Personal Rapid Transit, or POD (also known as Podcars) is a system of transportation which is in competition with other forms of mass urban transit. For those who don't know what a Podcar is, a Podcar is a form of public mass transit that uses "pods", or individual "personal" egg-style cubicles which move along a guide track from Point A to Point B. You are supposed to be able to go from any A to any B without stopping at intermediate stations or any other interruptions but that has yet to be shown.
At best the whole thing is no more than a bona-fide, overgrown amusement park ride. And amusement park rides are something I know a lot about because I've been involved in the engineering for many amusement park rides and their electronic system controls.
The whole idea surrounding Podcars is actually quite stupid. It involves installing millions of dollars of elevated "guideways" all throughout a city, which are vunerable to terrorism, vandalism, high maintenance and are just plain ugly and property intrusive. I mean, who wants a concrete monorail track running in front of (or above) their house??
During Netroots Nation I was appaled to see the Podcar people there trying to promote this silly idea. I argued for about 30 minutes intensely with a person from Sweeden about issues that he could not answer, although he is supposed to be an "expert" in the field. Issues such as safety, cost, terrorism and landscape beauty.
Here in Austin, TX there is a group trying to promote these hideous Podcars. I have been having an exchange with them. I have sent several E-mails to them voicing my opinion. Here is a part of what I have written (updated and word-corrected to correct for prose, tense and to protect identity of certain individuals):
Letter I wrote to Austin Podcars:
About Me
I'm an Austin resident. I have lived here nearly 20 years. I'm a retired electronics and mechanical engineer, now handicapped but still quite capable of getting around as long as I don't have to do anything too energy-demanding. I've designed amusements for many large famous name amusement parks nationwide. Before retirement I was a resident of Orlando, Florida where I worked on many projects for the attractions in that area. I also design arcade games and gaming equipment. Although officially retired, I still am a consultant on many projects all over the world and maintain a small website for experimenters in electronics and for coin- amusement operators.
Until attending Netroots Nation I had no idea that Austin was even remotely considering this garbage or I would have been at every Capital Metro meeting opposing the waste of money to even hold a meeting on the subject.
Podcar Engineering Sucks!
I have visited the Taxi 2000 website (Skyweb Express -- what a name! LMAO), and found that most of the information on that page is a very stretched version of something unrelated, picking out only the pertinent parts geared towards their cause. The engineering is totally out-of-whack and if viewed by any of us real engineers we'd all laugh our heads off. The site quotes one particular company, "Honeywell", who, as far as I can tell, has never designed anything like this before (they have at least never designed an amusement park ride which is similar), and their experience is chiefly automation control. Although Honeywell is quite famous for fine automation control items, they are not experts at the field of pod transportation, so the use of their name is no more than name-dropping.
The Taxi2000 website makes a big deal about their simulation software, making it out to sound like it is something right out of Star Wars technology. There are so-called expert "reviews" by companies claiming that this software is "state of the art" and is something very special. But the truth is that any embedded controls engineer could "review" the "simulation" software and see that it "works" (actually any nerd could do that!!), so the claims on the website are way off the mark and are clearly intended to convince the novice reader that the system has genuine integrity. If you want to know who the real experts are, some you may recognize include Siemens and Hitachi.
A Reality-Based Assesment
The idea of podcars, and the guys who manned the booth at Netroots Nation are completely out of touch with reality.
Nobody in their right mind will want to ride a bona-fide amusement ride every day in the Austin heat back and forth to work in a plastic "egg" on a monorail guidetrack which uglies up the beautiful Austin landscape, has dangerous properties, enables terrorism or other unmanned crimes, is easy to vandalize, disable or otherwise destroy or inhibit, and cost the taxpayer millions of dollars in an effort to do something with a misuse of technology totally out of place.
The Truth Be Known - An Arguement Podcars Cannot Win
I've designed amusement park rides with more integrity than this. And those rides require a lot of maintenance to keep them safe, fun and pleasureful for the passengers. And these rides are in a closed-environment situation where the guidetrack is under constant supervision, access is extremely limited and the law requires maintenance to be done regularly and records on that maintenance kept. You would need a fleet of maintenance workers greater than Capital Metro has now for bus drivers just to do the routine inspections, much less do actual maintenance. Way beyond the price anyone would be willing to pay, and way too unsafe. A single vandal could disable the entire system with very little effort. And it would be nothing for anyone with basic networking and automation knowledge to take over the automation part of the system, making the system even more vunerable to terrorism or just plain pranks by college students.
Way Too Hot for Austin
And what about air conditioning in the Austin heat? Did you forget that it made it to 105 degrees today (08-04-08) and has been over 100 degrees for the past month and will be over 100 (and possibly 110) all or most of the month of August? The waste of electricity to add A/C is enormous. To energize the guidetrack with enough current at a low enough voltage to be safe for humans and animals make adding A/C very restrictive. Engineering wise, it would simply not be do-able, keeping safety and practicality in mind. Unlike subways which use energized tracks, this system is above ground, accessable to the public despite all security measures you can take, and is quite accessable to birds, animals and curious youngsters who will, no matter what, gain access to the track. If a single kid walked around a fence and onto this guidetrack and fell into the energized areas it would be instant death.
The whole idea is obsurdly stupid to start with. As I argued intensely with the folks from Sweeden who came to Austin to discuss this obsurd idea (and drew enough attention during the arguement in the process), the citizens of Austin are not likely to stand for such a waste of money, disregard for beauty and landscape, and safety for its citizens.
[The moron from Sweeden, whose name is Christer Lindstrom from the "Institute for Sustainable Transportation", actually placed a bet with me for $100 that these Podcars would "take over the United States" in 5 years, and signed a document to the fact. He and his crew proved to be such idiots, making arguements to an actual engineer who has designed many similar projects, and never considered that he was at a BLOGGERS CONVENTION and that the whole arguement and the fact he placed the bet (with sweat on his face) was blogged in REAL TIME...] Note: This is true, but I do not know who the blogger was who did this. If you know, let me know and I will update this post with a link
An Unsafe Environment for Humans and Animals Alike
I cannot stress the safety issue enough. As an amusement designer safety is the single-most important factor and is the single highest cost during development and remains the highest cost long after the ride has been built. Despite all of the safety engineered into these rides and after daily, weekly and monthly inspections (sometimes several inspections per day) there are still hundreds of people who get hurt on these rides every year. And this is true on rides that only move at 5 to 10 MPH at the most, has a limited and fixed number of "cars" on the track, travels less than 200 yards distance, has a ground-level track, has no A/C or any other "powered" devices on board other than the drive motor, where the entire track is under constant supervision and there is virtually no possibility of access to the track from the outside (outside the theatre of the ride or the park) by persons other than the maintenance personnel, undergoes constant inspection and can be stopped on a dime any time during the ride. And you expect some form of safety to exist on a system which is MILES long, has cars that tend to "drive themselves", has an undeterminable number of "cars" on the track, has an elevated track whereso the height is dangerously high and crosses life-threatning geographical obsticles, has high voltage on the track, has no possibility of daily inspection at the level which would detect common defects (natural such as snow and ice or man-made such as glass bottles or bricks) which could disable, inhibit or make unsafe the use of the track, where there is no global supervision and works for the most part in an automated, un-manned environment?
Super Cost Prohibitive
Pod people have to be absolutely out of their mind. It can cost up to a MILLION dollars per year to maintenance a single amusement ride at a major amusement park each year. What do you think it is going to cost for this obscenely out-of-reality monstrosity?
Even if I were to design this, I wouldn't ride it. Way too unsafe.
Taking Action
Expect to hear more from me and others in this area on this topic. I am not the only Austin resident who strongly opposes this proposal.
Reply I got from the Austin Podcar people:
How are your safety concerns different from rail transit, or do you have
concerns about that too? Glad to have another engineer keeping an eye
on the technical development.
....
TRW and Siemens are involved to some extent with the ULTra product going
into England and Dhubai. Bombardier claims to be ready to work on PRT
installations, but we haven't seen designs from them. But I believe the
Koreans have the largest source of funding and engineering behind their
design.
HVAC is definitely in the works for the PRT cabins in the Minnesota
design. But T2K blew a great bit of their recent seed money (all
private, no public $$, despite what Mr Avidor keeps claiming) on their
effort to win the Dhubai contract. Unfortunately, ULTra with the
backing of BAA was a much easier choice for Dhubai to select. It's not
my favorite design, but it's progress.
Btw. We're not part of the podcar effort that came to Netroots Nation.
I've not met them, but I understand they're having a "Green" conference
later this year that will feature PRT along with other products.
Advanced Transit Association will have a presence there, but due to
budget constraints, no one I know as part of the Austin effort will be
going.
Gotta go, but glad to have another interested party in town.
Emphasis added. Names of certain people witheld to protect identities
After speaking to Mr. Avidor, he writes:
That guy is full of crap.
I never said that Taxi 2000 got public money.
I helped PREVENT them from getting millions of taxpayers' money back in 2004.
Taxi 2000 did receive $400,000 from a highway engineering firm SEH
that was hired to pave over my neighborhood.
Document here:
http://www.roadkillbill.com/...
These PRT guys have a thirty-year history of lying... they've gotten good at it.
-----
Thanks again,
-Avidor
Mr Ken Avidor is a blogger here on Daily KOS and I have permission to use his name in this post. He is a strong opponent to Podcars and has written other diaries on the subject.I am also an opponent to podcars and pledge to aid Mr. Avidor's efforts to inform the public on this assinine proposal.
Although it is necessary for us Americans to find an affordable, reliable and environmentally friendly means of public and private transportation, the Podcar proposal is not the answer. It is flawed, and for the most part, is no more than a money scam.
Please be informed on this issue because the Podcar proponents are coming to YOUR town sometime soon.