Who will rid me of this troublesome priest?

...is what Ken Avidor might have shouted, if he is familiar with Becket, upon reading this Avi-adoring reader comment on the recent Mountain View Voice article, Pod Cars have new champion in Silicon Valley (highlighting added):

Posted by Bill Hough, a resident of another community
on Sep 5, 2013 at 11:31 am

"Podcars or "Personal Rapid Transit" is an idea that's been around for decades yet never seems to actually get built or solve any real-world transportation problems. It basically combines the worst of both worlds: low vehicle capacity of the private automobile with the expensive infrastructure of a fixed guideway transit system.

This topic has been discussed at length. I recommend a couple of articles on the Light Rail Now website.
First, there's "Let's Get Real About Personal Rapid Transit" by Ken Avidor at Web Link

Avidor points out that, "PRT has a solid 30-year record of failure. Its main purpose in recent years seems to have been to provide a cover enabling its proponents to spread disinformation about real, workable transit systems. Except for the occasional laboratory-scale prototype, PRT actually "exists" largely in computerized drawings, in promotional brochures, and in cute, ever-successful animated simulations on the internet."

"The unsubstantiated claims of PRT proponents are always presented in the present tense as if the system is a proven success ... which, of course, it certainly is not. Promoters never seem to fail to bash real transit, such as light rail (LRT), as "old fashioned technology". Sadly, the media rarely check the veracity of PRT publicity and propaganda."

A longer, more technical article is "Personal Rapid Transit – Cyberspace Dream Keeps Colliding With Reality" and can be found here: Web Link

"Despite the persistent and fervent claims of its promoters, repeated attempts to implement a working PRT system, even in very small-scale scenarios, have invariably failed. Not a single PRT plan, during these promotional efforts over the past 40 years or more, has seen successful implementation even in a small test application, much less a major, heavy-duty, citywide rapid transit application. Early would-be PRT installations, such as the AirTrans system at Dallas-Ft. Worth Regional Airport, and the PRT at West Virginia University at Morgantown, eschewed any attempt to provide true PRT-style, small-vehicle, customized origin-destination service, and were implemented in effect as line-haul automated guideway transit (AGT) peoplemover systems with some innovative features (such as offline stations)."

And finally, the good folks at Light Rail Now have put up a helpful list of links to various Monorail, PRT, AGT, and "Gadget Transit" Analyses at Web Link

Council member Mike Kasperzak and the rest of the City Council need to realize that "podcars" are the latest manifestation of the PRT fad which has been around for decades yet never seems to get built.

Ken must have been so upset. I mean come on -- poor guy. Look at it from his perspective. He hides all of his hateblogs from the general public and enjoys a summer of peace and quiet, only to have this "Bill Hough, a resident of another community," remind everybody of the anti-PRT propaganda he helped write, but posted on websites not under his control.

"Hough" does make for fun reading though. It's as if zero time has passed since those execrable documents were written -- 'Heathrow Pod? Masdar PRT? Suncheon Ecotrans? What are they?'

Obviously the guy doesn't read the Laffable Luddite Chronicles or Get There Fast.



gPRT
Leave Ken Avidor alone! You're lucky he performs for you bastards!!!

Sense of proportion

"King Kong was only three foot six inches tall."

Peter O'Toole to Steve Railsback
The Stunt Man
1980, 20th Century Fox

Scale. It's always good to put things in their proper scale. Context, if you will.

The history of this blog is replete with examples of us pointing out when Ken Avidor ignores or omits context, all the better to incorrectly portray Personal Rapid Transit technology. I bet he thought he could sneak two non-contextual photos by us in his November 15 post, Suncheon Bay Vectus "PRT" Revealed to NOT be Personal Rapid Transit (Berther, 11/15). We could probably call it a Screen Play -- a Big Lie, 'Suncheon PRT stations aren't offline', running interference for this:



Two pictures in which there is nothing familiar to impart a sense of scale. Sure, thought Ken, I'll just call them 'massive.' It's not like anyone can prove otherwise -- it's all the way over in Korea.

He thought wrong.

An examination of the photo of Station One and Depot in the official Vectus PDF does contain a good clue about scale: workers on the ground.

Let's propose those workers are 5'7."  That would make the station platform only about 28 feet above the ground. And the station roof only about 40 feet above the ground.

For even better sense of scale, behold these recently released photos showing a rather compact Suncheon Station 2:

PRT Consulting

PRT Consulting

As for the 'massive' main guideway to Station Two, it is holding 2 sets of rails, one going in each direction. Therefore that guideway is twice as wide as what's shown above at Station One. Here's a photo of 3 guys standing on single guideway at Suncheon, just imagine it twice as wide.

PRT Consulting

UPDATE 1
It's official: Vectus lists 'typical' guideway width as 1400mm (4.6 ft. Ref: page 23 here). But the vehicles are 2100mm/6.9 ft wide (p.22), so the little pods are actually wider than the "massive" guideway.



gPRT Massive Liar

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

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

The Luddite Veto

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

Update 3 - Ritterman retires from Richmond council

gPRT

Notes

1.

2.

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.

His PRT is made of straw

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.

gPRT Big 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

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

He has a dream

More of a feverish delusion, really. Anti-PRTeabagger Ken Avidor observed the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday yesterday by linking a PRT consultant to the suicide of a teenage girl in India:

Source at PRT Moondoggie

The King of Klass is trying to make you think Peter Muller (PRTGURU) was somehow celebrating the rumor and the tragedy. But Avidor is making that up.

Muller's link, http://bit.ly/4HKfpp, was not to the Telegraph or the BBC, rather to a webpage that quotes an article about LHC originally carried by Business Week.

The article isn't on Business Week anymore, but you can read about it:

Carrying the Republican War on Science to previously unplumbed depths of human stupidity, Kevin "Dow 36000" Hassett of the American Enterprise Institute calls for the USAF to bomb both France and Switzerland, hoping to get the scientists in their tunnels before they can destroy the earth...

Business Week should be deeply, deeply ashamed of itself.

I know that the American Enterprise Institute is not shamed by anything, but even an organization that is not shamed by anything should be ashamed of this.

Let me just say that, IIRC, Leon Lederman named the hypothesized Higgs boson the "God particle" as a joke, because its effects were everywhere yet nobody had ever seen it in the flesh--not because it was in any way powerful or dangerous or numinous or terrifying.

Source

I want you to read Muller's tweet, and decide for yourself: was there anything in the tweet that overtly endorsed the Hassett fearmongering?



Muller could just as easily have meant 'get a load of this idiocy'. The site where the article was copied is the website of a Richard J. Wagner, computer science PhD and Democrat -- maybe Muller meant to agree with Wagner's viewpoint. We don't know what he meant, we don't need to: the point is that Avidor doesn't bother to find out, and just goes ahead and gives it the most horrific of spins.

I would give Ken Avidor the benefit of the doubt on this, that he's still just an ignoramus who doesn't understand Twitter.

Except that he has falsely smeared and slurred before, linking an innocent man to a multi-fatality train accident. Now he's linking a respected consultant to a suicide; which according to the BBC article happened in September 2008.

And what did Ken Avidor mean by:

"Polish PRT?"

Ken Avidor (@Daily Kos)
read the PRTJJ coverage

And just to emphasize the point: I've decided the following tweet means Ken Avidor was a delegate to the 2008 Republican National Convention:

+

gPRT

What We Learned - What do you expect from a Luddite?

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.

Everyone knows how Twitter works, right? It's a microblog service -- like any other blog you can have, except the posts are a maximum of 140 characters at a time. So what is this PRT Moondoggie post all about???

It's all delusional. Delusional!

• "Several PRT websites"
Two. I administer two serious PRT websites, Get On Board PRT and GetThereFast, and they are not devoted to Ken Avidor. It's not all about you, Ken .

• "several attack blogs aimed at me"
This is just spin by someone who knows his propaganda does not stand up under the light of debunking.

• I think my "activity on Twitter is private"
Laughable! If I thought my tweets were private, to whom was I telling all those Avidor-based one-liners (which are comedy gold, by the way)?
Or pick another tweet topic: #inews9k, the as-it-happens, Twitter version of my almost-weekly blog feature, "iNews 9000 Turbo wi-fi headline translator." It used to be on my blog Wiseline Institute and Center For The Secular Humorism, but for almost 2 years it's been running at Ragebot.
Here's the thing: at the end of each week I cull the best of my on-Twitter #inews and post them on Ragebot -- with an invitation to readers to read all the #inews ON TWITTER!--

I'm driving visitors to my Twitter feed, whether they Follow me or not. Ken Avidor: why would I make such an open invitation if I thought my tweets are private? The blog you're reading right now has the same invitation in the sidebar!

Where would anyone get such an idea, that tweets are private? It has the feel of an ego-driven notion. Therefore, my theory is that Ken Avidor is merely projecting -- that he himself thought tweets are private, and only learned the truth recently, and now he's going to show off his high-tech knowledge. He is, after all, the 'expert' who thought "LIM" is a PRT company.

• "furiously tweeting that he was being sarcastic"
He posted this as 'evidence':

Another example of Ken Avidor not reading what he clips (or absence of a sense of humor) -- those are the jokes, Ken! Those are one-liners! Thus the #badumbum hashtag! And you didn't even include the tweet with the "DOPE" pic!

Ken also urges the following:

David Gow (Blogger ID- Mr_Grant) is very much the public face of Personal Rapid Transit on the internet. I hope Governor Pawlenty, MnDOT Commissioner Tom Sorel and elected officials take a good look at PRT promoters like David Gow before they waste additional time or money on PRT.

Thank you, Ken! Thank you for associating PRT with me, a smart, liberal blogger, world-class satirist, and environmentalist! Of course, Gov. Pawlenty is a Resmuglican, so maybe Avidor's Palin-style questioning of my associations would make The Gov oppose rider-oriented, energy smart PRT on partisan political grounds.

Did I just blow your strategy, Ken?

Of course, that plan closes the barn door too late. If I am already "the public face of PRT on the internet," then Commissioner Sorel (and maybe new PRT Director Thakur) already know about me. And went ahead with the PRT initiative anyway.

And they did so even though they must have known about Ken Avidor and all his anti-PRT propaganda -- because he is very much the public face of opposition to PRT on the internet.

I'm afraid you lose again, Ken, no matter how you slice it.

Oh why not: "Audacity of the Dope"!

I nearly forgot: Ken, what did you mean by:

"Polish PRT?"

Ken Avidor (@Daily Kos)
read the PRTJJ coverage

gPRT

n=1

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.

Y'all remember your college statistics, right? Then you know what n is. Ssshh! Don't tell Ken, he went to art college.

The bigger your n, the more confidence you can have in your results. Therefore, when Ken Avidor generalizes about Ithaca, New York, using a sample size of just one (Ms. Peg Tully), there can be little confidence in the results. You can't say "there is little enthusiasm for the pods among Ithacans" based on one person's opinion.

Whereas if you refer to the PRT Is a Joke IS A JOKE coverage of Avidor and Ithaca from last September, you can see for yourself the number of Ithaca organizations who support Personal Rapid Transit -- including the mayor!

PRT's n is bigger than yours, Ken. Your n is really small; tiny; shriveled; like a peanut. Your n has shrinkage.

Read our coverage of Avidor's Ithaca blogging

Read the Los Angeles Times comment thread in which I refuted the smear of Jake Roberts

I see your Swedish Society for Nature Conservation (n=1), Ken, and raise you BioRegional and World Wildlife Fund (n=2)!

gPRT
Now he's copying my Google Translate links from Twitter -- Ken IS copying everything I do!