First, Barbara, an opinion piece by Joshua Frank is not "news." Second, there are some wonderful rhetorical stretches in the piece that should be pointed out. This sentence, for instance: "In Minneapolis, Cincinnati, Seattle, Chicago and elsewhere, PRT has burned through tens of millions of dollars..." That makes it sound like Minneapolis has spent tens of millions of dollars on PRT, which of course we haven't. Or the assertion that some (unnamed, of course) Greens are going into business with Raytheon. As posters have pointed out, Raytheon does not own the rights to PRT. No one in Minneapolis has advocated entering into an agreement with Raytheon. The article is silly, and one of its core arguments is disturbing: good liberals should oppose anything any republican supports.
I think there are some real problems with the current proposals for PRT in Minneapolis. Not least, I'm quite concerned with the idea of building a PRT system that is privately owned. Public transportation should be publicly owned. However, I think PRT has real potential. Many of its positives have been laid out on this list before, but here are some I haven't seen: 1) We could reduce excess capacity. The LRT and buses need to run at non-peak hours, but during these periods we spend a lot of energy moving very few people around. PRT (not necessarily the Taxi2000 system) has the capacity to more accurately and flexibly match vehicles to ridership. 2) The most energy-inefficient way to move a human being is to encase her/him in a heavy object and then stop it and accelerate up to thirty mph every other block. PRT has this advantage over both standard transit and automobiles (which often must start and stop, either within cities or in stop-and-go traffic on the freeway). The hypothetical PRT car travels at a more or less steady velocity from start to finish, using much less energy even at the same weight. Add to this the fact that PRT cars can get away with weighing so much less and we can realize some significant energy savings. I don't think PRT is the long-awaited solution to all our transit woes. We need LRT along high-traffic corridors. We need a city that's safe to bike in, walkable neighborhoods, buses and, yes, cars. I think PRT could be a good addition to the whole mix. Heck, I think we should look into everything that has any potential at all. Streetcars, neighborhood circulators, free bus zones, pedestrian/bicycle-only streets, etc. Let's keep our options open, and keep good ideas circulating. Robin Garwood Seward 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
