PRT Developer William Alden

William Alden died November 16 in Falmouth, Massacusetts. He was 92. Mr. Alden was married to Judith Alden for 67 years, was a descendant of the English colonist John Alden, served in the Navy, and graduated from Harvard. He created or served on the boards of a number of businesses and charities.

That time Denver voters approved a PRT system

Looking amazingly like 2getthere's Masdar vehicle, the TTI prototype on display at the PRT Expo '73. Denver Library

Read Katie Rudolph's article for the Denver Library, Denver's 1970s Flirtation With Personal Rapid Transit.

Taxi 2000 Exits

©MMXVIII The PRT NewsCenter
 
Long time pod transit company Taxi 2000 closed in mid-2017, exiting the business without achieving a demonstration facility or system in fare service. A shareholder letter obtained in January by the NewsCenter revealed that in 2016 Taxi 2000 lost an angel investor who held 49% of the company's shares.

Taxi 2000's demo in 2005. Ed Anderson is at left.

Following Freely

Part V of the IPERT Series

Email chatter picked up recently concerning Freely and Workman, therefore we thought it was time to check up on the Dotard Duo's internet presence.

Most of it is the same old stuff–except for this listing at MuseumsUSA, which lists "Roger Freely, Curator" at the Western Museum of Flight at 12016 Prairie Avenue in Hawthorne, CA.

It likely won't surprise you to learn that is not the address of the Western Museum of Flight.

Fast, Imaginary Ride To Courthouse - 2 Updates

Part IV of the IPERT Series

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The NewsCenter is able to confirm key parts of allegations made, first tipped by a comment on Part III , against IPERT fraudster Roger D. Freely. Not left out of the story is his partner Ivan L. Workman. The March 12, 2017 comment was—

Roger Freely tried to get a 16 year old child to move in with him. He also has a Facebook account. According to Facebook rules and regulations sex offenders cannot have accounts. However Facebook does not provide a way to report him.

Back And Forth With skyTran

One of the things we miss about the old days of covering personal rapid transit is the way everything used to be out in the open.

Perhaps an outgrowth of the federally-initiated PRT effort of the Sixties, the leading PRT efforts of the 1990s-Early 2000s welcomed publicity, and actively disseminated the results of their work. That Raytheon was playing with millions in public funds obligated some openness, but that doesn't explain why the private Taxi 2000, and later university spinoff Ultra, was open with the public to varying degrees.

But today's would-be pod transit makers are keeping their cards close to the vest. In some cases the caginess is due to an enterprise not being on the up-and-up (e.g. Maglev Movers, IPERT1, 2, 3), but in most cases the caution arises out of business security. Four, count them, pod transit systems now exist in the world, and the competition to be the fifth might be just that tight.

MISTER - MISTER - Update 1

Mikosza (top) and Choromanski

Ollie Mikosza says a well-connected academic stole his PRT design. Guess who's winning.

©MMXV The PRT NewsCenter

We began corresponding with Olgierd "Ollie" Mikosza in 2006, shortly after "MISTER" (Metropolitan Individual System of Transportation on an Elevated Rail), his suspended (vehicle below the guideway) personal rapid transit concept, first came on the scene. With Heathrow Pods and the Masdar City PRT still four years off, Mikosza exuded confidence and optimism that his design would be the one to break through.

In an article in EV World earlier that year, in which Mikosza announced MISTER to the world, he reported already securing letters of intent from interested cities, and that his plans had been endorsed by academic and transportation experts. The engineering, he seemed to say, would be straightforward by comparison.

Artist conception of Mikosza's vehicle

A Plague Of Coffee Pods

I'm a coffee person, I usually start the day with an Americano or three.

For a couple years I've made do with one of Krups' $60 espresso makers. Design-wise it's a disaster: the On light is dim, the basket usually falls out when being emptied, the lid can't be removed from the carafe, and a rubber foot went missing. But its only waste product are the grounds that go into the kitchen compost.

Which is an order of magnitude better than the rampant 'coffee pods' craze featured in yesterday's Seattle Times.

A great day in Kirkland -- but someone was missing

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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.

Finding Freely - 4 Updates

Part III of the IPERT series (Updates 2 & 3 May 31, 2014)
©MMXIII The PRT NewsCenter

The International Personal Express Rapid Transit story so far has been defined by what Ivan Workman has voluntarily claimed, contradicted, and contra-contradicted. And that is the problem -- all we know about him and IPERT is what he has chosen to make public.

But what about Roger Freely? When he has had anything to say it has been second hand, passed along to the public by Workman.

Why? Who is Freely? Is he even real? We have determined that he is -- and this is where the trail took us:

IPERT Part II - Update 4

©MMXIII The PRT NewsCenter

International Personal Express Rapid Transit President & Co-Founder Ivan Workman, apparently displeased with the publicity in "A Brief Look At International Personal Express Rapid Transit" (Nov. 19, 2013), finally decided to re-contact the NewsCenter on Nov. 26, writing among other things:

For your information, the maglev & prt patents are all under my partner Roger Freely, not me, get your information right David.

Those who have been paying attention will recall Workman already stated in The 2nd Email that, "my brother and I are the inventors and patent holders for the technology". (Oh, and the patent search for Roger Freely comes up zilch too.) 

A brief look at 'International Personal Express Rapid Transit'

©MMXIII The PRT NewsCenter

Part I

People who follow developments in advanced transit may have noticed and wondered about 'International Personal Express Rapid Transit' (IPERT).

Recently the NewsCenter (wearing our GetThereFast.org webmaster hat) was contacted by a person identifying himself as Ivan Workman. Workman said he was interested in hiring the creator of the GetThereFast.org "Better Campus" video to perform similar work for his PRT effort, IPERT. Workman's email ended with the following passage, which cried out for further information:

IPERT's PRT system is based on the only operational Maglev PRT system (since 2004) that has been built and operated successfully, profitably, and large enough to transport people and freight for a city covering 12 square miles and a population of 200,000 people at the Los Alamos Nuclear Weapons Laboratory in New Mexico, which was developed by IPERT's team in conjunction with the Army Corp of Engineers. IPERT has 5 patents for this technology.

More bad news for would-be US coal exporters

Demand for your dirty product keeps falling.

Shanghai to ban coal burning by 2017 (Think Progress)

Smartphone-Dependent Transit - No thank you

To all those working to design automated transit and improve conventional transit: If you're trying to gear scheduling and/or fare payment to smartphones, please stop.

A number of years ago, well before smartphones were a thing, I spoke with a PRT designer who was planning to make smartcards the preferred means for users to access the system. At the time I counseled him that a public system required anyone be able to pay a fare in cash -- what if the smartcard was lost, or damaged, or forgotten at home or office? What about members of the public who don't have a smartcard, for whatever reason? Tourists for example.

Reminder - Robocars aren't PRT

A pair of thoughtful pieces on driverless cars (Driving Sideways, NY Times, 7/23; How will the driverless car affect the design of our cities? Treehugger, 7/25) are a welcome contribution to the discussion of the problematic nature of 'robocars.'

However the small size of pod transit (PRT) vehicles still serves to confuse them with driverless cars in the minds of many.

So let's reacquaint ourselves with what pod transit is and is not (chiefly):

Caution on public-private partnerships

Public-private partnerships have been in vogue in the arts, education, and other facets of civic life for a while, and now they're coming to transit projects (The Planning Report, 7/8).

I suppose PPP sound appealing to the American ear, conditioned by corporate media to the couplet 'Private Good/Government Bad.'

But the public sector exists for solid economic and political reasons, no finer an example of which being the delivery of transit service.

Which is to say patterns and levels of service are critical determinants of urban form and function as well as civic life, and therefore there is an overriding public interest in planning, funding and operating transit systems.

The Human Factor

What does it mean to be a sustainable business? If you look at how a lot of companies and groups portray themselves, something's missing.

• Your Silver LEED building is impressive and beautiful. The rainwater catchment and onsite composting are nice touches. But oh, you forgot to get health insurance for your employees.
• The coffees you sell are delicious, organic and shade grown -- but it's not fair trade. And you use biodegradable sporks -- but your all-part time staff don't get any benefits and have to get health care paid by Medicaid, as if they are working at Walmart and not a self-styled 'sustainable' business.

What these (actual) example companies miss is the reality that they aren't truly sustainable if their workers are treated as disposable resources.

Bad Supreme Court News...

...if you're a fan of planning and common sense environmental protection:

Private property advocates cheer Supreme Court ruling
By Michael Doyle | McClatchy Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON — A legal dispute that started with Florida wetlands ended Tuesday in a Supreme Court victory for conservatives and private property advocates nationwide.
     In a 5-4 decision that could impede government regulators at all levels, the court effectively made it harder for public agencies to demand property or money in exchange for issuing a land-use permit. At a certain point, the conservative majority reasoned, these demands amount to an unconstitutional taking of property without compensation.

A wrinkle in the CRC debate

Every so often I turn my attention to the Columbia River Crossing project, the plan to -- among other things -- replace the Interstate 5 bridge between Portland, Oregon and Vancouver, Washington.

Because the plan is to include the means to send Trimet MAX light rail across the river to Vancouver, I suppose it's been easy to lean toward support of this freeway enhancement program, while dismissing the (voluble) opposition as north-of-the-river manifestation of right-wing, anti-government, anti-transit resistance to progress.

But now comes The CRC Mega-Highway Project, a three part series beginning today at the Seattle Transit Blog.

"Preserve Our Planet" - in 2nd inauguration speech, President Obama directly addresses the environment

"We, the people, still believe that our obligations as Americans are not just to ourselves, but to all posterity.  We will respond to the threat of climate change, knowing that the failure to do so would betray our children and future generations.  Some may still deny the overwhelming judgment of science, but none can avoid the devastating impact of raging fires, and crippling drought, and more powerful storms.  The path towards sustainable energy sources will be long and sometimes difficult.  But America cannot resist this transition; we must lead it.  We cannot cede to other nations the technology that will power new jobs and new industries – we must claim its promise.  That is how we will maintain our economic vitality and our national treasure – our forests and waterways; our croplands and snowcapped peaks.  That is how we will preserve our planet, commanded to our care by God.  That’s what will lend meaning to the creed our fathers once declared."

Complete transcript