Mass Transit Systems Fine Line Between Transportation, Freedom

“Personal rapid transit” (PRT) is a system where, basically, a bunch of minivans speed you along a dedicated runway to your destination. Riders simply step in, punch a number on the screen, and off they go without stopping or waiting for passengers. An elevator on wheels, essentially.

They could carry between 2 to 12 people and are designed to ease traveler’s angst against mass transit by eliminating wait times and granting express service with no transfers.

“Personal rapid transit as an idea has a lot going for it because it mimics what the car does. The problem is for it to be effective, it has to serve a wide number of origins and destinations” said transportation expert Jonathan Richmond.

Such systems have been considered in the past. Each time, though, they fell through due to costs. Implementation is a huge financial and technical risk, too much for even the government let alone private industry.

Our take? There is a very thin difference between the “freedom” of having your own car, and an effective public transportation system that can get you where you need to go, so thin we would say it is negligible. Of course that is no substitute for owning your own dream car, but when you consider that most of the lag time on roads is due to human inefficiency, such an automated system becomes quite desirable.


via Kansas City Star