“PRT Is A Joke” IS A JOKE !

Yet Another Luddite Veto

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

gPRT

Business Plan - UPDATE 1

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 ifKen 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 whenKen 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 getKen'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 ifKen 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 whenKen 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 2

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.

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 - UPDATE 1

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

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)

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 cansay things that the highway boosters could never say, such as "people don't like to ride withstrangers". [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'

Statistics For Luddites

2011-08-30T14:04:00.008-07:00

Mock Journalist, Part XII

What does Ken Avidor do when a PRT system is getting lots of positive media exposure? You wait for the imprecision that inevitably creeps in when downstream news outlets pick up the story.

So it was with the New York Times story about the new podcar system at Heathrow Terminal 5. Jim Witkin's August 5 post in the paper of record's Wheels blog has been picked up by dozens of general news websites and environmental, energy and design blogs. It has also spawned hundreds, if not thousands, of tweets.

Of course this means Avidor needs something he thinks could blunt* this publicity. It came courtesy of the August 12 Airport International News.

NY Times 'Wheels' blog August 5, 2011	Airport International News August 12, 2011
Pod Cars, Moving Silently at Heathrow's Terminal 5 By JIM WITKIN LONDON — Travelers passing through Heathrow Airport have an opportunity to experience the not-so-distant future of airport transportation systems in Terminal 5, where a curious row of pod cars connects the terminal’s two business parking lots. Since Wheels featured this personal rapid transit system in September, BAA, the company that operates Heathrow, and ULTra PRT, the manufacturer of the pod cars, have completed operational testing. Passenger service began in April. Starting from the second level in Terminal 5, I recently took the pods for a chaperoned test drive — or more accurately, they took me. The electric cars have no visible accelerator or steering wheel; rather, they are completely automated and travel along a dedicated guideway. My only input consisted of a button push, which indicated my destination. Quiet and comfortable were my first impressions of the five-minute ride between the terminal and parking lot. Onboard, the only sound over the familiar whirr of the electric motor was the recorded voice announcement from the iPad-like control panel inside the car, assuring me that I was “almost there.” Several pod cars making the trip in the opposite direction whizzed past. Top speed is about 25 miles per hour. Alicia Griffiths, the BAA spokeswoman who rode along with me, assured me that the system had not experienced any accidents. From an operational perspective, BAA is declaring the system a success, according to Ms. Griffiths. Two diesel-powered buses that used to make 216 trips daily along this route were removed from service in June, and now 22 pod cars [sic] shuttle nearly 800 passengers every weekday over 2.4 miles of track. Each car can carry four passengers and luggage. The cars have had very little down time for maintenance or repair; reliability has been above 95 percent, Ms. Griffiths said. Energy efficiency is improved not only by replacing diesel vehicles with electric ones, but also because the pods move only on demand. Rather than making constant, endless loops between the terminal and parking lots, irrespective of passenger load, the pods operate only when travelers request them. Passenger feedback also has been positive, Ms. Griffiths said, with many satisfied passengers using Twitter and YouTube to document their experiences. Sharing one’s pod is optional, but I managed to climb aboard with one nattily dressed business traveler who, while acknowledging the technology’s gee-whiz factor, expressed his reservations. “It seems to operate fine, but I wonder if this is just for PR value,” he said. “Would it work at the other, busier parking lots carrying many more passengers?” BAA is betting it would. It has taken a financial stake in ULTra, convinced that these systems would have applications outside the airport in places like office campuses and dense residential and commercial developments. Both companies plan to continue promoting the technology to customers in Europe, North America and India, according to Ms. Griffiths.	Heathrow's ULTra PRT Robot Taxis Now In Service Posted by Airport International's UK Correspondent The ULTra PRT (Personal Rapid Transit) electric robot pods, previewed by Airport International back in August 2009, have now entered full operational service at the UK's flagship airport, London Heathrow. Commissioned by Heathrow's operator, BAA, and developed by the ULTra PRT firm, the system's comprised of 3.86 kilometres of track and 22 individual pods. The pods, which are entirely autonomous, link a pair of parking lots with the airport's newest passenger facility, Terminal 5, and they're available around the clock. That's not to say that they run 24/7, but that a passenger can ‘hail' one any time he/she likes. In the absence of a constantly-running service, the system reportedly saves energy, compared to older transport methods. There are other environmental features, too, including the batteries that power them, which are recycled once they've been worn out. Heathrow Robot Taxi The frame of each Heathrow robot taxi is constructed from a plastic/steel mixture, making it fairly lightweight, while tubeless 13 inch tyres run between the underside of the pods and the track. The track itself is two-way, allowing multiple services to be run at one time. Each pod is capable of accommodating four passengers plus their luggage and, at present, they're used by something like 800 passengers on a daily basis. The speed of these airport robot pods peaks at about 25 miles per hour and, since the fleet became operational, they've shown themselves to be pretty reliable, with a five per cent failure rate. The Personal Rapid Transport concept is not unique to Heathrow Airport but nowhere else has it been implemented on the same kind of scale. ULTra PRT Airport System Research is now taking place into expanding use of the ULTra PRT airport system into other parts of the hub, potentially involving additional Heathrow terminals.

NY Times 'Wheels' blog
August 5, 2011

Airport International News
August 12, 2011

Pod Cars, Moving Silently at Heathrow's Terminal 5

By JIM WITKIN

LONDON — Travelers passing through Heathrow Airport have an opportunity to experience the not-so-distant future of airport transportation systems in Terminal 5, where a curious row of pod cars connects the terminal’s two business parking lots.

Since Wheels featured this personal rapid transit system in September, BAA, the company that operates Heathrow, and ULTra PRT, the manufacturer of the pod cars, have completed operational testing. Passenger service began in April.

Starting from the second level in Terminal 5, I recently took the pods for a chaperoned test drive — or more accurately, they took me. The electric cars have no visible accelerator or steering wheel; rather, they are completely automated and travel along a dedicated guideway. My only input consisted of a button push, which indicated my destination.

Quiet and comfortable were my first impressions of the five-minute ride between the terminal and parking lot. Onboard, the only sound over the familiar whirr of the electric motor was the recorded voice announcement from the iPad-like control panel inside the car, assuring me that I was “almost there.”

Several pod cars making the trip in the opposite direction whizzed past. Top speed is about 25 miles per hour. Alicia Griffiths, the BAA spokeswoman who rode along with me, assured me that the system had not experienced any accidents.

From an operational perspective, BAA is declaring the system a success, according to Ms. Griffiths. Two diesel-powered buses that used to make 216 trips daily along this route were removed from service in June, and now 22 pod cars [sic] shuttle nearly 800 passengers every weekday over 2.4 miles of track. Each car can carry four passengers and luggage. The cars have had very little down time for maintenance or repair; reliability has been above 95 percent, Ms. Griffiths said.

Energy efficiency is improved not only by replacing diesel vehicles with electric ones, but also because the pods move only on demand. Rather than making constant, endless loops between the terminal and parking lots, irrespective of passenger load, the pods operate only when travelers request them.

Passenger feedback also has been positive, Ms. Griffiths said, with many satisfied passengers using Twitter and YouTube to document their experiences.

Sharing one’s pod is optional, but I managed to climb aboard with one nattily dressed business traveler who, while acknowledging the technology’s gee-whiz factor, expressed his reservations.

“It seems to operate fine, but I wonder if this is just for PR value,” he said. “Would it work at the other, busier parking lots carrying many more passengers?”

BAA is betting it would. It has taken a financial stake in ULTra, convinced that these systems would have applications outside the airport in places like office campuses and dense residential and commercial developments. Both companies plan to continue promoting the technology to customers in Europe, North America and India, according to Ms. Griffiths.

Heathrow's ULTra PRT Robot Taxis Now In Service

Posted by Airport International's UK Correspondent

The ULTra PRT (Personal Rapid Transit) electric robot pods, previewed by Airport International back in August 2009, have now entered full operational service at the UK's flagship airport, London Heathrow.

Commissioned by Heathrow's operator, BAA, and developed by the ULTra PRT firm, the system's comprised of 3.86 kilometres of track and 22 individual pods.

The pods, which are entirely autonomous, link a pair of parking lots with the airport's newest passenger facility, Terminal 5, and they're available around the clock. That's not to say that they run 24/7, but that a passenger can ‘hail' one any time he/she likes.

In the absence of a constantly-running service, the system reportedly saves energy, compared to older transport methods. There are other environmental features, too, including the batteries that power them, which are recycled once they've been worn out.

Heathrow Robot Taxi

The frame of each Heathrow robot taxi is constructed from a plastic/steel mixture, making it fairly lightweight, while tubeless 13 inch tyres run between the underside of the pods and the track. The track itself is two-way, allowing multiple services to be run at one time.

Each pod is capable of accommodating four passengers plus their luggage and, at present, they're used by something like 800 passengers on a daily basis. The speed of these airport robot pods peaks at about 25 miles per hour and, since the fleet became operational, they've shown themselves to be pretty reliable, with a five per cent failure rate.

The Personal Rapid Transport concept is not unique to Heathrow Airport but nowhere else has it been implemented on the same kind of scale.

ULTra PRT Airport System

Research is now taking place into expanding use of the ULTra PRT airport system into other parts of the hub, potentially involving additional Heathrow terminals.

Airport International News did a good job of cribbing from Witkin-- or at least got the same information from BAA Media.

But when you paraphrase things, things get, well, paraphrased. Thus, the New York Times'--

"reliability has been above 95 percent"

--in Airport International News magically becomes:

"they've shown themselves to be pretty reliable, with a five per cent failure rate"

Amazing! A range of 95-99.999% has been transformed into a flat 95%, and eligible to be introduced into Ken Avidor's revolving door of talking points.

But let's go even deeper. When Avidor tweets the Five Percent Distortion and repeats it in his blog he's either showing his monumental ignorance of statistics, or counting on his readers being ignorant.

For even if a vehicle has a 5% unavailability rate, it doesn't mean there's a "1 in 20 chance" of missing your flight. For that to happen, all 22** of the Heathrow podcars would have to become unavailable at the same time.

Not 5%, but rather the chance of one unavailability times the chance of a second unavailability times the chance of a third unavailability, etc.

That is a probability of 0.05 ^22 = 0.0000000000000000000000000000238418579101563

gPRT

Previously in the 'Mock Journalist' series

UPDATE - "[the ULTra] the system has been operating for 22 hours a day since then and has so far proved virtually 100 per cent reliable."

* Ken's middle name is blunt
** There are really 21 pods, but the error doesn't affect the point of this exercise

Big Hug

2011-08-22T09:05:00.001-07:00

Big news, folks, in the ongoing effort to raise awareness about PRT: Lloyd Alter has largely changed his mind.

In an article posted today at Treehugger (http://bit.ly/oskqKn), Alter now writes--

"there is a real role for PRT and it is not, as I wrote a few years ago, always "a Cyberspace Techno-Dream".

That he specifically frames his new viewpoint as a contrast with his 2008, PRTher*-influenced, Cyberspace Techno-Dream article is a direct repudiation of the number-one PRTher's* propaganda claims.

Although Alter still doesn't accept that PRT could be an option in addressing transit's 'last mile' problem, his almost total reversal is proof that honest skeptics of PRT can change their mind when examining all the facts.

Alter now essentially agrees with me -- podcars should be part of the Transit Toolbox. PRT is not always the solution, but it can be sometimes. At this time Alter wouldn't advocate putting PRT in as many niches as I would. But things can change. It's a new day.**

The Chief Anti-PRT Propagandist must be having the Mother of All Snits right now.

gPRT

* rhymes with Birther
** note to Lloyd Alter: You know, there's nothing in the rules saying you can't formally return your Golden Heimlich Award. I can tell you there's a high probability The Academy would accept it.

The Down Low

2011-06-23T08:18:00.007-07:00

Ken Avidor hates Personal Rapid Transit to such a degree that it was pretty much inevitable he would eventually link PRT to Krazy Eyes Bachmann's just-launched campaign for the Resmuglican 2012 presidential nomination. That moment has arrived -- four days ago.

Just ONE blog post (http://goo.gl/SxykI), Ken? Just ONE tweet (http://bit.ly/lg8kJq)? Still obsessed but, basking in the retweets of your sensible Bachmann news, you know you have to keep your PRT smears on the down low -- so you blog and tweet it on a Sunday afternoon?

Smart for once, Ken, since this is how many retweets it has received: http://goo.gl/tsxSq

Which is none. People don't buy your anti-PRT disinformation war, not even with a 140 character limit.

Of course, the official PRT Is a Joke IS A JOKE! response is: "Will reporters ask Michele Bachmann why she & 4 other GOP agreed with 13 Democrats on PRT? (http://goo.gl/jGPEq)"

Also in that post: Ken Avidor scored a Double-Ego!

Alsø alsø wik:

Peter Muller (@prtguru) transcribes tweets about Heathrow pods at http://is.gd/s4tMZL. How can that be called "breathlessly"?

gPRT

http://bit.ly/prtnews

Here I Am -- or AM I???

2011-04-30T08:00:00.109-07:00

Or, "Rule Brittonia"

©MMXI Wiseline Institute & Center For The Secular Humorism

(With update)

If there's one thing PRT Is a Joke IS A JOKE! is known for, it's our disdain for people hiding behind obviously phony sciencey-sounding nameplates. And the other thing is our hatred of skewed polls.

And so, dear readers, I give you:

Yesterday's* Experiment

Problem statement:

So I'm checking my Twitter feed, and I see a little taunt from our old friend Ken Avidor, anti-PRT propagandist to the world:

RT @worldstreets: PRT? http://worldstreets.wordpress.com/2011/04/27/prt-proposal-for-delhi-convinces-chief-minister-but-does-it-convince-you-see-poll-result

Fer crying out loud, what is THAT about? I was going to mow the lawn. Oh, all right.

Ken wants us to see the end of the URL, that there is a poll attached to Eric Britton's World Streets piece on the commissioning of the Delhi Personal Rapid Transit feasibility study. It's an OK piece, insofar as it is well-written and Britton did us all a favor by not hiding his disdain for PRT.

Which is fine! He's entitled to his opinion. Only... on what are his conclusions based? Where are the many years of analyses to which he refers? I don't -- no, they don't appear to be in the article.

Hypothesis: There are no analyses.

Notice how I couch that as a positive, active statement? It'll look good in the abstract. Also, I can't be accused of making the experiment easy, since you can't prove a negative.

The variables:

Avidor put the poll in my lap (no jokes please, this is science), and over at CityFix Britton praises Avidor's egregious PRT Moondoggie blog as "a killer compendium," so the poll it is.

DID YOU SEE THE SIZE OF THAT POLL ON THE PAGE? IT TAKES UP SO MUCH SPACE! THAT'S -- (sorry) -- that's because it's not a poll, it's an editorial. Let's categorize those selections, shall we?

Selections	Label	Category
PRT for Delhi? Yes, No, I don't know
1	Excellent idea. Do it now	Very positive
2	Looks promising. Let's give it serious study	Positiv-ish
3	Hard to say at this point. Need more info before making a decision.	Neutral
4	You have to know the specifics of Delhi to have an informed view on this technology solution.	Neutral
5	Looks rather weak. Probably not a priority at this point.	Negativ-ish
6	Probably not for the Global South, but maybe a winner for other parts of the world?	Negativ-ish
7	A bad idea for Delhi and most certainly a bad idea for any other city in the world	Negative
8	Too uncertain, too expensive, too slow, too unproven and too marginal to make the needed contribution.	Negative, with assurances of years of looking into the matter, take my word for it
9	Quite an old fashioned idea really. Looked bad if naively tempting in 1970, but after years of endless discussion looks simply stupid today	Nose up, nostrils flared
10	This is a truly shameful, bizarre, irresponsible idea flaunted by interested parties and should be consigned to the trash heap of irresponsible proposals immediately.	Flame on!

Six out of ten choices are negative, only two positives. 'Skewed' is an understatement -- how can anyone take this seriously?** It is what's known in politics as a "push poll," such as:

1. Do you support John Smith for Mayor?
2. Would you be more or less likely to support John Smith if you knew he had shot a man in Reno just to watch him die?

Methodology: The objective is to get Britton to talk about his analyses of PRT. But I don't have the patience for all that vamping that PRT critics like to do. How can I use the poll to draw him out. Yes, it's not a question.

The placebo: This is the closest I can get to a control group -- unless anyone has a spare Eric Britton? No?

I decided just to let him know I was coming, in really obvious ways. First, I tweeted it.

In this poll about #PRT in Delhi http://is.gd/GV6WsW pollster has helpfully provided 2 positive options, 4 neutral & 4 very neg options

and

#PRT poll; skewed http://bit.ly/jZeQm6

Second, I gave him my real DNS address by posting a comment, with my real first name, which is on my Twitter account, and my real email address.

Third, I decided I would re-skew the poll in a really blatant way, not hiding my DNS behind proxies or anything. I wasn't hacking. Any administrator would be able to tell what I was doing.

The Testing Series:

Every so often throughout the day, I would go to the poll and vote in the positive, neutral AND negative categories,*** but in a way that made up for the scarcity of positive choices.

I even sent Avidor friendly tweets updating my progress, such as:

@Avidor "shameful"=11.8% http://is.gd/GV6WsW ___ #WahWaaahhh http://bit.ly/cX3zWu

and

@Avidor "shameful" now =10.8% http://is.gd/GV6WsW ___ #WahWaaahhh http://bit.ly/cX3zWu

Results:

You know what? I hate to say I knew it would work, but -- I knew it would work.

Hi Mr. Britton! Thanks for posting your followup 'editorial', in which you equate (seriously, it seems) personalized, last-mile rapid transit with two-wheeled Global South equivalents of the four-wheeled Private Travel Appliances we have in the North. One of these things is not like the others.

Sorry, but I still believe anyone should be able to get around a city without having to drive. Biking and walking are preferred for short distances and the able-bodied; telecommuting and living close to work and shopping are also ideal.

But our cities can be huge. Why live in one if not able to freely access all of it? As I commented elsewhere, every square mile should have multiple rapid transit stations of 1 or more modes. We should maintain existing rail systems, expand them as feasible, and add other modes such as PRT, BRT, and GRT. Mode selection and application should use a formula that balances service and quantitative as well as qualitative costs.

It's just a vision.

In the spirit of the example of Excellence In Polling set for us by Eric Britton, please consider participating in this poll:

Also Last Weekend:

The logic-absent 'anti-PRT conspiracy' again: Avidor thinks governments (at least ones in Minnesota) are so stupid
they would 1. grant PRT companies rights-of-way concessions without indemnifying themselves against lawsuits, and 2. grant the rights-of-ways willy-nilly, hither and thither, rather than along specific routes so as to complement, and not compete with, existing transit infrastructure. Ken Avidor continues to be the Anti-PRT Boobdoggle.

* ^ Your mileage may vary according to time zone

** ^ Certainly not me
*** ^ So if you read anything, elsewhere, implying/claiming I only voted for the positive options, that's what is called wrong

No Ken, POLLS, not 'Poles' http://goo.gl/AMlFU

gPRT

The Propagandist Learns Where Babies Come From

2011-04-26T18:33:00.011-07:00

Or, "Am I right, ladies?"

This is Ken Avidor's most bizarre blog post ever. Maybe since the beginning of time, depending on what your particular faith holds. Buckle up:

Pertinent links regarding the above post:

So "ridiculous" that NASA is working with them.
Gerald "Jerry" Sanders bio at SFSinvent.
FemSuite medical devices. Their central mission is to make better, non-huge versions of instruments used by obstetricians and gynecologists.
One of StageFright's 3 Femsuite videos:

We already know Avidor thinks Personal Rapid Transit is "ridiculous" and "gadgetbahn." Now he reveals that he thinks smaller specula that are more comfortable for OBGYN patients are just 'gadgets.' What conclusions can we draw from these facts, dear readers?

Reader Note: We are now hashtagging Avidor-related tweets with #prther (rhymes with Birther)

May 1, 2011: I have to remind myself to do this; much to do, much to do-

Ken Avidor: He-Man Woman-Hater?
gPRT

Don't blame us

2010-12-11T16:00:00.010-08:00

Ken Avidor the anti-PRT propagandist notes recently at the PRT Moondoggie that he doesn't get much e-mail from the pro-PRT side:

I don't get a "sizable amount of emails" about my "anti-PRT stance". In fact, I hardly get any emails from pod people.

Source

He then uses this as a shred of evidence to back his claim that PRT doesn't have much support.

The reality is, there's a much simpler reason Ken never hears from us. It's found at his own website. Here it is:

--and the fine print reads:

Go on. You know you want to.

What's next-- Ken claims no one supports PRT because there are no pro- comments posted at his PRT Moondoggie? Of course, there are no comments supporting him either- Hey, that must mean no one opposes PRT.

UPDATE - Don't Blame Us for This, Either:

Incoming right-wing governors in Ohio and Wisconsin are refusing High Speed Rail funds because 1) they hate the federal government and 2) they want President Obama to fail. Ken Avidor thinks it's because the chairman of the Minnesota HSR Commission also supports PRT

gPRT

Journalistic shmethics

2010-12-10T11:43:00.007-08:00

Mock Journalist, Part XI

Ken Avidor's latest PRT Moondoggie post today revisits an old meme of his: that the internet accurately mirrors reality. PRT-related forums don't have many members, he reasons, therefore PRT is unpopular. The underlying logic is similar to This photo of Cardiff doesn't show the ULTra test track, therefore it must have been bulldozed.

Avidor has styled himself as some sort of muckraker and reporter, and tried to be an online news editor at the TC Daily Planet. He has appointed himself a courtroom sketch artist. He has even wailed about how hard it is to practice citizen journalism.

So readers of PRT Is a Joke IS A JOKE -- well aware of Ken's Fox-level journalism -- will get a good laugh (and shake their heads) over this: Ken reproduces a reader's email without permission. This despite the email including a specific instruction not to reproduce it.

Source

Archives: "Mock Journalist" Series

Also: This could be Ken's stupidest post in a long, long time. How many stupid things can YOU find in it?

gPRT

AP (Avidor Putz) Stylebook

Pot Calls Kettle "Klassy"

2010-12-08T19:59:00.006-08:00

Ken Avidor, whose smears, distortions and outright lies are recounted in this forum, today is taking great umbrage at being called names, and at the craaaaazy idea that American corporations have "outsourced" jobs to other countries. Because we all know that's not happening, no sir.

The correct term Ken's looking for is offshored, but other than that I think his hypocritical umbrage (as well as ignorance of current events) speaks for itself.

Archives: Ken Avidor slurs the Poles

-10/18/2009

gPRT

No really -- Ken is just trying to make India (as though there's just one Indian) think all PRT companies are thinking like Jack Slade. Ken thinks he can use that as a wedge to disrupt potential ULTra contracts in India. Simple-minded geopolitics, Ken.

Wanted: used copy of the DSM-IV

2010-12-04T21:18:00.001-08:00

Because there are some symptoms I want to look up.

By this time it's pretty much established that personal rapid transit is neither Democratic or Republican, right? Considering -- among others -- the greens backing the Ithaca program, the European Commission, and now the state of Punjab, it would be insane for anyone to continue to insist that PRT is only the domain of ultra-right wing Resmuglicans -- wouldn't it?

Yet that is what Ken Avidor does once again over at the PRT Moondoggie blog.

We've long since established that during 2003-04 (the legislative session when Michele Bachmann sponsored the PRT-related bill that Avidor keeps yammering on about) Democratic sponsors of PRT legislation outnumbered GOP sponsors 13 to 5.

But Ken doesn't like talking about that session anymore. Today he switches to the 2006 Mark "Slappy" Olson bill which went down 26 to 107; it's much friendlier to Avidor's propaganda needs, because the Yea vote was 24 GOP and 2 Democratic.

It's as if, in his mind, the facts from 2003-04 don't exist. What do you call such obsessive pigheadedness?

And the three members from 2006 vote he chooses to mention by name? All GOP. All of whom are in some way extremist or notorious.* This allows Ken to claim, "Minnesota's Worst Politicians Supported Personal Rapid Transit."

Totally ignoring that over the years it has been supported by a lot of good ones as well. Klassy as always, Ken!

* And list those items - police-blotter style - he does, not that they have anything to do with transportation. It's just more of Avidor's guilt by association

gPRT

Predictions, anyone?

2010-10-28T21:05:00.002-07:00

The Podcar City 4 conference is underway in San Jose, California, ending tomorrow, October 29.

Click Here for Poll Online Survey
Conjoint Analysis
| Polls
| Email Marketing

| Feedback Tab
View MicroPoll

Or suggest your own!

gPRT

PRT Arrives at Heathrow

2010-10-19T11:49:00.004-07:00

Despite Predictions To The Contrary

Kernac The Magboobicent

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

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

Oct. 19, 2010: ULTra PRT begins passenger service for Heathrow Terminal 5 staff

Another Accidental Dump

2010-08-28T14:47:00.008-07:00

Following on his accidental post of a non-PRT blog item to the PRT Moondoggie on August 5, Ken Avidor did it again on August 23.

This time the Google News Alert calls attention to a PRT Moondoggie post titled "Mac Hammond's Church Goes..."

+

Once again, the link goes nowhere. And once again the post, "Mac Hammond's Church Goes Broke", finally shows up over at the Dump Bachmann Blog ("Dumping Bachmann Since 2005"). And, also once again, it has absolutely nothing to do with Personal Rapid Transit -- although Hammond's style of financial management does qualify as a boondoggle.

Transit innovation continues to have nothing to do with right wing wackos -- despite Avidor's lamest efforts to the contrary.

gPRT

Short & Stout!

2010-08-10T14:01:00.012-07:00

Ken Avidor may be joining the Tea Party! It's true! If you read Ken Avidor's blogs, you live in Winona, MN, and you hate PRT as much as he wants you to, then Ken wants you to vote FOR the Tea Party's Joshua Chasco in the race for city council!

It is the only conclusion a reasonable person can draw. Avidor's been writing for the Dump Bachmann blog*, and he wants voters to Dump Bachmann. Avidor has also written the Dump Mark Olson blog, which was devoted to the goal of dumping Olson.

Therefore, the three recent PRT Moondoggie posts and a Tweet promoting Chasco's candidacy, Tea Party bona fides, and anti-PRT stance, MUST mean that Avidor wants you to vote against PRT by voting FOR the Tea Party candidate.

Ken Avidor: he's a little Tea Potty, short and stout (and a little bit rock & roll)!

Fellow progressive Democrats: feel free to oppose Personal Rapid Transit, but please base your position on all the facts, not Ken Avidor's slanted, cherrypicked propaganda. Consider the source: Avidor likes the Tea Party just fine -- if it is against PRT.

Update: What Avidor has already said about Ollie Mikosza's "MISTER" PRT design:

"Polish PRT?"

Ken Avidor (@Daily Kos)
read the PRTJJ coverage

*Motto: "Dumping Bachmann since 2005"

gPRT

Apparently it's not long enough

2010-08-09T10:00:00.013-07:00

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:

+

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:

+

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

People of India, your attention, please!

2010-08-02T12:00:00.000-07:00

This is Ken Avidor:

Ken Avidor is a cartoonist. He is a cartoonist who hates Personal Rapid Transit and has been waging all-out propaganda war against it for years. And because you will be getting a Personal Rapid Transit system in Amritsar in the next few years, you will be hearing from Ken Avidor very soon.

Keep in mind Ken Avidor probably knows absolutely nothing about you or the Indian culture. So don't be puzzled if he says that 'weird stuff happens in India,' as he once said about Dubai. Or he might write 'Indian PRT?' as if being Indian is funny -- just as he once wrote about the Poles.

There is also a very real possibility that he thinks you are American Indians, and is busy searching the bia.gov website for Amritsar. So don’t be surprised if you see a post at The PRT Moondoggie that says something like 'there is no Amritsar tribe recognized by the U.S. government.' I mean, this is the guy who wrote to Houston trying to reach the Kuwait Arab Times.

Since Ken Avidor believes PRT is a scam perpetrated by right-wing politicians, he will also be accusing Indian politicians and urban planning officials of being 'gadgetbahners just like Michele Bachmann.' So don’t say 'tea party' if you really mean 'chai party' (although Avidor seems to be supporting the Bachmann-loving Tea Party. Go figure). So, India, you might as well prepare yourself for lots of these from Avidor:

But be not downcast India, for forewarned is forearmed. And good luck with your PRT project!

Also today:
One more time (with the Luddite catechism)!

gPRT
Amritsar is an anagram for Air Trams. COINCIDENCE??? Or part of the scam?

New! Timesaving! Blogging! Technique!

2010-06-18T22:24:00.021-07:00

Anti-PRT propagandist Ken Avidor has come up with another way to be repetitive.

It used to be that Ken would have to string his talking points together with linking phrases and, occasionally, punctuation. This takes time and effort.

But now Avidor's come up with a new timesaving blogging technique -- instead of repeating talking points, now he's just reposting whole sections.

For the past few months, a major part of every post on his "The PRT Moondoggie" blog has been the same thing: a cherry-picked list of negatively-spun PRT nooz; calling it 'news' would be a disservice to actual news (for non-propaganda PRT news, see the NewsCenter).

The nooz items are:

• "No $25 million earmark for PRT pork project in Winona, Minnesota"

• "The Swedish/Korean PRT prototype malfunctioned recently in front of the media."

• "The Masdar PRT (more computer-guided golf carts that follow magnets imbedded in the roadway) has been scaled way back, This setback got a mention in the NY Times and confirmed in this Bloomberg article."

• "The much-hyped PRT project in Daventry ended in fiasco."

• "The so-called Morgantown PRT (it's a mundane people-mover) was the subject of a student newspaper editorial after a malfunction created a "fireball" and filled a vehicle with smoke. The cost of fixing the Morgantown boondoggle is $93 million."

And lately

• "Mall of America Says No to Jpods."

This Luddite catechism has appeared in The PRT Douchenozzle on March 25, May 25, June 10, and June 15, as well as Dump Bachmann on June 10 and 30 (note that in the title of the June 30 post, ULTra PRT has become "Bachmann's fantasy transport system" [italics added] -- which should annoy Dr. Martin Lowson, ULTra's inventor).

I think Avidor might be onto something here -- a system that automatically blogs, RSS's, Tweets or e-mails the same thing, over and over and over again. It could save people millions of person-hours and billions of dollars worth of time.

Such a system could be called-- oh I don't know -- a Kenbot. Or Avispam. Doucheapp? It seems familiar, somehow.

Update (7/8): Need! I! Say! More?

gPRT Is Spam kosher? It's not really meat.

Reader poll time!

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The Antiplannidor

2010-06-17T17:30:00.008-07:00

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

Scrub-a-dub-flub

2010-04-01T12:17:00.016-07:00

Mock Journalist, Part IX

Advanced Transport Systems Ltd. has rebranded the websites for its ULTra PRT system. For years ATS has had the British domain URL atsltd.co.uk, which is not exactly memorable. Then, after the start of the Heathrow project they started a parallel site, ultraprt.com, mostly serving as the site for ATS's California office.

ATS's Steve Raney announced the rebranding last week on March 22:

ultraprt.com content has moved to ultraprt.net

atsltd.co.uk content will soon move to ultraprt.com. We are attempting to support some of the old ultraprt.com pages on the new ultraprt.com so that web sites that link to us won't get too broken.

This will all take some time and some links will break. Sorry for the inconvenience.

Source

Got all that? Pretty straightforward. And how do we know it's a rebranding? An ATS staffer tweeted it on the 23rd. And yet-

-on March 24 Minnesota anti-PRT propagandist Ken Avidor proudly announced his discovery that Raney's 'broken links' was just a cover story! As well as a new mystery: who owns ultraprt.net? And why?

Great discovery, you discoveryer! Except for one thing: ULTra's Minnesota PRT concept is now at ultraprt.net Yup, totally scrubbed. No one will ever find it. And no one will ever find out that ULTra PRT owner ATS Ltd. owns ultraprt.net.

Next week: Ken Avidor discovers ULTra's Minnesota PRT page at ultraprt.net -- and it's owned by ATS Ltd.!

Also today:

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gPRT

The PRTista-In-Chief

2010-03-29T12:21:00.007-07:00

President Barack Obama's Department of Transportation has decided on an upgrade for the Personal Rapid Transit system at West Virginia University, that institution has announced:

WVU has been awarded a Federal Transit Authority [sic] grant that, along with allocated student transportation fee monies, will pay for a portion of the upgrades to the PRT.

...

"The overall goal is to erase intermittent problems through new and upgraded technology in order to provide a more positive passenger experience by making the PRT more dependable," said John Jeffrey, PRT project manager.

...

The VCCS, or brains of the vehicle, will be the first system upgraded. These onboard computers communicate with electrical systems on the PRT guideway and at the passenger stations about vehicle movement all along the system.

The VCCS has been redesigned by Azimuth Inc., a Morgantown engineering firm, and is currently being tested by Lea & Elliot, a third-party independent validation and verification firm.

"At present, we are about halfway through the verification process and hope to have the initial VCCS arrive at the PRT in mid-September," Jeffrey said.

Eleven new VCCS will be installed during the first phase of the project, with the remaining 61 to be replaced during the second phase with an overall cost of $3.6 million.

Another two-phase design, build and install project a will be the upgraded PRT Propulsion System. Like the VCCS conversion, the propulsion system will switch from analog to digital control and communication to improve reliability.

"The PRT has just signed a contract with Bombardier of Pittsburgh to build a prototype, and we hope to have an initial propulsion system by August 2011," said Jeffrey.

Source

This is not the action Minnesota anti-PRT propagandist Ken Avidor has recommended for the world's first PRT. In fact, the FTA has done exactly the opposite:

"Time to pull the plug on the WVU PRT boondoggle." -Ken Avidor

Sources:
4/30/2009
5/8/2009
10/15/2009

If Ken Avidor is going to be consistent, he's going to have to call Barack Obama a gadgetbahner. He's going to have to say Obama is a PRTista just like Michele Bachmann. And we won't have long to wait until Avidor puts this on the web:

Oh wait-

gPRT

Still waiting

2010-03-11T10:46:00.008-08:00

There's been some movement on the Winona, MN federal funding request for its PRT Lab project with Taxi 2000.

And we're all still waiting for the dark, scam-my, pork-y backroom deal Ken Avidor had practically promised reader of his PRT Moondoggie blog. Remember?

Who are the "Possible Private Donors" for the Winona PRT Project?

The Winona Post has an article on the pods of Winona... I wrote about a similar pitch for a PRT resolution back in December 23, 2005...

...The PRTers have pulled variations of this scam in Duluth, Minneapolis, and Rochester. They convince some well-meaning councilmembers to vote for a resolution saying they are "considering" or "studying" a PRT project for their city.

The anti-LRT/anti-Northstar bunch (Bachmann and Mark Olson are prominent Northstar haters and PRT boosters) in the legislature use the resolutions to convince DFLers to vote for their anti-transit PRT bills because a PRT project in their district smells like pork. That's the Democratic Party for you, the Dems will eagerly hang themselves if the rope is made of pork.

Source

Ken is always going on and on about how PRT is Republican and right-wing, and yet did you just notice what he did? He says "PRTers" "convince" local councils to support PRT -- but doesn't specify how the convincing happens.

It must happen like magic. He just needs it to be taken as read -- meaning he can explain away any support for PRT by any government jurisdiction and by any official, whether liberal or conservative. That's how Avidor's conspiracy theory works.

And notice how Avidor slams Democrats who secure federal funds for their districts -- even though for nearly three decades Minnesota has received less federal spending than taxes paid.

This is the reality of the funding process:

Walz listening on earmark requests

U.S. Rep Tim Walz has received requests for more than $280 million in earmarks for Winona-area projects, including $25 million to test transit technology in Winona and $26 million for preliminary work on a high-speed rail route along the Mississippi River.

Walz, DFL-Minn., last week posted on his Web site the nearly 100 federal funding applications from local governments and nonprofit organizations throughout his district. The earmarks target money already appropriated in the federal budget.
...
The congressman submitted 44 projects from his district last year, and his selections this year will be posted March 19 on his Web site. "He is looking for projects whose requesters share his commitment to transparency and accountability," [spokesperson Sara] Severs said.

Source

One funding application, in competition with nearly 100 others, with criteria that includes "transparency and accountability." And reported in the media! Where's the beefy scam, Ken?

Yes, the request to Walz (and also insurance proposals to Sens. Franken and Klobuchar) is an earmark -- now. As we can deduce from the cover letter of this package, the request to Walz is the backup ask, therefore the original grant request was rejected. So it's still a fact that when Avidor was claiming Winona was seeking an earmark, they weren't.

gPRT

Mock Journalist, Part VIII

2010-03-03T19:26:00.019-08:00

Snow Job

©MMX PRT Is a Joke IS A JOKE! and Get On Board!PRT NewsCenter

Ken Avidor's recent postings (1 , 2) about the Vectus test track technical problem in the snow reported by media in Uppsala, Sweden, are just so quintessentially Avidor. Because they bear the hallmarks of his 'reporting'--

The broad, baseless generalization ("FAIL")
No value-added: clipping news written by others, adding no substantive comments of his own
Going to an expert for an opinion that just-so-happens to be PRT Moondoggie-compatible

As readers of PRT Is a Joke IS A JOKE and the Mock Journalist series know, Ken never goes directly to the source to get the facts first-hand. He (and this time his expert) just engages in guesswork that nurtures his predetermined, PRT-is-a-Joke, buy-my-book objective.

He leaves that grunt work to me -- Mr_Grant, PRT NewsCenter editor, and Perhaps The New Leading Skeptic of PRT^®. In this case, it meant the arduous task of sending an email to a public Vectus address. Read my exclusive ex-po-zay of this (it turns out) non-story here, at The NewsCenter.

Was it ghosts? (March 4): "'bump' in the night": Avidor ally Michael Setty needs problem to stay unknowable, disbelieves Vectus' explanation

UPDATE (March 30): Michael Setty's candidate for Napa supervisor is a property-rights activist and founder of the Napa Valley Taxpayers Alliance

Behold: Vectus test track glitch explained

Read: the "Mock Journalist" Series

gPRT you're welcome AGAIN, Ken. What do you say--?

Both side now

2010-03-01T15:51:00.007-08:00

Because "PRT Is a Joke" IS A JOKE! and Get On Board PRT are objective news sources, I report both sides of Personal Rapid Transit developments, the negative as well as positive. And I beat Ken Avidor to it. In order to get material for his PRT Moondoggie blog, all he has to do is scoop up the negative news from my Twitter feed and discard the positive.

I say it here,

Getting #Vectus test route harder than expected - no snow problems, but glitches during reporter visit http://bit.ly/bV0Baz #prt #podcars

March 1, 2010 11am PST

and it comes out there:

Vectus PRT - FAIL

March 1, 2010 2:03 pm PST

That's how Avidor covers 'both side' in PRT news. Once again: you're welcome, Ken

gPRT

Wheelie, wheelie, strange meme

2010-02-22T08:30:00.014-08:00

One strange meme to which Ken Avidor has tried to impart momentum is his opinion of the inadequacy of wheels used in PRT vehicles, specifically:

the Cardiff ULTra was essentially Frog/2getthere with its dorky wheels covered up to give it a futuristic look
--Avidor at Daily Kos, 5/21/09

the Cardiff ULTra was essentially Frog/2getthere with its dorky wheels covered up to give it a futuristic look
--Avidor at Dump Mark Olson, 9/10/07

Taxi 2000's PRT pod is supposed to run on futuristic-sounding "linear induction motors" (The pod actually rides on dorky, little rubber tires).
--Avidor on Dump Mark Olson, 6/15/06

The only difference between FROG and ULTra that I can see is that the ULTra vehicles have wheel covers that hide their dorky, un-futuristic-looking wheels.
-- Avidor at WellUrban, 6/9/06

Lately, he's been at it again:

That's just an error within an error -- ULTra uses 13 inch diameter tires, and everyone knows golf carts have 18-22 inchers.

What's dorky about small wheels anyway? I guess we have to do what PRTJJ does best: examine the facts.

Dorky (dȯr-kē), adjective.
slang: foolishly stupid
Merriam Webster

How are small tires foolish or stupid? Not only have they been standard equipment on some compact cars for decades, they are also used in custom cars. Such as lowriders.

I invite Ken Avidor to go to East L.A. and tell the first lowrider driver he sees that his car has "dorky little wheels."

Little (li-təl), adjective
1. Not big
2. Not much
Merriam Webster

What does wheel diameter have to do with strength or reliability? Not much:

I doubt four 13 inch wheels will have trouble supporting a 800-ish kilo PRT vehicle.

Plus, in today's eco, bio, lower consumption, smart-energy, compact walkable urban village world, isn't smaller better? Next to a Hummer, is a Zenn a "dorky little" electric car? Which is better, Ken -- a Range Rover or a Smart fortwo? Which happens to be the same size as a --

Of course, one person's dorky golf cart is another's Neighborhood Electric Vehicle.

But to be consistent, Ken Avidor must support the bigger and therefore less dorky wheels. And we all know what guys who love the BIG wheels are compensating for, don't we?

I bet he rides a

Also today:
He goes all the way back 10 years to portray PRT support as mostly Republicon -- still dances around more recent majority Democratic backing

gPRT Ken Avidor (Kən Av-i-dor), noun - small in importance or interest: trivial

Missed Again

2010-02-14T22:59:00.018-08:00

Desperate in his continued attempts to politicize transit research and development, propagandist Ken Avidor has returned to trawling (or trolling) for controversial messages at the Transport-Innovators discussion group on Google.

Let me say some things here about that group: many if not most of the active members in the group are highly opinionated inventors, engineers and scientists. So looking there for controversy is the lazy person's research, as difficult as looking for moisture in the ocean.

I try to avoid reading Transport-Innovators unless absolutely necessary. The group often seems less about discussing transportation so that it can be understood by an ill-informed cartoonist, and more about who's right about a laundry list of issues. Or wrong. Some of the "Innovators" have political views that can be characterized as libertarian, others positively neanderthal. It takes all kinds to make a world.

But Ken Avidor has decided to take two persons' extreme views and cram all PRT proponents in that pigeonhole.

1. Jerry Roane of TriTrack, who apparently doesn't care much for man-on-man love:

I did some more study on why Portland has an affinity for little bicycles and why they resonate with Washington DC money givers. There seems to be a naked bike ride they do and they had the first openly homosexual (male on male) mayor. This money is being passed out to the constituents. It has very little to do with mobility. The naked bike ride looks more like a men's locker room than 800 randomly chosen citizens. Portland is not even a metropolitan city. It is in a metropolitan area but the city is only 1/2 million.

Jerry Roane

Ehhhh whatever, Jerry. Like I said, it takes all kinds.

2. Jack Slade of god-only-knows, who wants to draft Halal dietary rules into the global war agin terr':

If you really want to put the fear of Allah into these terrorists, you should make it be known that ALL your bullets have been dipped in pig blood. All the Military bullets, too.

Jack Slade

I think that misspeaks for itself.

If these cries for help prove anything, the first is that PRT has a right wing (as well as a left, e.g., Donn Fichter, Joan Bokaer, World Wildlife Fund, Debbie Cook, me) -- just like light rail had Heritage Foundation founder Paul Weyrich, and high speed rail has the LaRouchies. The second thing is that the world of PRT advocates doesn't have a single centralized messaging apparatus. Unfortunately.

Not that such an apparatus would have kept Roane and Slade's mouths shut, because they were expressing their opinions about world events. PRT is a technology. PRT doesn't have opinions.

Which brings us to an interesting concluding note: Roane is not a PRT designer, his Tri-Track system is Dual Mode -- private road vehicles that can be placed on a guideway. The words "personal rapid transit" aren't even used on Roane's website.

+

Not all Transport Innovations are PRT -- you missed again, Ken. Stop calling Roane's system "TriTrack PRT."

And what of Jack Slade? His technology is shrouded in mystery; even a source of mine who is regarded as the leading archivist of transportation technology isn't sure what Slade is working on. My source guesses it might be passenger cabins on a conveyer belt. Which wouldn't be PRT either, since the definition says no moving parts in the guideway.

gPRT

Too Hot Baby

2010-02-12T22:20:00.016-08:00

Hi there, kool gang of PRTistas -- guess which Minnesota anti-PRT propagandist can't handle freewheeling life on the Interweb.

As you know, Ken Avidor's been doing his usual sniping at Rob Means' PRT Idea over at Change.org.

To do this, Ken had to create an account. Which has a profile. Which has a Facebookish comment wall. So I've been using that wall to ask Ken some questions about things he's written or said, including:

What did you mean by "Polish PRT?" http://bit.ly/c9ZWVX

Have you apologized to Bill Mego yet? http://bit.ly/bLdyLP

Have you apologized to Larry Fabian yet? http://bit.ly/dtshP8

I had a whole bunch of 'em lined up and ready to roll.

What could be so wrong with that? They're just questions. It's not like Ken has to answer them, or even look at them. He could ignore them; he could delete them; he could post non-responsive comments; he could -- well, a lot of things.

Instead, he did what he does with his blogs, like Dump Mark Olson and Green Party Gone Bad, when he's losing the argument -- he shuts down discussion and hides:

+

I guess this means six more weeks of winter. Nice going, Ken.

NEW:
Thank you, Ken, for linking Change.org readers here (2/13 6:08pm PST) so they can read the questions you were afraid to have on your comment wall

Idle thought:
Why is Ken on Change.org anyway? In 2006 and 2008 he supported an anti-choice, pro-highways, pro-gun, anti-marriage equality candidate for Congress. That would be change in the wrong direction. Ken even interviewed that candidate, Elwyn Tinklenberg, and didn't challenge his positions

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gPRT Ken, you haven't Changed (badumbum)

See his impact on Change.org

2010-02-11T10:13:00.011-08:00

There's a PRT Idea being voted on at Change.org, so naturally Ken Avidor has been littering the comments with his propaganda. Here's the latest impact of his contributions:

+

Take Action!

Vote for PRT at Change.org

gPRT Ken Avidor is "a minor issue" --Change.org

Love Letters (with apologies to A.R. Gurney)

2010-02-10T07:45:00.005-08:00

After all these years, I think we've finally found a PRT scam. And it has been exposed by "PRT Is a Joke" IS A JOKE!!!

from: J. Edward Anderson <[* * * *]@gmail.com>
to: ["PRT Is a Joke" IS A JOKE]
date Tue, Feb 9, 2010 at 12:43 PM
subject Re: Help Request

Dear,

How are you today? May this emergency appeal finds you well,i am sorry i didn't inform you about my travelling to Europe for a program.The program is taking place in three major Countries in

Europe which includes Spain Germany and United Kingdom.It has been a sad and bad moment for me,the present condition i found myself is so intoxicated to explain.I feel so ashamed because i am

stranded and stocked in United Kingdom because I've misplaced my wallet on my way to the hotel where my money,my document and other valuable things were kept ,i am so confussed right now i don't know what to do or where to go.

I need your urgent help,i want you to please loan me the sum of 3,200.00 USD = £2,000GBP to sort-out myself and confirm my basic travelling allowance fees back home.In case you couldn't come up

with all the requested amount due to the short notice kindly go ahead and send me any amount you can afford at this time and email me the transfer details i will be so grateful to receive the money,I

will appreciate whatever you can afford to help me with and I promise to pay you back as soon as I return home.
I want you to understand that i am in a very tight and critical sitaution at the moment,i know you will never disappoint me that is why i have contacted you in this regards and please as you endeavor to

help me with this money i don't mean you should disclose my predicament to anybody for personal reasons till when am successfully back home.However,it is not compulsory that you will send me the

money but if my situation and our good relationship touches you i want you to quickly proceed to any of the WESTERN UNION MONEY TRANSFER OR MONEY GRAM TRANSFER station or post

office around you and transfer me the money as soon as you have received this email.Western union money transfer is the most convenience and safe for me to receive the money here without any delay or problem.

Below is the information where to send me the WESTERN UNION MONEY TRANSFER.

Here are the details:

Name:Edward Anderson
Address : 10 Godliman Street
Zip code : EC4V 5AJ,
State : London
Country: England
Test Question :Thank
Answer :You

After you have sent the money email me the western union transfer details such as:

WESTERN UNION TRANSFER RECEIPT
MTCN(Money transfer control number)
Test Question: Thank
Answer:You
Amount Needed: 3,200.00 USD = £2,000GBP

I'll check my email soonest to pick up the western union transfer details to enable me return back home with the next available flight,i need the transfer # MTCN (money transfer control number) as soon as you are done with the transfer.

Thanks for your kind help and sorry to bother you.

Regards.

J. Edward (Ed) Anderson
PRT International, LLC
763 [* * * *]
[* * * *]@prtinternational.com
www.prtinternational.com

from ["PRT Is a Joke" IS A JOKE]
to "J. Edward Anderson"
date Tue, Feb 9, 2010 at 1:08 PM
subject Re: Help Request

Ed --

FYI, your email account has been hacked.

- Show quoted text -

from: J. Edward Anderson <[* * * *]@gmail.com>
to: ["PRT Is a Joke" IS A JOKE]
date Tue, Feb 9, 2010 at 1:19 PM
subject Re: Help Request

Thank you for your concern and reply, My email address has not been compromised, I sent you the mail in-order for you to help me out, let me know if you can help me out

from ["PRT Is a Joke" IS A JOKE]
to "J. Edward Anderson"
date Tue, Feb 9, 2010 at 1:43 PM
subject Re: Help Request

Ken, is that you?

from: J. Edward Anderson <[* * * *]@gmail.com>
to: ["PRT Is a Joke" IS A JOKE]
date Tue, Feb 9, 2010 at 1:55 PM
subject Re: Help Request

Ken

Thanks so much for your concern and reply i sent you the email in other for you to help me out,let me know if you can help me make the transfer.

Thanks

from ["PRT Is a Joke" IS A JOKE]
to "J. Edward Anderson"
date Tue, Feb 9, 2010 at 2:04 PM
subject Re: Help Request

Typos. Repetitive. Slow to catch on -- Ken, it IS you!!! I will send you this much post-haste! Don't spend it all on pints at Quarter Jacks, 10 Godliman Street, London.

(Note to lawyers with no sense of humor: it wasn't really Ken Avidor.)

Reading:
Scams with same/similar language

The REAL J. Edward Anderson and PRT International

Godliman Street by St. Paul's, London:
Quarter Jacks
(in Grange St. Paul's Hotel)

The corner of Godliman & Knightrider (!)

View Larger Map

gPRT

Reading Is Still Fundamental

2010-02-09T11:06:00.010-08:00

The Minnesota Department of Transportation has issued an RFI for PRT in that state. So today anti-PRT propagandist Ken Avidor asks:

Will MnDOT be taking this PRT plan into consideration?

For the answer to Ken's question, let's go to the RFI!

5.1 Who May Respond

Responses from any city, county, company or organization, such as a university, institution, or partnership of same with the ability to build, operate and maintain such a system are welcome.

Dean Zimmermann (ex-Minneapolis Green Party councilor who served time in the federal prison system for "illegal gratuities") is not a PRT builder, operator and maintainer. Nor is CPRT, the nonprofit advocacy group who supported Zimmermann's plan in the past.

In short -- NO, Ken, the Zimmermann plan won't be considered. The answer was right there in the RFI, in black and white, for you to read.

Ken Avidor's 'question' is merely his latest attempt to smear PRT through guilt by association.

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gPRT

Just a bill

2010-02-08T11:08:00.013-08:00

Earmarks vs. Pork (Ken Avidor goes to school)

Earmarks are products of the legislative process. They are part of the overall appropriations process, but unlike a tax exemption or bond there is no requirement for an earmark to pay for it itself.

The name earmark comes from the legislature specially designating money for a specific project -- like turning down the corner of a page in a book -- as opposed to an executive branch agency funding a project through the budgetmaking process.

A legislator adds an earmark to a spending bill, and it becomes one of the legislative body's spending priorities. This is not horsetrading -- a quid pro quo in which lawmakers agree to vote for each others' measures. That is termed 'logrolling.'

Appropriation is another way earmarks differ from grants, which are awarded to projects based on objective evaluative criteria. This lack of objectivity (and publicity by good-government and anti-government activists alike) has caused earmarks to be conflated with 'pork,' which traditionally is understood to mean spending intended to buy the support or votes of a group of constituents.

Politics can affect how an earmark gets approved. But one person's earmark is another's wasteful spending.

In contrast, a grant program is set up through a legislative process, but legislation only establishes the top level goals and objectives. The recipients are chosen by an executive branch agency through an open call for applications; grants are awarded to projects that are judged, based on the objective criteria, the best able to achieve the goals and objectives.

The current Winona 'PRT Lab' funding request is to a grant program.

Reading:

Richard Shelby's $35 billion Northrop-Grumman earmark
(1,400 times the size of the possible 'PRT Lab' grant for Winona)

1981-2005:
Federal spending in Minnesota
LESS THAN federal taxes paid

gPRT

"Short attention sp- look, pork!"

2010-02-01T14:00:00.021-08:00

(Mock Journalist, Part VII)

You really have to wonder about Ken Avidor. Look at his post from last Saturday, "Hilarious Opinion Piece By Personal Rapid Transit Promoter Hugh Miller." The excerpted "hilarity" includes:

Our country is in very serious financial trouble, mortal financial danger, and unless and until we turn it around, quickly, the American Dream will die.
...
The national debt we are accumulating is both debilitating and unsustainable, and by most standards we are already bankrupt. What this means, in practical terms, is shortly we will not be able to control our own destiny...
...
We are a nation of about 300 million people, and we now have a total debt and unfunded liabilities of about $62 trillion. That''s $200,000 a piece!
...
Simply put we must cut spending, drastically, tough and unpopular as that may be.
...
Sacrifice will be required by all of us, and it must be done fairly...

Somebody help me, I just busted a gut laughing. And notice: the op-ed does not mention PRT.

I don't know Hugh Miller (of the same family as Mayor Jerry and state senate candidate Jeremy -- didya know that, Ken? You're welcome) or his politics. And I don't know that he, personally, is a PRT supporter. All I know of him are his philanthropic activities (1, 2) and leadership of the RTP Company. And I'm neither endorsing nor condemning his views, I am only reporting the above excerpts from an extremely windy op-ed. That was the extent of Mr. Short Attention Span's superficial reportage: it's funny cuz it's long!

But at this point there is also enough information above that Ken Avidor could have had himself a Big Scoop. See, one of the things cited as an advantage of the Mayor Jerry-backed "Winona PRT lab" plan is that the city has a thermoplastics company that could build some of the PRT components (see p. 6 here). That company? RTP.

If he was even a fourth of the half of the genius investigative blogger he thinks he is, Ken Avidor could have raised a question like "Is the 'PRT lab' just a way to help out the Miller Family empire?" I'm not saying the situation is too cozy; and I'm not saying it isn't. I'm just saying that Ken Avidor is so focused on namecalling, mocking, and guilt-by-associating to the exclusion of all else, that he misses the obvious line of investigation.

Instead, the Big Scoop -- objective skepticism about this specific proposal -- goes to "PRT is a Joke IS A JOKE"! We out-skepticized the PRT Skeptic! All hail Mr_Grant, perhaps the new leading skeptic of PRT! Policy analysis beats art college again!

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Read: the "Mock Journalist" Series
(is "mock" an adjective or a verb? You decide!)

Also today:
See the end of his post -- Avidor still thinks a grant is pork, an earmark (see earlier #4 here).

NEW:
Where is Porkidor's outrage over $35 billion in major earmark
abuse, holding hostage more than 200 of President Obama's
nominations? That's 1,400 times the size of the proposed
$25 million "PRT lab" grant.

NEWER:
1981-2005: Federal spending in Minnesota
LESS THAN federal taxes paid

gPRT

Local man questions doctor's competency

2010-01-27T09:44:00.010-08:00

A Minneapolis man went public today with questions about the competency of Dr. Thomas X. Guy of the Physical Rehabilitation Therapies (PRT) clinic.

Ken Avidor of Kingfield accused Dr. Guy of not knowing what he's doing. Avidor, who describes himself as "perhaps the leading skeptic of physical rehabilitation therapy," says the clinic exists only to steer patients toward lengthy, painful and expensive treatment, and away from proven technologies like canes, wheelchairs and walkers.

Avidor also cited information on the clinic website, which he called "proof of the PRT scam."

"According to his biography on the clinic's website, Dr. Guy has been practicing medicine for over 20 years. Well how much practice does he need? When is he going to stop practicing and just do it?" wondered Avidor.

"How many chances does Guy of PRT get???"

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"Polish PRT?"

Ken Avidor (@Daily Kos)
read the PRTJJ coverage

gPRT Ken Avidor is a preexisting condition