[sustran] Re: "Valid" PRT analysis

[Steve Raney]

Lee states that the use of OPM (other peoples' money) by public transit agencies reduces creativity, innovation, and cost control and also produces distorted risk-taking. The ULTra system at London Heathrow uses 100% private-sector funding, so Lee’s point is invalid. In the UK, Margaret Thatcher privatized transport, including Heathrow Airport (BAA). Not only is BAA the ULTra customer, but BAA also made an equity investment (private sector risk taking). 

The iPhone is a software/hardware product featuring a great touch screen user interface, a complex operating system, wireless communications, location tracking, and appealing packaging. Same for ULTra. 

The iPhone "delights" users. The ULTra system underwent extensive design and human factors research, like most private sector technology products. The ULTra system also "delights" – examples: 
*  "Landed and used the very cool #heathrowpod … and they're even better to use - quicker, easier and greener than the buses to/from the car park" 
*  "Just rode the "Heathrow Pod" It's awesome!!"
*  "On personal Heathrow Pod - parking to T5. Awesome sci-fi system." 
*  "I am in a pod. A bit like the cab on Total Recall without the mad driver! ... FAST though! ... Almost like a real life scalextric ;-)" 
*  "Geek transportation par excellence!"

After the iPod came the iPhone came the iPad. PRT feature sets may progress along similar lines. Already, 2getthere offers a family of advanced transit solutions. 

*************** 

I expect there is a consensus in favor of "rational project decision-making" for PRT & all transportation alternatives studies. It might be productive to attempt to define a list of "desirable characteristics" beyond the initial consensus for fair, apolitical, rigorous studies. A PRT-exampled first cut at desirable characteristics:

1. Human-powered transportation is highly desirable.  

2. 100% private sector funded business models (such as the ULTra Heathrow system) are desirable. 

3. "Public transit with zero general taxpayer obligation and risk management" is desirable. Note the recent article on innovative cleantech (including PRT) funding tools: http://www.thenational.ae/lifestyle/personal-finance/new-investment-vehicles-can-boost-green-energy-projects. In addition, wind turbine financial risk management tools may be applied to other new cleantech technologies. 

4. User fees are desirable. It is desirable to minimize general taxpayer obligation (OPM). Transit creates real-estate appreciation. Where possible, value capture should be used to capture local benefit, to improve business models. Historically, transit value capture mechanisms are less effective than desirable. (PRT research has led to the invention of a new tool, "parked car cap n trade." http://www.cities21.org/CRIB.htm )

5. Social equity should be given high value.

6. Lifecycle environmental impact should be included as part of rigorous analysis.

7. With new technologies, care should be taken to envision potential unintended consequences.  If a new project turns humans into the atrophied, former-bipeds envisioned in the movie Wall-E, this is undesirable. See: http://cache.heraldinteractive.com/blogs/entertainment/the_assistant/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/wall-e-human.jpg 

8. Innovation (providing alternatives diversity) should be given high value. Sometimes innovation is hard to measure. Sometimes innovation takes time to arise/resolve. Take BART. Sir Peter Hall’s 1982 book, Great Planning Disasters states, “Had the citizenry of the Bay Area the ability to foresee the true future, there seems little doubt that they would have rejected the whole BART proposal out of hand. But in the critical decisions between 1959 and 1962, the information on which they acted was seriously deficient. The cars would be controlled not by drivers but by computerized automatic train control. This involved advancing the existing state of the art in one giant leap.” Contrast this to one current opinion, “30 years after Great Planning Disasters, daily BART ridership is beyond 300,000. That’s a catastrophic success.”

-	Steve

-----Original Message-----
From: Lee Schipper [mailto:schipper at berkeley.edu] 
Sent: Wednesday, May 11, 2011 1:22 PM
To: Steve Raney
Cc: sustran-discuss at list.jca.apc.org
Subject: Re: [sustran] "Valid" PRT analysis

I have kept my fingers quiet in this interesting discussion, but I want to
add one point responding to what Steve wrote.
Comparing pods and pods is to me very invalid. Apple's  IPOD is a product
of a private firm with a history of interesting investments in
intellectual and physical capital. It knows how to take risks.
The problem facing any public transport system with infrastructure costs
is that the public, aka 'OPM' (for 'other peoples' money') is asked to
take the risks and come up with the money to put something we're assured
we'll benefit us all. Since "us" is in fact all of us, we do need this
kind of scrutiny.
My colleague at Stanford, Richard White, wrote about this in his op ed in
the NY Times a few weeks ago:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/01/opinion/lweb01train.html?_r=1&scp=3&sq=high%20speed%20rail%20richard&st=cse

While you may think high speed rail is a good thing (or not), and you may
or may not agree with his stance, you have to admit that the issue of who
takes risks and who gets benefits must be discussed. For all public
transit systems, the risks are political, monetary, and often
environmental if a system (like the Lima metro) fails but leaves a huge
scar across the space it was supposed to serve.

I don't know how to solve the OPM problem in my own country, and I would
not claim I know how to solve that problem in India, but I do know that
building any system of relatively low transport capacity per unit of
investment, in a place where transport demand is spilling over every
where, is risky. Whether it is the best use of public funds, I don't know
-- that's for those of you in India to decide. But given the dominance
until now of roads over other modes of transport in terms of where
spending for Indian urban transport has gone, I think it's important to
look at a specific city, take a long-run view, and see how combinations of
options fit in, who pays and who benefits.
This is not the way one sorts out what kind of ipod or other individual
device should be made next.
-- 
Lee Schipper, Ph.D
Project Scientist
Global Metropolitan Studies
http://metrostudies.berkeley.edu/