PRT- A Cargo Cult of the Post-Petroleum Era.

By Ken Avidor

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." -Arthur C. Clarke

I first encountered the strange world of PRT in 1989, two years after I moved to Minneapolis from Manhattan. Hennepin County was planning to build a light rail transit line, a modern replacement for the trolley line that was torn up in 1954. The County sent a representative around with charts, maps and brochures to the monthly Kingfield neighborhood meeting.

During the question and answer time, a very agitated man stood up and delivered a fierce polemic against trains, calling them a “19th century technology” He also praised automobiles because drivers could choose who to ride with, adding that Americans would never ride in a bus or train with “strangers”. He then began talking about Personal Rapid Transit or PRT. Personal Rapid Transit, he explained was far cheaper and more efficient than trains because it had all of the “advantages” of automobiles and none of the “drawbacks” of trains.

Coming from New York, I thought the guy was a total nut. After all, cars were invented about the time as electric trolleys and while American rail transport has fallen behind, European and Japanese rail systems are as modern as any transportation technology. In the years since that meeting I have encountered more of these fanatics who insist that PRT was “faster, cheaper, better” than trolleys and buses. In one memorable encounter, a deranged man interrupted a workshop my wife and I were giving at Macalester College, shouting that PRT is the “only transportation solution", threw a dozen Taxi 2000 Corporation brochures at us and stormed out.

In 2003, I joined a group of transit advocates to stop the 35W Access Project, a highway expansion project. As we tried to put mass transit on the table as an alternative, PRT supporters added confusion to the debate. During one meeting, we had to endure one woman’s description of the PRT exhibit at the “Wonders of Technology” building at the Minnesota State Fair. She spoke about the PRT vehicle, a pod resembling a shiny red lady bug. “We could build it on Lake Street and call it the ‘Lady Bug Line’”, she chirped on and on about the pod while we cringed.

January 20, 2004, the Mayor of Minneapolis and five city councilmembers declared their support in a resolution for a study of PRT. Green Party Council member Dean Zimmermann was so preoccupied with promoting PRT that he nearly voted for the “Excess Project” Fellow Greens talked him out of it. In the end, the Minneapolis City Council voted to support the highway expansion project... condemning homes, businesses and a playground for low-income children. PRT played a crucial yet unacknowledged role in that decision.

In the aftermath of that vote, I decided to strike back and post a satirical and skeptical view of PRT on my web site. I was not prepared for the response I received. I got e-mails from all over the United States and England with information and advice from other PRT opponents. I learned from them that PRT proponents had attempted to block improvements to mass transit in other cities. Some of these transit activists had even coined a word, “gadgetbahnen” for futuristic transportation schemes like PRT.

I attempted to get skeptical information on the web about PRT, but it wasn’t easy. PRT proponents are very web savvy. They have dozens of web sites, all linked to each other which moves them to the top of the list on search engines such as Google and Yahoo. I had to spend many hours finding the few articles that were skeptical of PRT claims.

What I eventually pieced together is a complicated picture of the PRT movement. PRT groups seem to have a great deal of support from anti-transit, pro-highway forces. For people with a stake in highway planning and construction or people who have a right-wing, ideological hatred of the public sector, PRT is clearly a way to monkey-wrench mass transit.

PRT appears to be an investment scheme similar to “Springtime for Hitler” in the Mel Brooks movie “The Producers”. In The Producers, the Broadway huckster played by Zero Mostel oversells a musical he is certain will fold on opening night. With PRT's inherent design flaws, lack of peer approval and 30-year history of failure, Taxi 2000's stock has nowhere to go but up. PRT share prices can be easily be boosted by a favorable article or press release. The proponents of PRT seem to spend more time and energy on publicity and public relations than the pursuit of credible research and development. Sadly, the media is all too eager to publish these “Gee Whiz” puff-pieces on PRT. When PRT projects go nowhere or belly-up , the media is less likely to report they were hoodwinked. The unwary media also seems dazzled by the cult-like enthusiasm of PRT proponents.

PRT proponents have an almost evangelical belief in the power of PRT technology to transform the world. The grassroots contingent of the PRT movement thrives in cyberspace, where it seems that anything is possible if it can be cut and pasted with Photoshop and uploaded with Dreamweaver. It’s this faith-based aspect of PRT that reminded me of the cargo cults of Micronesia.

Cargo cults sprang up in many Pacific Ocean Islands during World War 2 in response to the invasion by more technically advanced Japanese and American troops. The islanders who had never seen an airplane before began to build their own airstrips in the hope the "big birds from heaven" would come to them and deliver the cargo they were convinced was being sent to them by their ancestors. Thousands of these cargo cults sprang up independent of each other all over Micronesia and New Guinea.

PRT has its roots in the glory days of the 20th century era of cheap and plentiful petroleum. The streamlined monorail was a featured element of the “World of Tomorrow” futuristic propaganda of that optimistic time. That propaganda, paid for largely by the auto industry fueled an explosive growth in the suburbs and led to the “benign neglect” of older, transit dependent cities.

The cheap petroleum era and all its naive, optimism began its decline after the 1973 OPEC Oil Embargo. With the subsequent rise of the environmental movement, the automobile became a symbol of waste and excess. Smog, acid rain, pipeline and tanker spills, and the growing awareness of the automobile’s contribution to the trashing of cities and towns led to a growing cynicism for the “American Dream” of a house in suburbia with two cars parked in the garage. More Americans were looking to Europe and Japan for a modern, non-automobile solution to getting around. Americans began to ask for alternative transportation.

The automobile and highway construction industry were on the ropes after the beating they got in the 1970's from European and Japanese small car manufacturers. The last thing they needed in the “stagflation days” of the post embargo economy was a federal program to fund mass transit. They called on their friends in government and academia to stall federal investment in conventional transit and instead plow money into PRT, monorail, smart roads, synfuels and other technologies that didn’t threaten to replace the highway and the automobile. After several decades and millions of dollars of investment, none of these “gadgetbahnen” solutions delivered on their promises.

In spite of nearly thirty years of failure, PRT and other gadgetbahnen are experiencing a renaissance. In Minneapolis, Duluth, Cincinnati, Seattle, Santa Cruz and San Antonio, the Gadgetbahners are busy lobbying government and citizens for funding, tax-breaks, and “exclusive utility” exemptions from antitrust law.

It’s not surprising that all this gadgetbanen activity comes at a time when Americans are once again being confronted as they were in 1973 with the realization that the oil their economy depends on is a finite and rapidly vanishing resource. We are trapped in bloody conflicts for oil in Asia, Africa, and South America. Scientists are warning us that our increasing fossil fuel use contributes to catastrophic climate change. Oil and gasoline prices are climbing again. In Washington and state capitols smaller transportation budgets pit the supporters of transit against highway construction and automobile lobbyists. Along with aging baby boomers nostalgic for the care-free, top-down, car-hopping, hot-rodding, post-WWII glory days of the cheap petroleum era, Generation X’ers holding together a shattered dream of better living through cyber-connectivity have been drawn to the futuristic allure of the PRT pod. Other PRT supporters, the conscientious and environmentally-minded, feel terribly guilty about the cars they are forced to drive because of suburban sprawl or lack of adequate transit. For these people the knowledge that their driving a car contributes to global climate change is very disturbing. The current war for oil in Iraq and oil combined with reports that oil may run out mid-century adds to their unbearable guilt. For them, PRT’s claim to be a “green technology” holds an almost messianic promise of miraculous deliverance from a depressing, guilt-ridden existence.

This strange group of hucksters and true believers march through state capitols and city halls shoving their petitions and brochures at lawmakers, in the process, they spread misinformation and confusion about real alternatives to automobiles and highways. They hallucinate back and forth on Yahoo and other e-mail forums. Like other fanatical, faith-based groups such as right to lifers and creationists they have an indefatigable desire for confrontation and debate. They call up radio talk shows and write letters and e-mails. For transit activists, having to combat the disinformation campaign of the PRT fanatics is exhausting.

The world is aghast at the spectacle the United States has become. We need to take stock of the reality of 21st century America. We have become a nation constantly at war abroad for the oil to fuel millions of cars that isolate us in depressing , blighted landscapes. We have become a sedentary nation that spends all of its time sitting in front of televisions, and computers or sitting in cars with millions of Americans sickened and fattened by drive-in convenience food. Americans need to abandon the American cargo cult illusion that we can each continue to pursue our individual quest for comfort and convenience at the expense of the peace, justice and the environment of others. Americans can no longer keep hitting the snooze button on the Doomsday Clock.

We to need to wake up and get real.

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For more about PRT, Gadgetbahnen and Cargo Cult Science:

PULSE of the Twin Cities
“The Pros and Cons of Personal Rapid Transit” -Troy Pieper (April 28, 2004)

http://www.pulsetc.com/article.php?sid=1056

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“Personal Rapid Transit – Cyberspace Dream Keeps Colliding With Reality”
Light Rail Now! Publication Team • March 2004 (Rev. April 2004)

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

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“Cargo Cult Science” by Richard Feynman:

http://www.physics.brocku.ca/etc/cargo_cult_science.html

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“Cargo Cult Science-Revisited” by T. M. Georges

http://tgeorges.home.comcast.net/cargo.htm