Takes A Luddite

2011-12-19T08:00:00.000-08:00

The holiday season is such a hectic time, isn't it? Why, I'm so busy with various preparations that I have to save my blogging for late at night. This very post -- despite being published at 8 am Pacific time -- is being written a little after 1 am Pacific time.

Which is inconvenient, since for the past couple weeks I've also been working on a sorta-investigative piece over at This Week In Precipitation, the PRT NewsCenter blog. Go check it out, it also published at 8 am.

The research for the story required a little more time than I had. So last week I sent out an SOS on Twitter:

...and so on.

My intention was to get Ken Avidor to help me out by doing some research into @cymply -- the Twitter handle of Graham Cockroft of MaglevMovers.com -- for me.

I had to retweet the same group of tweets several times before Ken picked up on it, but eventually I was rewarded with this post at the PRT Moondoggie blog.

Thanks Ken! I just want to give you full credit in this space for ferreting out that salacious item. I knew it would be right up your alley.

Update 1: Ken Avidor is rapidly becoming the go-to guy on Portuguese RV campgrounds

gPRT

Another Luddite Veto

2011-12-15T11:40:00.000-08:00

Today's Ken Avidor/Dump Bachmann coverage of Personal Rapid Transit in Amritsar, Punjab is pretty good -- if you like omission of balancing quotes, lack of cultural context, and no content about Krazy Eyes herself. It's a bait-and-switch.

That's right, the Laffable Luddite blogger who recently mocked an Indian newspaper's use of "operationalized" as though it were not a real word is now Extremely Concerned about shopkeepers in Amritsar who

apprehend that the system would adversely hit their business.

The foundation stone was laid outside the Hall Gate where shopkeepers raised anti-government slogans and staged dharnas. [emphasis not in original]

Ken is Extremely Concerned because -- oh, did I mention the screaming headline on his post?

Shopkeepers in India Are Fasting in Protest Against the Personal Rapid Transit Boondoggle

...
A dharna is "a fast held at the door of an offender in India as an appeal for justice."

Not the first time, pRT [sic] has provoked a mass protest, read; "Pod Off! Residents oppose Daventry PRT scheme".

Here's the cultural context: dharnas actually are a prevalent form of protest in India, found in situations major and minor, in both the public and private spheres. Dharnas are not extreme last resorts like hunger strikes in the West because, Ken, India is a different culture. To see what I mean, just look up "dharna" in Google News.

And, true to form, Avidor also fails to look for articles explaining the Government's response to the merchant's concerns. Avidor doesn't do it, so I will:

[Dep. Chief Min.] Badal said that this new technology transport system not only facilitate [sic] the pilgrims coming to Golden Temple but also proved to be beneficial for the local business, as it would attract more tourists to the city. He said that as the main station of this PRT system would be in Hall Gate bazaar of the city, thus, it would multiply the business opportunities for local vendors. "Moreover, the POD would run at height more [sic] than the nearby shops, the system would provide traffic and hindrance free access to these shops", he added. Source

Avidor also pretends to weep over how advertising on PRT structures "Would be a hideous visual scar on the historic city"...

...as though Amritsar is not already a massive urban area that has -- yes -- buildings as tall or taller than PRT, and advertising:

How are each day's thousands of pilgrims supposed to get through congestion like this? Avidor doesn't want to let the local authorities decide. Flickr Photo: rwoan

And NO RELEVANCE TO BACHMANN, other than the usual 'she got her cooties on it when she was a state senator.'

Bottom line: the Laffable Luddite is once again trying to interfere in local decisionmaking, just as he has in England, Alameda and Richmond, California. He claims PRT is a right wing conspiracy, yet the only reason he knows about any pod transit project in any country is because planning for them is occurring in public view. Whether they proceed is up to each locality. Ask Ken Avidor why he cares so much, and make him be factual and consistent.

IMPORTANT ARCHIVES:

The year Bachmann sponsored PRT in the Minnesota Senate, she was one of 5 Republicans and 13 Democrats to do so. Ken Avidor never mentions the Democrats.
Old Laffable Luddite blog "Now Bogus On Two Continents" (Daventry, England)
Avidor claims to live in Alameda, accidentally sides with anti-Smart Growth NIMBYs
"Luddite Fires His Loose Cannon" (Richmond, CA)
Avidor claims PRT is right wing scam, but he promoted candidacy of anti-PRT Teabagger.

Ken, what did you mean by:

"Polish PRT?"

Ken Avidor (@Daily Kos)
read the PRTJJ coverage

UPDATE 1: The Amritsar pod public transit system would be used by the more than a million religious pilgrims a year who visit the Golden Temple. An Avidor fan equates them with rich people crossing cities in helicopters in order to avoid seeing slums:

UPDATE 2: (12/15/2011) Today a Ken tweet leads to one inescapable conclusion -- he believes transit competes for fares against taxis and rickshaws* ONLY IN INDIA:

Also that the planning/decisionmaking roles of the local Amritsar government and Punjab state government are not worth mentioning -- on Planet Avidorpia the "British Automated Pod Corporation" is doing it all!

"#occupy," Ken? Really?

UPDATE 3: (12/16/2011) Desperate to blunt today's NY Times coverage of Amritsar, Ken is now blogging and tweeting about comments by a grumpypants Heathrow traveler who thought 25 mph "felt" too slow, didn't like that the pods were busy, didn't like emergency exit hatches, and didn't like that the pod's windows didn't let him look directly forward or behind. Ken also issues a call for an:

I don't know what experts would ever satisfy Avidor, since he doesn't want a state department of transportation involved.

Irony of The Year: Ken Avidor is putting stock in the opinion of someone who didn't like riding on his pod with strangers:

Ken has always tried to claim people who don't like riding with strangers love PRT.

Leave Laffy Alone!

gPRT

* Taxis and autorickshaws burn petrol, Ken!

It's a two-fer

2011-12-04T17:17:00.000-08:00

He couldn't get a quote right to save his life

It's hard to pick which category to file this one under -- Fact Check or Worst Expert In The World.

Remember when context-challenged Ken Avidor claimed snow shut down the Morgantown PRT, but it was really a power failure caused by an automobile crash? This is like that. But it's also like the time he claimed I thought my Twitter feed is 'private.'

A screengrab is worth a thousand words:

It's a two-fer! Not only is Ken Avidor caught in the act of taking someone out of context, it also reveals he doesn't know 'new Twitter' shows you the thread right there!

UPDATE 1: He removes the context AGAIN! (12/14/2011)

I tweeted:

...and Avidor quotes it as:

Is Avidor content to leave it here, and limit the damage to himself (@GottaLaff has over 18,000 Followers, versus Avidor's 501)? Of course not, he continues the kerfuffle -- finishing it off with an arrogant flourish:

(Firedoglake? Why doesn't Ken ever promote the time he got his clock cleaned at Democratic Underground?)

Thanks for this Christmas present Ken , it's exactly what I wanted!

Leave Laffy Alone!
gPRT

Mr. Accuracy's Thanksgiving Weekend

2011-11-29T17:48:00.001-08:00

Ken "Mr. Accuracy" Avidor (the guy who thought Google Maps predicts the future) has his panties in a twist over how the PRT industry uses the word innovative.

Need I say more?

gPRT

Intolerance - UPDATE 1

2011-11-03T12:00:00.000-07:00

Luddite fires his loose cannon, Part II

It was so predictable. No sooner had I alerted Ken Avidor to the existence yesterday of the Richmond Confidential's human interest piece on Cybertran's Eugene Nishinaga, than the Laffable Luddite picked it up. And today he blogs about it: "Faith-Based Pie-in-the-Sky Boondoggle Cybertran Partner's Right-Wing, Anti-Abortion Tweets"

Now, we know Ken shares our distaste for fundamentalist Christians, since it is a fixture of his work with Dump Bachmann (motto: "Dumping Bachmann since 2005 or possibly 2004").

But "Faith-Based Pie-in-the-Sky Boondoggle Cybertran Partner's Right-Wing, Anti-Abortion Tweets"takes him into smeary territory that is darker and intolerant. Because the Richmond Confidential article isn't about the right-wing partner (Allen Payton), the focus is on Eugene Nishinaga:

CyberTran: Small start-up has big dreams
By: Alexis Kenyon | October 31, 2011 – 4:05 pm

For Eugene Nishinaga, the chief technical officer at CyberTran International, ultralight rail is nothing short of a spiritual awakening.

"I was actually driving on the highway, right outside the [Richmond] field station," he said, "totally coincidence — and I felt the call of God."

The call was the impetus for a major shift in Nishinaga's life. At the time, he was a respected research and development manager for BART with nearly 40 years experience in transit. But in 2008, Nishinaga, 58, quit his job to take a position at CyberTran International -- an ultralight rail start-up based out of UC Berkeley's Richmond Field Station.

Avidor needs to discredit Nishinaga because the man is an expert in conventional transit who is now trying to make innovative technology a reality. Therefore Avidor uses the old bait-and-switch -- in the headline promising Payton, but leading with Nishinaga. Equating them.

I don't know what Nishinaga's political views are, but the way his religious views are characterized in the story (he felt a 'calling', he wanted to become a pastor and join the ministry) is so neutral as to reveal nothing that is inherently fundamentalist OR liberal.

The point is that Avidor doesn't know what Nishinaga's ideology is either. But because of Cybertran, Avidor goes ahead and smears Nishinaga anyway, because he needs Nishinaga to be just like Payton.

Today we also see Ken attempt to practice the journalism basic known as 'establishing a pattern':

It is not surprising to find faith-based jargon among supporters of Personal Rapid Transit. PRT is essentially a faith-based concept - check out Higherway PRT brought to you by the inventor of the Savior Cycle.

But the pattern here is that the person is religious, not how they are religious. Avidor is just indiscriminately (or discriminately) putting all religious people in the same basket.

He doesn't know anything about Higherway inventor Tad Winiecki, he just sees another Christian like Nishinaga who, in his mind, must be just like Allen Payton. And, presumably by extension, just like Michele Bachmann.

Except I happen to know that Tad Winiecki is definitely not like Bachmann:

On March 21st, 2007, Tad Winiecki said:

I have noticed what I consider far too much name calling, attributed motives by association, and denigration of opponents in most public forums and especially blogs related to partisan politics. I was trained to be a scientist so this is against my usual way of thinking. It bothers me when Republicans refer to the "democrat party" rather than the "Democratic Party". It makes me want to call them the "publican party"...
On June 19th, 2007, Tad Winiecki said:

"He who oppresses the poor to increase his wealth and he who gives gifts to the rich – both come to poverty." Proverbs 22:16 (NIV)

Corporate welfare – gifts to the rich – bothers me. A bad example in Washington State (and many similar cases elsewhere) was tearing down the Kingdome in Seattle and building a new stadium. It cost us poor taxpayers and benefitted rich team owners and players. Uneconomic deals with extraction industries such as oil companies are also giving to the rich. The Republican Medicare prescription drug plan was a gift to rich drug companies. We could go on and on, couldn’t we?

Ken could have known this too. But he is not duly diligent.

Religious intolerance. Somewhat ironic for someone who is waging a holy war against new transit technology.

Earlier:
The Luddite Veto (September)

Luddite fires his loose cannon (October)

Update 1:

PRT Consulting reports Nishinaga has left CyberTran

gPRT

Circular

2011-10-10T09:00:00.000-07:00

Anyone (such as, oh I don't know -- Current TV Urban Mobility and Dominic Blackwell Cooper?) who wants to see how Ken Avidor argues against personal rapid transit, check out his latest blog entry at the PRT Moondoggie:

Sunday, October 9, 2011
U of M's Center For Transportation Studies Wants MnDOT to Waste $1.4 million on PRT Study

The Humphrey School's Ferrol Robinson is calling it ART, but it's the same old PRT. You can download the silly report at the CTS website.

Bottom line:
The budget to complete a feasibility study and related outreach and education efforts is estimated at $1.4 million, and the anticipated study duration is two years.
This would be a total waste of money.

Other states have wasted money on feasibility studies for PRT. MnDOT can just look up these reports:

New York State (PDF) 2011

New Jersey (PDF) 2007.

OKI Central Loop project - 2001

Here's the conclusion of the OKI report on PRT (PDF):
Personal Rapid Transit

Due to the uncertainty of the technology and costs, Personal Rapid Transit (Taxi 2000) is not recommended as preferred technology [sic, emphasis not in original] for the loop circulator. The Committee encourages Taxi 2000 to continue to develop the design and construct a full-scale test track to address critical questions regarding engineering design, operational feasibility and cost.
Of course, all the "critical questions" remain unanswered because they cannot be answered without a true PRT system in revenue service. But many of the critical questions could be answered by a peer-reviewed study - this study should not be done by MnDOT, but by experts in the urban studies, transportation and engineering fields.

UPDATE: There's also this 2010 study for PRT in Ithaca, NY.

Calling a report "silly" is pretty much the extent of Ken's analytical abilities. But why is he afraid to have the Minnesota Department of Transportation examine a transit technology? Because that agency already has a PRT program (started under GOP governor Pawlenty and continuing under DFL's Dayton) that is not biased against the technology, so that's no good to Ken .

No, Ken 's going to claim PRT feasibility studies are a waste of money. Why bother, he seems to say, lookit all these other feasibility studies. One of the three he cites, the New York one, isn't even a feasibility study -- it's a paper by a Master of Social Work on the subject of how senior citizens might benefit from a personalized public transit system.

The OKI report is a typical Avidor talking point, he keeps citing it despite being conclusively refuted.

And the New Jersey feasibility study is typical of all studies of emerging technologies -- there is by definition insufficient performance data due to their emerging nature.

The New Jersey study notes where there is insufficient data and recommends further efforts to obtain it because it is practicing objective full disclosure. The exercise of full disclosure doesn't prove or disprove anything, and is certainly not a valid basis for arguing those further efforts "would be a total waste of money."

Saying something is insufficiently proven, then campaigning against getting proof so you can continue arguing it is unproven, is circular -- a Ken Avidor hallmark. It's one of two circular arguments today, the other being opposing a $1.4 million feasibility study as a waste of money, but then proposing another study that would -- presumably -- cost money as well.

gPRT

Luddite fires his loose cannon

2011-10-03T12:00:00.000-07:00

We can't think of any other reason Ken Avidor would need to smear Richmond City Council progressives such as Dr. Jeff Ritterman, so the only reason, the Single Issue, is Personal Rapid Transit.

Apparently realizing his attack on Richmond, California's support for CyberTran conflicts with his Only Right Wingers Support PRT talking point, Avidor has doubled down on the smear.

Now he's blogging that the liberals on the Richmond city council aren't real liberals. No, apparently they're:

Self-described "progressive" members of the Richmond, California City Council
Source

And to deepen the smear, Ken uses the tried and true Sarah Palin tactic, Questionin' The Associations. In Ken Avidor's universe, progressive Jeff Ritterman is a "progressive" (in airheadquotes) because of the involvement of one Allen Payton.

It's Ken's same old Cooties talking point -- he says if you're for PRT you're Just Like Bachmann, you're for Bachmann's Boondoggle, because she got her cooties on it in 2004. Never mind the DFL (Democratic)-dominated bipartisan agreement on PRT.

What Avidor means is: Councilman Ritterman's support for new transit technology means nothing because I say it has GOP cooties -- in fact it means Ritterman isn't a real progressive.

Yet inconsistent Ken (and his Twitter proxies who pretend to miss the point) remains in favor of light rail despite it being infested by Heritage Foundation founder Paul Weyrich's cooties. It's Ken's standard, not mine.

Not only does Ken Avidor want veto power over your local transit policies, he's also annointed himself the go-to litmus tester to vet your elected officials for you.

What a dick-tator.

Update 1 - Ken claims 2011 GOP-Green connection:

But the blog post "http://t.co/eb5eAKiU" contains no mention of Greens (23:09 PDT).
I don't care for U.S. Greens -- not enough experience in governance -- but that doesn't mean they deserve to be lied about.

Update 2 (10/7) - He continues to push the Conservative Cooties angle in attempt to shame California Democratic elected officials. Basically, whether you call it a hotel project, economic development, or whatever, Ken Avidor is opposing transit-oriented development in Richmond.

• Archive: Against it before he was for it -- Avidor sides with opponents of Smart Growth in Alameda

He continues to try to suck up to Current TV (after attacking it) in the Comments:

Only Avidor would call realism "dampening expectations." The reality is that ULTra's India partner is proceeding with a system in dense Amritsar, in the state of Punjab.
Also, there is no nasty political battle in Richmond over Cybertran. The city is pursuing a lobbying effort, any controversy will be due to Avidor (or other out-of-town proxies) creating one.

gPRT

On the occasion of the approval of an Amritsar PRT

2011-09-29T22:00:00.000-07:00

Today we take note of the Punjab Infrastructure Development Board's approval of an urban PRT for the city of Amritsar, India.

Let's see what Ken Avidor the Minnesota anti-PRT propagandist has said about Amritsar. Please welcome back Mr. Side By Side Comparison:

Avidor sez:	Meh:
With only "revenue service trials" at Heathrow completed, ULTra has teamed up with Fairwood India to propose building an ambitious PRT system in Amritsar, India. "The Personal Rapid Transport (PRT) – developed by our ULTra PRT, UK – is a revolutionary new transportation system, which has been operationalized in London (Heathrow airport) after 20 years of development." "Operationalized"?	Yes, Ken, "operationalized." It's a word, the past participle of operationalize, meaning to make operational. I know what this is! This is like that one time, when your only comment about the M.I.S.T.E.R. PRT was "Polish PRT?" -- isn't it, Ken? They speak English in India, Ken, English is one of India's two official languages. You might have heard of a little thing called the Raj?
The map for the Amritsar PRT is here. There is no indication that the citizens of Amritsar had any input in creating the route and the proposed destinations on the map. There has already been criticism that the PRT project "would harm historic Walled City of Amritsar and would hamper tourism in the city.	He's pulling it out of his butt. He has no idea what public input had occurred or was planned, or what Indian law requires. We can pretty much count on it being different from how we do it in America since, you know, it's a different country. Actually, the whole purpose of the PRT project is to serve some of the 100,000 religious pilgrims a week who visit (some might say tour) the city's world-famous Golden Temple. How could a low-profile transit system possibly get in the way of that?
One reason that PRT never goes anywhere is the PRT guys never engage the public in any meaningful way. Source Dec. 4, 2010	It's not the job of "the PRT guys" to engage the public, "the PRT guys" don't make the decisions. Officials of the various state and city jurisdictions are the ones who lead the process, they are answerable to their citizens. I'm going to assume whatever public input regulations they have were followed, since India is the world's most biggest democracy.

We know what kind of public engagement Ken likes. He likes it when the citizens are angry about PRT, because that's the output of his international Luddite propaganda campaign, waged in website comment forums and in the op-ed pieces he has gotten published from time to time.

Ken loves when citizens get angry about PRT, and I'm sure he's helped stir it up. When the District government of Daventry, England was planning PRT, Ken gleefully posted and reposted the public's negative, "pod off" reaction to the project (See? Governments do engage the public about PRT). When I was doing background research on the Daventry planning process, I communicated with a District official who said they had received anti-PRT cartoons. Gee, I wonder who sent those.

An angry populace is also no doubt what Ken was hoping for when he was agitating against the PRT initiative by the municipal government of Winona, Minnesota. A centerpiece of his campaign involved drawing attention to local Teabagger opposition to PRT, in the form of Teabag city council candidate Joshua Chasco. Nobody disrupts a town hall meeting like Teabaggers.

Teabaggers disrupt town hall meeting on health care reform, 2009

gPRT

The Luddite Veto

2011-09-24T20:00:00.000-07:00

Something I've had a chance to write a lot about lately is the subject of transit as a public good -- meaning it's a service delivered by the public, not private, sector of the economy.^{1 2}

The public is highly familiar with the effects transit lines and stations have on land use and the community fabric. It is this public interest that has made transit a public good that is very much controlled at the local level. Elected representatives and the agencies who work for them are responsible for planning, operating and maintaining our transit systems for all.

Transit is a highly visible and much discussed subject in our cities; transit attracts as much community attention as public safety, schools and property taxes.

Yet Ken Avidor does not respect the decisions that come out of these local processes. Correction -- he only respects local decisionmaking when it decides against personal rapid transit.

He attacked consideration of PRT in Daventry, England even though the public process led to the planning process being stopped.
He attacked consideration of PRT in Winona, Minnesota until federal funding applications were rejected by the local member of Congress -- even to the point of promoting a Tea Party city council candidate.
As regular readers remember, he went so far as to claim Alameda, California residency to get a letter published by a news blog, and accidentally (I assume) wound up on the side of residents opposed to smart growth.
Update 1- And he continues to call PRT a scam and boondoggle even as he revisits the unrealized 2001-02 Cardiff ULTra plan. Avidor ignores that it was another public process, and ended in local authorities deciding not to go forward, not spending £15 million in grants. No scam. No boondoggle.

Such has been the central part of Ken Avidor's (possibly) decades-long anti-PRT strategy: meddle in other communities' affairs.³ This is the action of someone who doesn't respect or trust citizens' abilities to make their own decisions -- Ken Avidor, the world's worst 'expert' at anything, wants veto power over your transit decisions.

And now today he's meddling in the affairs of Richmond, California:

Tragic Waste of Taxpayers' Dollars on Gadgetbahn in Richmond, California

...The latest suckers to fall for the gadgetbahn flim-flam is Richmond, California:
The City Council will spend $20,000 to lobby for a federal transportation grant to help light-rail company CyberTran develop 13 ultralight rail stations throughout the city — a transit system, in the words of city leaders and CyberTran’s CEO, that would be clean, efficient, and create 20,000 jobs in the next decade.
And where is the $$$ going?
[City Councilman Dr. Jeff] Ritterman went to Washington D.C. with CyberTran’s team this July to lobby for the federal transportation funding. The $20,000 approved by the city Tuesday will go to the law firm Manatt, Phelps & Phillips, which will seek infrastructure funding from the Federal Transit Administration’s Surface Transportation Program.

See, when a city says Yes to PRT it's because their local planners and democratically elected leaders are suckers!

Three things here:

1. How does Ken think you get federal funds? I know, he doesn't know: he doesn't even know the difference between grants and earmarks. One of the ways you do it is you hire a firm with federal expertise; a partner in Manatt Phelps is Mickey Kantor (D) -- you know, Bill Clinton's (D) Commerce Secretary Mickey Kantor. This makes Richmond's proposal stronger, and Ken hates that.

2. In the cosmic scheme of things, nothing is further from "tragic" than a city investment of $20,000 in an attempt to get 20,000 jobs. A reason Richmond is working with CyberTran (a frequent target of Avidor wrath) is that it is a local Richmond business. Ken, on the other hand, is a couple thousand miles away in Minnesota.

3. And who are the people Ken is calling "suckers"? Well, the bio of Councilman Jeff Ritterman (D) says, among other things, that he's a cardiologist, was a VISTA volunteer, and has organized and delivered medical supplies to victims of apartheid in South Africa and to refugees in Central America and Iraq. Ritterman is the one who introduced Richmond's resolution of solidarity with Wisconsin public employees. Wow Ken, you found a real villain lurking behind PRT!

Another example of a civic-minded progressive -- and a Democrat⁴ -- working for PRT. Ken Avidor keeps linking Michele Bachmann to PRT as though she invented it; but she has done zero for PRT in Congress. The last Republican to do anything federal for PRT was that liberal Nixon.

Archive (2007): Ken Avidor calls CyberTran's president "a cybertranny"

(What 'cybertranny' means)

Update 2 - Avidor thinks a host of California Democrats, including Sen. Boxer and Rep. Miller, are "suckers" like Jeff Ritterman

gPRT

Notes

3. The other part of his strategy is Shaming Liberal Opinionmakers Who Dare Support or Report Favorably On PRT, like Debbie Cook (D). Recent examples include Josh Marshall, Al Gore's Current TV, and 350.org
4.

Great Mileage

2011-09-22T20:33:00.000-07:00

"See, in my line of work you got to keep repeating things over and over and over again for the truth to sink in, to kind of catapult the propaganda." - George W. Bush

Tell me, what does "No need to ride with strangers" mean to you?

In the context of Personal Rapid Transit, it is describing a fact of the service concept -- when transit service is on demand, a trip starts when you enter the station and select a destination, board a pod and go. People ahead of you are in their pods and don't have to wait for you, and your pod doesn't have to wait for others. Whether you know them or not is immaterial. If you're at your neighborhood station you might know the travelers in the other pods, but otherwise the odds are good that you won't. This is what it means.

To Ken Avidor it means something else: People don't like to ride with strangers.

Let's just tell it like it is. What Ken is doing here is trying to smear PRT with another Ick Factor (like PRT is dirty and PRT=Bachmann). He's implying PRT fans are people who don't care for other people, are trying to scare people away from transit, or trying to appeal to classists, ageists, racists, etc.

Ken 's little paraphrase would be fine if it just stopped there, but it wouldn't be our Ken if he stopped there. Ken takes People don't like to ride with strangers and attributes it to others.

It's gone from a paraphrase to a quote, those are quotation marks. The group Minnesota 350 is holding a sustainability event this Saturday, part of the worldwide Moving Planet day, and Citizens For PRT is participating. Ken wants to try and shame MN 350 into disassociating itself from CPRT. Lookit what the bad PRT people say! says Ken. He even provides a photo, the Twitpic link. Only, that photo only proves he is the Great Misquoter:

What, he's hoping no one actually looks at it?

This would be a minor amusement, except for that Ken has been pulling this same trick for 8 years.

Apr. 23, 2003 in Pulse Of The Twin Cities:
[gives no reference.]

Jul. 13, 2004, at Car Free Cities: The biggest myth the PRT proponents spread around is that people don't like to ride with "strangers". [gives no reference. At this point he's just quoting one word though.]

Jan. 2005 at Light Rail Now: PRT proponents can say things that the highway boosters could never say, such as "people don't like to ride with strangers". [gives no reference. Now the quote is a whole phrase.]

Apr. 17, 2005 at Mobjectivist: When Councilman Dean Zimmermann testified for Mark Olson's PRT bill (HF1174) in the Minnesota House Local Government Committee March 9th 2005, he said "With PRT you don't have to ride with strangers." This is the audio link:
http://www.house.leg.state.mn.us/audio/ls84/locpol03092005.asx [This should be definitive, right? I mean, it's audio! Except Ken gets wrong both the quote and the context. At 3:15:20, what Zimmerman really says is:
"You have the same relationship with this sky cab that you would to an ordinary taxi cab, in that you get in it, you ride it with yourself or your family, you're not riding with strangers. And when you get to your destination you don't look back and say 'now what am I going to do with that big hunk of steel?' You just leave it there, and it's available, sitting in the station, ready for the next person to jump in and go."
He's only describing how PRT is like a taxi.]

Jun. 2, 2005 at Transportation Geek: What they will "market" will be more websites with flashy computer graphics and more brochures with anti-transit propaganda saying stuff like "People don''t [sic] like to ride with strangers". [link to image of flyer with quote that doesn't match]

Jun. 6, 2005 at MAP-NP Community Forum: Dean Zimmermann has testified at the Minnesota State Legislature in favor of Rep. Mark Olson''s anti-transit PRT bills saying that "people don''t [sic] like to ride with strangers". [gives no reference, note same typo as Jun. 2, 2005]

Jun. 14, 2005 at PRT Skeptic: Dean has even teamed up with right-wing Republican Mark Olson at the Capitol and Minneapolis City Hall to say wonderful things about the Taxi 2000 Corporation and spread nasty disinformation about buses and trains such as "People don't like to ride with strangers". [gives no reference]

Jul. 25, 2005 at PRT Skeptic: What do you expect from people who are fond of saying "People don't like to ride with strangers."? [gives no reference]

Aug. 22, 2005 at Seattle P-I (and republished elsewhere): PRT proponents can say things that the highway boosters could never say, such as "People don't like to ride with strangers." [gives no reference]

Jan. 25, 2006 at Detroit Metro Times: PRT proponents can say things that the highway boosters could never say, such as "People don't like to ride with strangers." [gives no reference]

Feb. 7, 2006 at Wikipedia: PRT proponents can say things that the highway boosters could never say, such as "People don't like to ride with strangers." [he was unable to document it, tried to use the Jun. 2, 2005 link]

Apr. 11, 2006 at PRT Skeptic: What do you expect from people who are fond of saying "People don't like to ride with strangers."? [gives no reference]

Jan. 12, 2010 at Democratic Underground: The pod people are always saying PRT is better that reality-based transit because "you don't have to ride with strangers". [includes image with non-matching quote]

And now it's back!

May 20, 2011 at PRT Moondoggie: the PRT hucksters aint [sic] going to give up the fear-mongering about "strangers" on buses and trains

Ken Avidor: the Great Catapulter. How many more miles can he get out of this sleight of hand?

Also: The reality is that PRT ride-sharing is happening

UPDATE: This Avidor post shows how if someone thinks PRT is about not riding with strangers, it's because Ken gave them the idea.

Archives: Ken's opinions about teenagers and Poland

Catapult:

Super mileage:

gPRT

His PRT is made of straw

2011-09-18T22:00:00.000-07:00

Ah. You know Personal Rapid Transit is having a good week whenever a loud NNNNNNNNNNGGGGG sound comes from the direction of Minnesota. That's the sound Ken Avidor gets whenever he starts up the totally analog, hand-cranked calculating machine on which he hammers out his PRT Moondoggie blog attacks against anything resembling transit technology innovation. And here it is now:

Saturday, September 17, 2011
ULTra's Glorified Golf Carts at Heathrow Not "Faster, Better, Cheaper"

For many years, I've had to listen to the PRTistas claim Personal Rapid Transit was "faster, better cheaper" compared to conventional modes of transit. The so-called Heathrow PRT project was supposed to be the proof of those claims... [sic] and it has failed miserably.
…

NNNNNNNNNNGGGGG. The core of this offal is taken from the same tired, old, made-up talking points as always* -- so instead of another dissection, this time I want to make some observations about Avidor's strategic direction. Let's turn to our debunking friend who's fun to be with, Mr. Side-By-Side Comparison:

Ken Avidor blog/claim	Fact check
After many years, delays and enormous piles of hype, the pods of Heathrow are now "officially unveiled"(Reuters): Traveling at speeds up to 40 km/hour (25 mph), after an average wait of just 34 seconds, the system looks like something straight from a science fiction film. 25 mph? Not exactly "rapid". And the 34 second wait? That pretty much dooms their oft-repeated claim that you never have to wait for PRT. Also, a 34 second wait eliminates the possibility that PRT could operate at "nano-second headways" in order to match the capacity of conventional transit. With those pathetic stats, the ULTra pods cannot be seriously considered a viable transit mode for urban areas.	The first PRT study for Heathrow was in 2004, and the go-ahead was given almost exactly 6 years ago. Six years from greenlight, through design, planning, construction, manufacturing, and testing is not a long time for a major civil engineering project that includes the first of a kind product. 25 mph is plenty fast when the vehicle doesn't have to stop until its destination; that speed is close to average speed. As a comparison, when the Hiawatha Light Rail line opened in Minneapolis, its scheduled speed was 21 mph.** Also, no respectable PRT designer says there will be no waiting -- they say 'little or no waiting,' or 'on-demand or brief waiting.' In ULTra, the control system is synchronous, meaning pods are inserted into virtual 'slots' that circulate around the guideway network. Each slot is as long as the minimum interval allowed between pods. What this means is that there is room for roughly 113 slots on the network's 2.36 miles of guideway. There are currently 21 pods, so the system has plenty of unused capacity, which if needed would be met by adding more pods. The current ULTra ridership record is 164 trips in an hour using 18 pods, or a capacity of 656 people moving among the 3 stations. The designed capacity is 500,000 riders per year for this phase. Guideway, pods and riders served will increase should the system expand to the rest of Heathrow.
According to ULTra, the company behind the technology, the 30 million pound ($47 million) development could transport up to 500,000 passengers each year and replace 50,000 shuttle bus journeys. ... The cost of the Heathrow pod project proves that the infrastructure is expensive to build. There are no real-life figures on what it will cost to operate and maintain the pods of Heathrow for a year.	Waaaaait. One of the things Ken is supposed to be showing is that PRT is not "cheaper." $47 million is a lot, but no one ever said PRT would be dirt cheap. Just calling PRT expensive doesn't prove it's not cheaper. To do that he has to compare it to something else. Which he does not do. But I can. Heathrow ULTra is 47/2.36=$19.9 million per mile. Light rail in the U.S. averages "about $35 million per mile."
There is a control room and presumably people who have to monitor the pods. How much that all costs - 3 or 4 million dollars a year for a simple two mile stretch, it's certainly not "cheaper" than taxis or jitneys.	He just pulls "3 or 4 million" out of his butt. But even if Ken's in the ballpark, doesn't that money represent money for jobs rather than hardware? Taxis and jitneys burn fuel, Ken. And each one requires a driver -- presumably not working on a volunteer basis. What's the economy in Avidor's universe based on?
It could be argued that the Heathrow pod "system" is not a true PRT system at all. It has a heavy "bi-directional guideway" that would not fit on the average city street. The Heathrow pod system do not have the elevated stations that are pictured in countless visuals on the web- for example, the enormous, hideous station festooned with advertisements on this webpage. The Heathrow pods have rubber tires and do not circulate like taxis, but instead must be berthed separately so they can charge their batteries. The pods must also back out of their berths - requiring plenty of room.	Sure, you could argue it. But if someone argues that something they oppose isn't a "true" example of that something, it's usually a sign they know they can't win the argument. Ken is defining ULTra as not-PRT in order to be able to continue to claim PRT doesn't exist and is unproven. And for the record, "bi-directional guideway" (2 guideway, one for each direction, on the same support posts) is used at Heathrow where it does fit, and because it would be stupid to go around the end of the runway by more than one route.

That last Ken Klaim™ is what I want to focus on. As I noted, he's trying to parse ULTra, basically nitpicking it. He's hoping the casual reader will take his ULTra-as-outlier argument at face value.

This is the approach he has taken for years when opposing ULTra. Sure, it looks like a car on something resembling a footbridge. Compared to the even-more-futuristic designs of Taxi 2000 and PRT International (which Ken is more familiar with because they are being developed in Minnesota), ULTra looks downright present-day.

Which is the problem for Ken . Because looking present-day, existing and functioning translates into feasibility. Which makes a joke (appropriately enough) out of Ken's Number One Talking Point: "Personal Rapid Transit is an infeasible transportation concept."

Keeping PRT looking infeasible is why Ken Avidor continues to panic-bash the Heathrow transit-pod project. Heathrow is shaping up as the smiling, telegenic poster child for feasibility.

But don't take my word for it. Let's compare ULTra to the official definition of PRT by the Advanced Transit Association:

ATRA sez:	ULTra?
Personal Rapid Transit has all of the following characteristics:
• Direct origin-to-destination service with no need to transfer or stop at intermediate stations.	Check.
• Small vehicles available for the exclusive use of an individual or small group traveling together by choice.	Check!
• Service available on demand by the user rather than on fixed schedules.	Check-a-roony.
• Fully automated vehicles (no human drivers) which can be available for use 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.	ULTra is fully automated, but -- Oops! ULTra is only available 20-22 hours a day, depending on day of the week :( But this is more hours than the Heathrow Express train from London (no service 11:30pm - 5am). So we'll call this one... 'Chec.'
• Vehicles captive to a guideway that is reserved for their exclusive use.	There are no off-ramps from the guideway, so Check!
• Small (narrow and light) guideways, usually elevated but also can be at or near ground level or underground.	Check, check and check!
• Vehicles able to use all guideways and stations on a fully connected PRT network.	Check!
Note that these bullets define characteristics of service and safety only. PRT is technology independent, and manufacturers are free to use any technology they choose.

Note that last thing: "PRT is technology independent, and manufacturers are free to use any technology they choose." All this Avi-steria -- about FROG, little rubber tires, kinds of guideway and stations, everything -- is just a lot of smoke.

He's saying Don't use ATRA's definition of PRT to evaluate ULTra, use MY definition. What is known as a straw man.

ULTra is Personal Rapid Transit. ULTra works. Which is more than you can say about Ken Avidor's arguments.

gPRTBig Bad Wolfidor

Notes

* The following links debunk other Talking Points appearing in Ken's post:

• ULTra does not use FROG-brand navigation
• 2getthere née FROG still exists, it was the old parent company that went bankrupt.
• Michele Bachmann: one of 5 Republicans and 13 Democrats authoring PRT-related legislation in the Minnesota Senate session in question. Her bill was insignificant.
• Vukan Vuchic says the automobile is a necessary part of "modern transportation," and lumps it in with buses and rail. In other words, the automobile-centric status quo.

** A news item reported by Light Rail Now, so it must be true.

“Another FAIL” for the anti-PRT propagandist - Heathrow pods officially launched

2011-09-15T10:46:00.000-07:00

These are just a few of the many statements Ken Avidor has never formally retracted:

"...there is no PRT project at London's Heathrow airport..."
—Ken Avidor
Oct. 18, 2005

the fine print in the BAA press release says that the [Heathrow] project depends on "agreed milestones being achieved.". [sic] It is highly unlikely that ULTra-as-PRT will pass these milestones.
—Ken Avidor
Oct. 18, 2005

"PRT is so not happening at Heathrow."
—Ken Avidor
Oct. 5, 2010

Heathrow's PRT had a brief test last year, and has been in an extended public trial since April. The new system officially launched today.

gPRT

Light Manufacturing

2011-09-06T12:00:00.005-07:00

Ken Avidor's strange relationship with chronological order continues. Late on the Friday before Labor Day, where news goes to die, he posted thusly:

Friday, September 2, 2011
Another FAIL for Personal Rapid Transit - SW Corridor LRT Approved by FTA

The Strib:
The Federal Transit Administration said Friday that it has approved preliminary engineering work on a new light-rail line that, if built, would become the third in the Twin Cities.

The 15-mile Southwest Corridor line would connect downtown Minneapolis and Eden Prairie. If the project continues to clear FTA hurdles and wins federal funding, construction would begin in 2014, with an aim of making the rail line operational by 2017 or 2018.
I remember when the PRT hucksters proposed their idiotic pod concept for the SW Corridor - how many chances do these crackpots and con artists get?

Remarkable. It's an article about federal approval of preliminary engineering work, and suddenly out of left field comes PRT -- as as if PRT was referenced in the story (it wasn't), and as if PRT is still in the Southwest Corridor picture at this point.

It's not. The selection of light rail occurred on May 26, 2010, closing the door to competing modes.

This means Ken's Friday post was another of his non-stories. It was just another of his attempts to manufacture excuses to take shots at the viral-magnitude positive buzz surrounding the ULTra starter-PRT at Heathrow Terminal 5.

Update (9/8): Ken aligns himself against Al Gore's Current TV over this segment:

gPRT

It's a Ken Avidor "FAIL" fail!

Stöøl

2011-09-02T14:00:00.005-07:00

Things must be really slow in the cartoon biz, because now Ken Avidor is actually trying to generate support for PRT so he can have something to attack.

It's as though Ken needs PRT to complain about, so he has bought one at Ikea -- and he is going to try to put it together all by himself!

1. Tools needed:

2004 Starting Line Foundation proposal, for PRT serving a new Minneapolis stadium.

2. Identify component parts:

@SaveTheVikesOrg on Twitter

3. Assemble!* (Twitter goes from bottom-up)

Sure, one leg of this stool is shorter than the others, and there are parts left over. And the Starting Line proposal that he's desperately trying to get SaveTheVikesOrg to read is in no way connected to the Vikings' current Arden Hills project. Plus the readership-of-one couldn't figure out what Ken was talking about.

But SO WHAT, accuracy and low traffic never stands in the way of the PRT Moondoggie Blog -- right, Ken?

Also today:

Avidor doesn't know what Capita Symonds does

gPRT

poo-poo head!

* Or in his case, 'dissemble'