Propaganda Easter?

It awakens!

I Cannot Comment

Thanks to reader "Not THE Harry Harrison" for alerting me to this:

At first I thought maybe this was Ken's extreeeme attempt to deprive me of material. But no, it's about all of his blogs, not just Dump Bachmann:

At first reading it is tantalizing for what he doesn't say -- not I don't know, or There are technical difficulties, or even That god-damn Blogger. What it sounds like to a reasonable person is I've been told to keep my mouth shut.

And here is his explanation for public consumption:

Wow. The "Dump Bachmann" blog (and all of Ken's blogs) has been retired with Bachmann yet-to-be-dumped.

The Speculationing. Yes, SPECULATIONING.

Let's note that in general "I cannot comment" is a very legalistic expression. People say it when they're in trouble. They say it when arriving at the police station to assist with their inquiries.

Maybe litigation is occurring, or is in the pipeline, about something or things Ken has written in one of his blogs. Something serious and with merit, otherwise those blogs would still be up and Ken would be blogging about it. Of course, libel can be libel even if distribution is limited.

This is the "case" mentioned by AnitaMaria, but I can't believe that has any merit, coming as it does from a right wing whackjob. I certainly wouldn't pull down my blogs in face of a nuisance suit from such a quarter (unless I had written something that -- oh never mind).

Or maybe Ken simply doesn't understand that to be of value an archive needs to be accessible to would-be researchers. ANY researchers. Otherwise your archive enters the realm of conspiracy theory-style 'secret knowledge.' Yes, Stupidity would be the simple explanation.

More later (I suspect).

Don't hold a wake for the Laffable Luddite's blogs yet, though:

His Jan. 2008 blogging retirement

April 2008 unretirement

Later in 2008 re-retirement

April 2009 - He's back

gPRT
I suppose I COULD treat it as a victory

Nothing Meaningful

Mock Journalist, Part XIII

The new Ken Avidor blog post is the work of a lazy, lazy man.

You can tell from the title: Was Minnesota Personal Rapid Transit Huckster Run Out of Fayetteville, Georgia on " a Greased Rail" After "Press Release Hoax"? (PRT Moondoggie, 3/12) The question mark at the end means 'I have no idea.' Lazy.

The story is about the foot-in-mouth attempts by the JPods PRT company to secure an installation deal with the city of Fayetteville, Georgia. We relayed this sorry excuse for transit development starting a month ago at the NewsCenter (see 2/13) -- the linked stories show how JPods basically counted its chickens before they were hatched.

The overview is that JPods accidentally or on purpose released a press statement prematurely claiming Fayetteville had agreed to host the company's first pod installation. When it found out, the city council was not pleased, and the gambit (or mistake or misunderstanding or whatever it was) appears to have been pivotal in the council decision to not let JPods build on/over public rights of way. Build it on private land, they decided.

Which is absolutely the correct decision in this case, simply because JPods has zero track record it can cite to reassure a community it can bring off a successful project. JPods wanted Fayetteville to be the guinea pig for a pod design with no prototype, no testing results, no regulatory sign-off, no project team, no manufacturing capability, no supply chain. In effect, JPods wanted Fayetteville to host a testing facility -- and that is not the job of local government, even if (as JPods claims) the project funding was to be 100% private. The public still 'pays' by allowing use of public ROW, and in any negative impacts on overall transportation and land use.

That Ken gets the story right this time is due only to the fact that he sat back and waited for the Fayetteville media, the NewsCenter, and the Transport-Innovators Google Group to do the work of information gathering as well as criticism.

And he concludes today's entry by telling any public officials who might be reading (I suppose it's possible), "If you're wondering whether PRT is a boondoggle or not, Google is your best friend" -- an unwitting admission that Ken Avidor adds nothing meaningful to the coverage or discussion of personal rapid transit.

But you knew that.

gPRT

Terrifying Misrepresentation!!!

Today Ken Avidor the Laffable Luddite is back, and he's in fine Jell-O-like form.

"VIDEO: Heathrow T5 Personal Rapid Transit Pod Customer Service: " Truly Shameless"
Pod promoters always downplay the possibility of failures for PRT. The fact is failure can happen with any mechanical system. What is especially terrifying for a passenger is to experience a failure without any human available to explain what is going on. …
Source

"Video"! "Shameless"! "Failure can happen"! "Especially terrifying"!

Ken then shows you the video. Of a man terrifyingly* stuck at the Terminal 5 pod STATION, trying to speak with Customer Service but not getting satisfaction, which "PRT is a Joke IS A JOKE" is certain must never happen in any other everyday situation in the whole wide world already.

OH THE HUMANITY! Frame from the terrifying video of the terrifying Heathrow Terminal 5 pod station. At any time they might have walked next door for a snack (although I hear Gordon Ramsay kitchens can be nightmares) while the problem was being resolved.

"Pod promoters" don't really "downplay" failures, either. In fact, they speak and write extensively on how they try to design their system with backup components to reduce the odds of failure. Maybe that makes them sound overconfident, but they certainly don't "downplay."

In addition, it's hard to make sense of the source blogger's complaint:

We had to listen to a voice hiding behind the screen, who after a while stopped picking up the help phone also. 

As though he expected an airport representative to be crouched behind the little kiosk. We don't even know why the pods appeared to be not in operation.

But the blogger does make it clear that:

Its [sic] not bad that it failed, because these things do fail, what was worse was that they refused to send anybody down for the 20 minutes it was out of order. 

The complaint was about Customer Service (the human factor), NOT the Ultra PRT technology. And at 20 minutes in duration, a decidedly minor complaint.

Verdict:
 

Update 1: Robert Llewellyn's Fully Charged -- "About 90%" of Heathrow Pod users have pushed the :) button.

^ *So terrified he had the presence of mind to record the video 



gPRT

Three little words

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

Related:

The 6 Surrenders Of Vukan R. Vuchic

gPRT

Possibly the funniest Laffable Luddite post...

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

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

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

The Laffable Luddite says:

"He's covering monorail!"

"He's NOT covering monorail!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

* * *

Ken also writes

David Gow has finally acknowledged the existence of the PRT proposal for his city on his Get There Fast website's news page, with this comment:
Get There Fast takes no position on this proposal.

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

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

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

Update 1:

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

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


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

Achtung

You boys play nice, now.

Archive

Missed Again (2/14/2010)

gPRT

Yet Another Luddite Veto

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

A unique operational feature is that the vehicles will keep moving slowly through stations without completely stopping. This operation has proved successful when tested with handicapped passengers. Passengers alight as soon as the vehicle enters the station while others board just before it leaves the station. If no one boards, or if boarding is incomplete, the vehicle will stop in the station. Stations are arranged so as to keep boarding and alighting passengers separate (even to the point of having separate staircases).

Source

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

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

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

Personal Rapid Transit Pod People Invade Mexico

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

Source

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

"Polish PRT?"

Ken Avidor (@Daily Kos)
read the PRTJJ coverage

Update 1:

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

gPRT

Business Plan

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

The Cherrypick.  This is where he only uses facts favorable to his claims, discarding the rest. Examples: repeating 'Bachmann's PRT boondoggle' while ignoring the 13 Democrats who supported PRT in the Minnesota Senate; blaming a Minnesota High Speed Rail Commissioner's separate support of PRT for cancellation of Ohio and Wisconsin HSR, ignoring that Governors Kasich and Walker just want President Obama to fail.

Far And Away. He lies about places he thinks would be difficult to verify. Blaming a few years of PRT planning for over a decade of neighborhood decay in England is an example of Far And Away. Others include: claiming to be from Alameda; depicting PRT in locations where no one is proposing putting it (1, 2); making a big deal about Amritsar merchants protesting pod transit with a dharna fast, when dharnas are actually very common in India.

Hail Mary. This is when Ken says something prima facie wrong, or a misquote, and hopes to get away with it. Examples: A PRT system for one city "would be in the trillions of dollars"; a dropped sentence fragment turns an anti-oil tweet into a pro-Keystone pipeline tweet.

The Hidden Ball Trick. He states something as fact, tries to camouflage it with bluster or under a layer of narrative, and hopes no one factchecks it.

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

So was his claim that one guy used PRT to "stop rail transit" in Minneapolis in the 1970s -- but bureaucratic infighting was the more believable culprit.

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

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

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

Taxi 2000 Document Reveals Safety Concerns Can Make PRT Systems "Unworkable".

    ...The following are excerpts that show that Taxi 2000 itself believes that PRT is a very risky investment.

"Federal and State safety regulation of automated transit systems can make PRT systems unworkable. Since there are no examples of our technology currently in operation, we cannot predict what sort of state or federal government safety regulation might apply. At this juncture, the Federal Transit Administration - which would exercise whatever regulation might apply at this level - has left the matter up to the states. Management believes the states will look foremost to the work of a committee of the American Society of Civil Engineers, which has developed a set of safety standards for "Automated People Movers" (APM's). We have been following that work and think at this point it will pose only one problem: eg., "brick wall stopping" requirements for the control system (borrowed from railroad signaling practice). The requirement is that if one vehicle stops instantaneously, the next vehicle must be able to stop before hitting the stopped one. That requirement would inhibit the sort of minimum vehicle headway used in our design, but it would not affect operation of the first, lower density systems. In the context of PRT, "headway" means the nose-to-nose time spacing between two sequential vehicles. Setting a minimum allowable headway determines the maximum carrying capacity of the guideway. We will work to have the headway requirement amended, since we believe it is inappropriate to PRT technology, but there is no guarantee we will be successful in that regard.

...The above paragraph is not some earth-shaking secret admission of a fatal flaw. In fact it is a fairly standard "safe harbor" statement, something all companies that offer stock are required to do, to apprise prospective investors of every conceivable risk, no matter how remote...

Every public company has safe harbor statements in their prospectuses, annual reports and 10-K filings. So if everyone gave full, literal and equal weight to everything in safe harbors, no one would ever invest in anything.

[Source]

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

Return of the Hidden Ball

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

Ten Years Ago: Taxi 2000 Corporation's Business Plan

...Here the "Business Plan" includes the lengthy bios of J. Edward Anderson, A. Scheffer Lang and Raymond A. MacDonald. Then it gets around to... the money:

The Taxi 2000 business plan requires funding of twenty-five million dollars to be raised in successive rounds over a thirty-six month period. The funds will be used for completing specifications, building of the test track facilities, world-class procurement and marketing.

Exit Strategy

The opportunity for investor exit should occur between months 54 and 72. At this juncture, Taxi 2000 should have a strong backlog of booked sales, as well as a substantial number of highly interested potential customers. Initial system installations should be complete and operating, with other systems under construction.

Two potential opportunities for investor exit will be an IPO or a strategic acquisition by a large corporate interest. The strategic acquisition of the investor position would be the more likely scenario but this would be determined by the climate of the public equity markets at that time.

Interesting - a business plan with an "Exit Strategy"?.... [ellipsis in original] anyways, according to Mpls/St. Paul Business Journal:

The firm has raised $2 million in a $24 million fund-raising effort to pay for the testing facility and other corporate needs, according to SEC filings and city documents.

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

Are you aware that Claude Pepper is known all over Washington as a shameless extrovert? Not only that, but this man is reliably reported to practice nepotism with his sister-in-law, he has a brother who is a known homo sapiens, and he has a sister who was once a thespian in wicked New York. Worst of all, it is an established fact that Mr. Pepper, before his marriage, habitually practiced celibacy.

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Exit Strategy - Strategies for Investor Exit

The majority of Business investors will be looking for a planned exit strategy worked out at the time of investment. It will be very beneficial to work out the ideal exit strategy for potential investors before you seek funding. Investors will need to know when they can realise a return on investment so this is a crucial area of the pitch to get right.

Investors want a maximum return on initial investment and a well thought-out exit strategy provides them with the incentive to invest in your venture.

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

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

Therefore when Ken Avidor writes “Interesting - a business plan with an "Exit Strategy"?” his interior monologue is screaming, 'Don't bother reading this, because I am an ignoramus. I don't know what I'm talking about. I really just don't know.'

gPRT Wall Street Weak

He's green until he's not

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 (multiethnic) people of Amritsar 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!

Another Luddite Veto

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.

UPDATE 4: By the way, this photo which Ken thought showed "a hideous visual scar" on historic Amritsar? 



It's not even Amritsar. It's Gurgaon.


Leave Laffy Alone!

gPRT

* Taxis and autorickshaws burn petrol, Ken! 

Intolerance

Luddite fires his loose cannon, Part II

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

On March 21st, 2007, Tad Winiecki said:

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

---

On June 19th, 2007, Tad Winiecki said:

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

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

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

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

Earlier:
The Luddite Veto (September)

Luddite fires his loose cannon (October)

Update 1:

PRT Consulting reports Nishinaga has left CyberTran

gPRT

On the occasion of the approval of an Amritsar PRT

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

Here I Am -- or AM I???

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?

PRT for Delhi? Yes, No, I don't know
Selections	Label	Category
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