A great day in Kirkland -- but someone was missing

©MMXIV The PRT NewsCenter

Saturday's Cross Kirkland Corridor Advanced Transportation Symposium ("the Symposium") was, in this participant's estimation, a smashing success in terms of establishing policy gravitas and as a successfully planned and executed event.

Held February 8 at Google's Building B in Kirkland, the Symposium drew federal, state and local lawmakers, business people, transportation officials, and a variety of vendors and activists from the field of high-technology transit, for an all-day program of presentations and panel discussions.


Dignitaries included Congresswoman Suzanne Del Bene (D, WA-1), State Rep. Judy Clibborn (D-41), Kirkland Mayor Amy Walen, and County Councilman Fred Payne Greenville, SC (R-28). Also in attendance were Mayor Karen Guzak of Snohomish, State Rep. Luis Moscoso (D-1), and Deputy King County Executive Fred Jarrett.

Transit planning and operating agencies were represented by officials from Washington State Department of Transportation, King County Metro and Sound Transit.

The PRT NewsCenter was there to briefly speak on the subject of Group Rapid Transit and the historical origins of automated transit in general.

The purpose of the Symposium was the exploration of using automated transit technologies in the 'Cross Kirkland Corridor,' Kirkland's segment of the 42-mile Eastside Rail Corridor, the former freight rail line which in places is becoming rails-to-trails.

Therefore the stars of the day were people in the forefront of studying and planning automated transit systems (PRT, GRT, and gondolas), and reps of the companies promoting their automated transit products.

Of particular interest were Payne, leader of a Greenville redevelopment initiative called GreenVillages, and Laura Stuchinsky, Sustainability Officer for the San Jose Transportation Department (via Google Hangout), who talked about the 2012 study of Personal Rapid Transit at Mineta Airport.

The automated transit industry was represented by Robert Baersch of SkyTran, CyberTran Chairman Neil Sinclair, and Jo Klinski, COO of the Port Angeles company Magna Force (its product is called LevX).

All three companies are promoting systems that have been advertised as imminent for some time, to put it charitably, with little progress toward regulatory certification and a revenue-service installation.

Which highlights the absence of an important player at the Symposium: government regulators.

Because SkyTran and CyberTran, at least, are an extremely accurate sample of American PRT companies -- stuck for years chasing the elusive first contract in hopes of leveraging private investment capital, and vice versa.

It's a formula the passage of time has proven doesn't work.

What has been missing is an authority, ideally the federal government, maintaining a procedure for evaluating advanced transit companies and their designs, providing a measure of developmental funding for ones that meet the smell test, and administering a roadmap to regulatory certification.

USDOT is the natural home for such a program, and it need not be expensive most years. All that might be required is staff, a list of experts willing to act as evaluators, and a development & demonstration matching grants program that need spend nothing if it receives no qualified applications.

A significant problem in the American PRT/GRT industry has long been the small and sometimes imperceptible amount of separation between companies with viable technology, companies with some good ideas that need work, honest efforts that don't have a chance in hell, and outright scams. A vetting authority would divide the wheat from chaff almost overnight, reducing uncertainties for policymakers as well as protecting taxpayer interests.

In her remarks Stuchinsky spoke of the lack of regulatory clarity that was a conclusion of the Mineta study, and Kirkland is going to run into the same thing. It needs to be solved, whether the technology in question is Made In USA or imported, so it's valuable to have Congresswoman Del Bene paying attention to Kirkland's activities.