Not synonymous

From reading the Laffable Luddite's tweet about Princeton's Alexander Street/University Place transit task force dropping PRT from consideration, you'd think the bulldozers were already idling at the construction site:

Yes, Ken says they killed a PRT project.  Cue visions of hard hat-wearing engineers throwing down blueprints and stalking off in high dudgeon.

Except if you actually click on his link, what you find is that what Princeton has dropped is not a project:

Princeton Council heard testimony at their September 9 meeting from Kevin Wilkes, the Chair of the Alexander Street / University Place Transit Task Force. He reported that the possibility of a heavy rail extension of the Dinky Line to take it up to Palmer Square is no longer being considered. Use of Personal Rapid Transit (PRT) technology has also been excluded from further discussion. However, several other transport modes remain under discussion.

Did we get that? "Considered." "Discussion." They are talking about the transit modes they could implement, and dropping some of those. What has been stopped about PRT is scoping --which, at this early stage, is basically just an on-paper technology assessment.

Such discussion does not a project make.

Why was PRT dropped? The article itself says the reason is unknown, and speculates it's because PRT is "relatively unproven" (not noting the existence of Heathrow and Masdar). But an educated guess can be made, based on this statement about the proposal to extend the existing 'Dinky' heavy rail [italics in original]:

We don’t have the turning radius; we don’t have the ability to run the catenary lines up any street in town. We eliminated that as a possibility.

If they're restricted as to where elevated wires can go, that probably also applies to elevated modes.  The cliche putdowns "pie in the sky," "The Jetsons," and "anti-transit scam" do not make an appearance. Not even "more of a Shelbyville idea."

The verdict:

Update 1
So Ken has tried to learn from the above, posting this today (10/2/2013):

Hedging his bets, he calls the Amritsar PRT thingamajig a "Proposal."

Except the Amritsar PRT thingamabob has reached the stage of laying a foundation stone, selecting a vendor, and drawing up detailed plans. I'm afraid that takes the Amritsar PRT thingy past the rank of proposal, all the way to being a real project.*

The verdict:

Too bad, Ken.


* Although, the headline on the linked article is "Much-hyped Pod transit system for Amritsar may get scrapped" (emphasis added), so as of now it can't be said to have actually bitten the dust yet.

gPRT

Berther

Laffable Luddite again displays ignorance of basic PRT concepts


I think we've pretty well established how Ken Avidor is the Worst Expert In The World when it comes to anything to do with PRT. So his new blog post "Suncheon Bay Vectus "PRT" Revealed to NOT be Personal Rapid Transit" can best be described as maintaining his pattern.

Avidor writes as follows (pay attention to what he has put in bold, they are not in the original):

The Vectus October update (PDF) has a preview of their much-ballyhooed Suncheon Bay project in Korea.

Station Two is currently under construction and due to be completed by the end of December 2012. Both stations will feature in-line berths, platform screen doors and touch screen passenger information/destination selection facilities.

According to the Wikipedia PRT article which is mostly written by fans of PRT,  offline stations are  a defining characteristic of PRT:

In PRT designs, vehicles are sized for individual or small group travel, typically carrying no more than 3 to 6 passengers per vehicle.[1] Guide ways are arranged in a network topology, with all stations located on sidings, and with frequent merge/diverge points. This approach allows for nonstop, point-to-point travel, bypassing all intermediate stations

So Vectus is just another monorail/people-mover that exist in airports, amusement parks etc. all over the world. Not the revolution in transportation we were promised, not "faster,  cheaper,  better" than conventional transit modes.

He really thinks he has something here, and sinks his teeth in. Except he's comparing apples and oranges: the fact is a PRT station is offline, but its berths can be either inline or not inline.

Nomenclature review:

1. A station is where multiple pods can park to load and unload passengers; it is offline on a siding so vehicles going to other stations can bypass it.
2. The positions where pods park are berths; they can be sawtoothed where pods park at an angle so they can pass each other in the station, or inline (!!!) where pods park nose to tail.

Here is a PRT station at Masdar City:

Sawtoothed: Berths angled, not inline. Station is offline.

Next, a PRT station at West Virginia University:

Berths nose-to-tail, or inline. Station is still offline.

You choose: Ken Avidor doesn't understand what an inline berth is, or knows what it is but has decided to deliberately confuse it* with inline stations.

---

Update 1 (11/16): Martin Pemberton, Vectus director of Sales & Marketing, has confirmed to NewsCenter that the Suncheon stations are indeed offline --

Maybe some confusion in terminology. By 'in-line' we mean one behind the other. The stations are 'off-line' from the main track, ie. in siding as you call them.

The clock to see how long it takes Ken to retract his post starts... now.

JavaScript Kit

---

By the way, while the official definition of PRT calls for offline stations, a demonstration system with only two stations (like Vectus at Suncheon) wouldn't need stations to be on sidings. A trip from Station One that bypassed Station Two would end up -- where? I invite Ken   to try to fill in the blank.

Basically, there is no need at Suncheon to bypass a station. Doubt could be cast on Vectus should they ever offer inline stations in a larger, multi-station system. But we know they are capable of offline stations. An offline station was a feature of the Vectus test facility in Sweden, which received government safety clearance.

Uppsala, Sweden. Vectus pod enters offline guideway.

Also: We cover this Vectus Update at the NewsCenter.

^ * i.e., lie

P.S. Ken  also has a second post today, in which he declares:

"elections have consequences... the [Nov. 6, 2012] election slams the door on any chance of public funding for PRT projects"

For proof he cites a quote from 2011 by one Minnesota legislator who is skeptical of PRT, who is the new chair of the senate transportation committee. And the quote contains no vow about door-slamming, it's all an Avidor prediction; we know how accurate he is about predictions.

In short, elections would have consequences for PRT in Minnesota -- had PRT been an issue in any Minnesota election contest, which it was not (sorry Ken, you mentioning it doesn't count).

At any rate, no future public funding for PRT projects in Minnesota represents no change from the past. Ken is celebrating no change.


gPRT
PRTher, rhymes with Birther

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

Light Manufacturing

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!

Apparently it's not long enough

Mock Journalist, Part X

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

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

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

+


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

Propagandist undercuts his own position

Editor's note: We continue beta-testing the change to one of the oldest editorial policies of "PRT is a Joke" IS A JOKE. For a limited time, The Name of the Minnesota anti-PRT propagandist will be shown -- although special formatting will be used.

Ken Avidor's editorial policy at the PRT Moondoggie blog is not only to copy multimedia embedded on PRT Is a Joke IS A JOKE, Get On Board!PRT and GetThereFast. His (currently frenzied) pattern is also re-posting old propaganda -- whether it makes sense or not! Let's examine the items in his 'latest' posts:

Post 1: Personal Rapid Transit Hucksters to Offer Non-Solutions During Cop 15 [sic]

Apparently, SkyTran is the only PRT system worth discussing -- 1,900 words worth (after promising a "quick answer to any questions about podcars"!). It's all there -- Doug Malewicki's "Aaaarrrrgghh!" quote, the Robosaurus, the guideway building robot. No need to read any of it -- all have been previously posted by Avidor, numerous times:

• "Aaaarrrrgghh!" quote. Posted by Ken at least six other places on the internet. It's a relatively antique statement that was on the SkyTran website as early as May 11, 2000 (click through to item 14 in the Technical section)-- yet Avidor manages to omit the fact and let readers think it reflects SkyTran's current status.
  
  And funny that he wants to call attention to Malewicki's statement, "If I want to hire all black engineers (and I know a bunch of dam [sic] good practical ones), to the exclusion of Hispanics, Women, Polaks, etc. the government won't let me" (as if that's supposed to be 'shocking' -- 'Malewicki' is Polish). Funny, because Ken slurred Poles only two weeks ago:

"Polish PRT?"

Ken Avidor (@Daily Kos)
PRTJJ coverage

• Phoenix New Times article about SkyTran. Posted by Avidor two places on the internet.
• Arizona Republic article about SkyTran. Posted by Kennine places on the internet.
  

Post 2: Will San José [sic] Pimp Their Own Pods?

• Eleven month old report from KGO-TV San Francisco. Gotta brush up your HTML, Ken! Then the embedded player might work. I'd be happy to give you some pointers.
  
  
• "ULTra is featured zooming around in computer-generated videos... [ellipsis in original] no mention that the launch of ULTra at Heathrow 5 has been postponed twice." Because that eleven month old report came out before the reschedulings!!!
  
  
• "Pimp your own pod" video. Posted by Ken at least 14 other places on the internet.
  
  
• Video with Barbara Johnson in JPod. Posted by Avidor at least 4 other places on the internet.
  
  
• "Barbara Johnson's pod-praising letter to Bill James from the Jpod website."

Yes. What about Barbara A. Johnson, President of the Minneapolis City Council, representing Ward 1? She was elected in 1997, succeeding her mother, Alice Rainville, who was the city's first woman Council President. Mrs. Rainville served for 22 years; she only passed away this past March. In other words, Ken Avidor is sneering at a woman who is carrying on a family tradition of public service. And only because she supports PRT. Klassy* again, Ken!

And you know what else? BARBARA A. JOHNSON IS A DEMOCRAT! Endorsed with an "A" rating by Stonewall DFL! But- but- Ken Avidor claims only right wing Republicans like Michele Bachmann support PRT!!!

I guess Ken Avidor is wrong. Again.



* BTW Ken, I notice you're using "klassy" too. Get your own shtick.

gPRT
This is too easy Ken, you gotta put some effort into it

Is PRT an issue in Minneapolis Council Ward 9 race?

It is, if you believe anti-PRTeabagger Ken Avidor:

Dave Bicking is your garden-variety PRT-promoting politician.

Source

Editor's note: We continue beta-testing the change to one of the oldest editorial policies of "PRT is a Joke" IS A JOKE. For a limited time, The Name of the Minnesota anti-PRT propagandist will be shown -- although special formatting will be used.

But is Bicking talking about PRT?



How about Democrat Gary Schiff?



The Independence Party's Todd Eberhardy?



So why is Ken Avidor injecting non-issue personal rapid transit into this race? Why? WHY???

Update: His response to this post? To rehash four year old non-news!
(Kena Wei, how much should a first prototype cost -- one that worked "exactly as designed"?

"Polish PRT?"

Ken Avidor (@Daily Kos)
PRTJJ coverage

gPRT

Blogger resigns to spend more time with his conspiracy theory

Editor's note: We continue beta-testing the change to one of the oldest editorial policies of "PRT is a Joke" IS A JOKE. For a limited time, The Name of the Minnesota anti-PRT propagandist will be shown -- although special formatting will be used.

August saw the end of an era for Personal Rapid Transit, as it's most articulate critic announced his resignation as a contributor to the Dump Michele Bachmann blog.

"Way back in 2004, a transportation activist sent me an MPR article about the pods that quoted Michele Bachmann," Ken Avidor wrote in Dump Bachmann in recalling how he got started wanting to Dump Bachmann and opposing PRT. He also started opposing PRT in 2003 and 1989.

Avidor went on to explain he is departing Dump Bachmann in order to spend more time with his conspiracy theory. "I spent a lot of time away from my anti-PRT conspiracy theory last year, polishing my liberal credentials in the run up to Bachmann's reelection. Then I started to realize how much I miss my conspiracy," Avidor said.

One day, Avidor was on his regular daily commute between Alameda and Minneapolis when he started discussing children with the man in the next seat.

"I suddenly realized how fast my conspiracy has grown up, so much that I hardly recognize it," he said, "so I decided I needed to devote more time to it, before it has to start college in September."

This year, Avidor and his conspiracy have traveled to many places together, including Ithaca NY, Morgantown WV, Phoenix, London and Daventry in England, and Abu Dhabi.

He promises to return to Dump Bachmann soon. "Hopefully she'll be in Congress a long time, so I can spend the rest of my life trying to dump her -- it's that important to me," Avidor said.





gPRT

The "Alameda fib" limps on

Editor's note: We continue beta-testing the change to one of the oldest editorial policies of "PRT is a Joke" IS A JOKE. For a limited time, The Name of the Minnesota anti-PRT propagandist will be shown -- although special formatting will be used.

Of all the odd things Ken Avidor has done, one of the strangest happened at the Action Alameda blog on an Aug. 8, 2008 when he signed a blog comment "Ken Avidor, Alameda."

"PRT Is a Joke IS A JOKE" has had great fun publicizing this fib here and in other blogs' comment areas, as have other debunkers such as Atren/A.T.E.

Avidor has not seen fit to explain his geographic self-mislocation. Until now.

Avidor finally attempts to address the address issue in the recently concluded Streetsblog comment thread, attached to the brand extension of his Daily Kos diary "Michele Bachmann and the Right-Wing Libertarian Argument Against LRT / For PRT":

Ken Avidor

A.T.E.: "Avidor disciples - many of them are Avidor sock puppets anyways."

Avidor: Not true. I've posted here only under my own name. [Dodging the issue of whether he uses sock puppets elsewhere. -Ed.]

A.T.E.: "Ken Avidor was quickly on the scene, telling some local blogger he was an Alameda resident"

Avidor: I responded to a post on a form that automatically said I was from Alameda. I asked the moderator to correct it. No attempt to pass myself off as a resident.

Here are all the Action Alameda blog posts about the SunCal's PRT proposal.

June 8, 2009 at 7:25 pm
#135

Not only is the sock puppet denial evasive, but the rest of Avidor's explanation doesn't work either.

1. If you follow the link he gives for the list of SunCal posts, the date of his post is the earliest of the bunch. To what was he responding?

Maybe he'll claim he was responding to this post from the same day -- except it was posted at 8:55 pm, and Ken's piece was posted 11:59 am.

2. An examination of the Action Alameda blog reveals two ways to send them comments: an email address, or this form:



Where is the forced Alameda choice?*

As further evidence of Avidor's bogosity, this commenter was able to indicate that he's from Torrance, CA.

3. If he asked the moderator to correct it, why hasn't it been done? The Action Alameda blogmaster had time to correspond with Atren and write more about PRT and Avidor in a follow up piece -- and even notes Ken is in Minnesota.

And Action Alameda does write about other requests for corrections.

It sure looks like Action Alameda believes "Ken Avidor, Alameda" is something not needing correction.

Come clean, Ken. Everyone knows what you did: you sent Action Alameda an op-ed, omitting any mention of Minnesota and your three favoritest Minnesota politicians, and claimed Alameda residency so they would be more likely to run it. Admit it. It would be the first time you corrected something -- who knows, you might like it.



Recently: Ken thinks Reverse Psychology is "weird"


* And here's their FORM code, no hidden City field:

<form action="http://actionalameda.org/actionalamedanewsblog/wp-comments-post.php" method="post" id="commentform">

<p><input type="text" name="author" id="author" value="" size="22" tabindex="1" />
<label for="author"><small>Name </small></label></p>

<p><input type="text" name="email" id="email" value="" size="22" tabindex="2" />
<label for="email"><small>Mail (will not be published) </small></label></p>

<p><input type="text" name="url" id="url" value="" size="22" tabindex="3" />
<label for="url"><small>Website</small></label></p>

<!--<p><small><strong>XHTML:</strong> You can use these tags: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong> </small></p>-->

<p><textarea name="comment" id="comment" cols="100%" rows="10" tabindex="4"></textarea></p>

<p><input name="submit" type="submit" id="submit" tabindex="5" value="Submit Comment" />
<input type="hidden" name="comment_post_ID" value="1682" />
</p>

</form>

gPRT

Here comes the cloud of obfuscation

It's now the afterglow of Kiln Ovendoor's latest Daily Kos humiliation, so you know what that means, dontcha?

He has to do something to change the subject. As usual he's telegraphing his punch:

I can always tell when something really embarrassing has occurred for the PRT guys when Mr. Gow tries to distract me with his silly comment spam.

Stay tuned.

by K*n A***** on Mon May 04, 2009 at 09:45:43 AM PDT

"Stay tuned" means I'm frantically Googling right now. He'll take a bunch of unrelated items and combine them into something that fits his conspiracy theory. A little from Search A, a pinch from Search B, stir in some Search C; add bile and serve! (An example of this was his smear against Trevor Smallwood of ATS Ltd.*)

Notice also how Labridor is doing the time warp again -- he says I'm trying to distract him from an imaginary PRT embarrassment. Whereas in normal space-time I'm responding to his imaginary Morgantown news blogging that came first.

UPDATE! Kenwood says it has something to do with the New York Times and The Guardian. Funny, my Google News Alert has nothing PRT-wise from those esteemed journals.

UPDATE II: The cloud is more of a sandstorm.

* Notice how he has never repeated it!

gPRT
Ken Avidor takes the L out of Lover

Mock Journalist, Part V - Bonehead Revisited

Remember the Ken Avidor-authored laff riot otherwise known as Was the ULTra test track bulldozed? Journey with me now to the days of yesteryear --

It was February 19, 2007, and Kennel Ration tried to use Google Maps to prove that the Cardiff test track had been removed. The ULTra website shows an aerial photo of the track, but Google Maps shows a vacant lot -- the track must be gone and ULTra a failure! was his line of reasoning. It didn't occur to Kenmore that the Google Maps photo might be -- oh, I don't know -- out of date?

I responded to him, also on February 19, with my own satirical take on his gaffe.

Have you tried our new information resource, The PRT-Centered Universe of...? In the course of doing research for it, I happened upon a posting to a Welsh message board:

Posted: Tue Feb 20, 2007 12:20 am
Post subject: ULTra Cardiff Test Track... Bulldozed?
Does anyone know if the ULTra Test track at the end of Viking Ln is still there? [ellipsis in original]
Source

Now, over the years I have been critical of Vapidor's lame attempts at journalism, so it's good to see him, the ex-Transportation Editor of the Twin Cities Daily Planet, trying to ask questions, seeking the whole story.

Oh but wait -- notice the date. February 20 -- the day after his original blog post!¹

That wasn't a real reporter's question, it was Labridor desperately trying to get the 'proof' he should have tried to get before publishing the story! Which makes his 'story' a Lie.^®

1. Even accounting for time zones, 12:20am in Cardiff is 6:20pm in Minneapolis, and Kenwood's original blog post was at 10:11am.


gPRT
Ken Avidor got his tit caught in a big fat wringer

The fibber's latest fibs

Bon jour gadgetbahners, I have indeed returned from a great holiday in France. So you can understand if I look down the list of the Minnesota anti-PRT propagandist's smelly output of the past two weeks, and simply smile at how trivial it (and he) is.

Ken Avidor has been a busy boy though. For entertainment purposes, the most fruitful of his prating have got to be his contributions to the Action Alameda News blog. The blog about life in that San Francisco Bay Area community¹ had a post about Peter Calthorpe's pitch for redevelopment at Alameda Point (a, b; also here), and Avidor had to chime in with his usual Talking Points.

I'll skip over the old ones that have already been debunked, and focus on two interesting New Fibs. They are just as lame as New Coke.

1. Kenny-Boy wrote a letter to Action Alameda News, and signed it "Ken Avidor, Alameda." He lied so his smear job would gain the added legitimacy of local relevance. What do you call that -- a sock puppet address? But maybe he's really moved there! It's possible I guess. Advice: It's California, Kenwood, wear your sunscreen!

2. After his Minnesota residency is exposed by Atren, the Action Alameda author is intrigued enough to do a follow up. An interview with Ken is recounted, in which he talks about the origin of his PRT hatred:

...says that his opposition to PRT is rooted in his experience in 2004, watching the City of Minneapolis approve a study of a PRT system. Source

Interesting and moving, except for one thing: one of Kennel Ration's biggest claims to infamy, his seminal anti-PRT fearmongering cartoon, dates from April 23, 2003.

But wait -- on his own website, Kenwood wrote:

I first encountered the strange world of PRT in 1989, two years after I moved to Minneapolis from Manhattan. Source

C'mon Ken, which is it -- 1989, 2003, or 2004? Pick one and stick with it. Or are you doing that time-distortion thing you do so well???

Archives: He's ready for warmer climates in his Sonny Crockett blazer --

Related: Some of what I saw in France (@Viropop)



gPRT
Ken Avidor puts the IN in 'inaccuracy'
1. Hey Ken, have you picked up on the fact I was in the East Bay area in mid-July? Coincidence???