Hello, I recently did some research on the "fancy pants" baggage system that was installed at the new airport in Denver, DIA, in the mid-90s. There were a lot of issues with the project. One of the things that struck me was that at a high level it's the same as PRT. You have guideways for mechnical carts / cars to run along. Each one of these has hundreds of places from which it can start at and hundreds of possible destinations. The city of Denver still owes $300 million on the system (yes, just the system). Part of that is due to delays and part because a secondary conventional system was built in the end for airlines other than United to use.
As simple as the concept was the main reason it failed was because of it's complexity given it's size. The main contractor on the project had built similar but smaller systems at San Francisco for United and also for the airport in Munich, Germany. This system was considerably larger and because of this even more complex. Even if Minneapolis was in a healthy financial situation at this time, I would hope the city would not risk lots of it's money on a PRT project. Surely even a simple system built within the city would be much more complex than the system at DIA both because of it's size and increased safety requirements. Allen Graetz - Lowry Hill REMINDERS: 1. Think a member has violated the rules? Email the list manager at [EMAIL PROTECTED] before continuing it on the list. 2. Don't feed the troll! Ignore obvious flame-bait. For state and national discussions see: http://e-democracy.org/discuss.html For external forums, see: http://e-democracy.org/mninteract ________________________________ Minneapolis Issues Forum - A City-focused Civic Discussion - Mn E-Democracy Post messages to: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscribe, Un-subscribe, etc. at: http://e-democracy.org/mpls
