Mary Kiffmeyer Promotes Rep. Mark Olson's Faith-Based Transportation Boondoggle

[Avidor]

When it comes to transportation, Kiffmeyer is drinking the same Kool-Aid as Mark Olson and Bachmann:

http://is.gd/3ZAk

First, our roads and bridges must be well-built, properly maintained and designed to meet the needs of our citizens safely and efficiently! Second, it is critical that we anticipate and provide for the high-volume corridors and work with local government and benefiting communities to implement cost-effective means of mass transit such as buses, trains, personal rapid transit and other innovative modes of travel.

Here’s an article about the sorry history of PRT in Minnesota:

http://is.gd/3CwZ

[Eric J in MN]

1. Would the tracks go on the street, underground, or in the air? NT

NT

[Lydia Leftcoast]

2. Elevated, but that's the least of its trouble

Advocates have not thought out all the logistics of, say, rush hour. It would combine the fixed guideway of regular rail transit (which can carry hundreds of people at a time) with the log jams caused by individual cars.

[Avidor]

3. Every Kiffmeyer thread has to have this picture...

[Avidor]

4. ..and this too...

[Eric J in MN]

5. Do you mean if there is a malfunction and one car stops

...and blocks the cars behind it?

[Lydia Leftcoast]

6. Not only that

Since the pods run on tracks and yet are individual, it's hard to have enough pods in the right place at the right time. Furthermore, the system needs multiple tracks in each direction with the equivalent of on-ramps and off-ramps, because if the passenger of Pod A wants to stop at Station 1 and the passenger of Pod B doesn't, having a single track means that everyone else is backed up behind Pod A.

Even if you have on-ramps and off-ramps, suppose an outbound station has a lot of pods left off, many more than people require for onward journeys. How do you get them to where they are needed--i.e. to the end of the line and back? How do you maintain schedules? What if the only pod available in your station has been vandalized by the previous passenger?

A train is much simpler. People get off where they want to get off, and the train moves along to the end of the line or an intermediate turnaround point. It then retraces its route in the opposite direction, all on a predictable schedule.

PRT has been proposed as "the answer" for over 45 years. To date, no city has built more than one PRT line, due to the logistics, which don't become apparent until you try to envision a whole city trying to meet its daily commuting needs with a network of PRT lines.

PRT is passive-aggressive fake mass transit for people who realize that we can't keep depending exclusively on cars but who hate the idea of sharing space with "not our kind of people."

[Avidor]

7. Thanks Lydia...

PRT is totally bogus.... read more here:

http://www.lightrailnow.org/facts/fa_prt001.htm

http://www.roadkillbill.com/PRTisaJoke.html