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The Taxi 2000 Corporation, PRT- What's the Real Deal?
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| The Taxi 2000 Corporation, PRT- What's the Real Deal? |
| 06.13.05 (5:18 pm) [edit] |
Don''t be fooled. Taxi 2000 doesn''t have a workable, full-scale system to sell. They are selling
From the Skyweb site:
Funding: This phase will be funded at approximately $15 million for the design, engineering and construction phase. Sales, marketing, administrative and contingency expenses of up to $9 million are planned. In total, this phase has a $24 million budget and a 30-month duration.
But, they haven''t said who will certify PRT. At a recent hearing on HF 1174, MnDOT said it can''t certify PRT. Even if it were to get some kind of blessing from the state, no large scale system is likely to get built without federal funding.
Taxi 2000 wants to spend $9 million of the $24 million of taxpayers'' money on sales and marketing even before it gets "certified". What they will "market" will be more websites with flashy computer graphics and more brochures with anti-transit propaganda saying stuff like "People don''t like to ride with strangers". The only "sales" will be of worthless shares in a bogus company to foolish investors.
Most likely this facility will end up like the Raytheon project....rusting away somewhere. But, they will move on to another city and propose another test facility and all the while spreading their gospel of futuristic-pie-in-the-sky -pod-transport while highway mega-projects and suburban sprawl continues.
If you want to know the real deal on PRT, read the Risk Factors document that the Taxi 2000 Corporation filed with the State of Minnesota.
It says one of the risk factors is the headway problem (which cannot be solved by any sort of advanced technology). It instead suggests that Taxi 2000 would ask to have the guidlines for headways changed to allow pods to stop on a dime and subject passengers to gut-wrenching g-forces. I don''t think too many professional engineers are going to sign off on that.
So while the budgets of Metro Transit, Minneapolis libraries and schools continue to be cut, every taxpayer should be furious about this useless waste of time and money called PRT.
Taxi 2000 Corporation and the PRT proponents are asking for $24 million and a whole lot more:
The PRT bills in the current session of the Minnesota House are:
HF1174 (Olson) Personal rapid transit local bonding authorized.
HF1173 (Olson) Public personal rapid transit systems exempted from certain taxes.
HF 1641 (Olson) Personal rapid transit local bonding authorized.
HF1366 (Olson Minnesota Regulated Public Transit Utilities Act adopted providing for regulation of transit services, and requiring legislative reports. ( this nasty bill proposes a new regulatory agency that will regulate "subsidized" transit and create exclusive zones for PRT)
There are similar PRT bills in the Senate, one senate bill is authored by the notorious Senator Michele Bachmann.
If you live in Minnesoata, please call and write your legislators and tell them to vote no on all PRT bills.
Learn more about PRT at the PRT is a Joke web site.
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