The Citistates Group

The next big thing in transportation may be small. Its generic name is “personal rapid transit (PRT).” PRT is currently stuck in the starting blocks, waiting to prove its mettle as a major part of a regional transit strategy. Its prototype is perched on a specially engineered track in a warehouse in Fridley, Minnesota.

Nearby one finds the brooding eminence of its inventor, Dr. Edward Anderson. Anderson conceived the technology 20 years ago, tweaking and perfecting it ever since. Small vehicles, slightly smaller than Volkswagen’s Beetles, run on elevated tracks 16 feet above the street level. Anderson, now 75, concocted the complex of algorithms to control the car’s movements, creating software that advocates say makes Anderson the Bill Gates of transportation. But, as yet, there’s no Microsoft-like company. Anderson and advocates have not succeeded in rounding up enough funding to field a scalable demonstration, much less a first real market application. This leaves the idea in the Rodney Dangerfield position.

But respect may be coming — for two reasons.

First, nearly every growing American region is waking up to the risk of sticking with an auto-only transportation approach. The explosion of interest in light rail and commuter rail over the last decade suggests that public officials in many metro regions see the need to provide some choices, particularly in the midst of a real estate boomlet back to urban centers.

But all these rail strategies have the same problem as broadband in the telecom world — the last-mile gap. Rail, like signal switching, also terminates in stations. During a normal workday, people do a lot of moving around in activity-rich zones such as downtowns or university areas. When the zone is too big or too hostile for walking, people naturally opt for their cars. Except for places like New York and Boston (and maybe Miami), large American urban centers notably lack convenient ways to get around without using a car. This is the natural PRT target — the sweet spot — serving activity-rich zones, to which most people still drive, while a steady and slightly growing minority arrive by rail or bus.

Second, PRT’s characteristics meet almost exactly every standard reason people throw up for using their cars rather than transit. Its small vehicles simulate the privacy and flexibility people associate with cars. The vehicle goes only to your destination, not stopping at a dozen others on the way. The system is always there when you want it; so waiting and schedules are not factors.

So why is this technology not finding its natural market?

The big problem is this: while PRT boasts more than competitive capital and operating cost projections, the public sector has grown so risk-averse (Robert Moses — where are you?) that no public official will take the risk that something will go wrong. So this technology sits on the sidelines, longing for angel funding or some private developer eager to incorporate it in a major real estate scheme.

It helps to remember that the facsimile process emerged in the 1940s. The military and research scientists used it, but nearly no one else did until the late 1970s when fax machines became a regular market phenomenon. Cell phones share a similar history. The first cellular call was made 30 years ago. But cell phones were mostly novelties until the late 1980s. Today they’re the extended earrings attached to two thirds of the American population.

PRT looks like it’s on the same slow track. Today Anderson’s invention — now dubbed Skyweb Express — looks likes it has a clear technology lead. The small company organized around the invention — Taxi 2000 — shows off a shiny red prototype in that Fridley warehouse for a new round of visitors every week. The same computer software capable of guiding hundreds of vehicles to destinations moves the prototype car around a simple test track. What’s needed is venture capital and a management team experienced in the arts of bringing radically new technology to market.

Once PRT shows its stuff — any place — it’s easy to imagine its rapid spread. The Federal Transit Administration would smile on its projects. State DOTs would include it in their 20-year plans. Mayors would talk about it as though they’d invented it.

Meantime, Ed Anderson still feels like Rodney Dangerfield.

Even as G.W. hits the stump for vast tax cuts, and states struggle with horrific deficits, a big gaping capital hole — the housing crisis in America’s regions — continues to worsen.

An early May alarm report, from the National Housing Conference, points up the issue. Not just the poor and chronically underhoused are now in risk of losing, or never finding, a roof to go over their heads, NHF suggests. Many of the stable “middle class” working folk — the elementary school teachers and police officers, licensed practical nurses and retail salespeople whom we know are essential to make our communities and entire metro areas tick — are getting priced out of decent housing. Median incomes for those occupations now fall short of the nearly $50,000 necessary to qualify for a national-average median priced home of $156,000, the Housing Conference reports. In almost half the 60 metro areas included in the survey, families dependent on a police officer’s salary are priced out of the market. Families dependent on one teacher’s salary can’t afford to buy a home in 32. (For detailed stats, check here.)

What’s often forgotten is that lack of housing can drag down an entire regional economy. Access to a suitable labor pool, which we know is key to prospective employers, is severely hindered by lack of affordable housing. And when families lack adequate homes, a whole range of social problems, overcrowding and congestion degrade the entire community’s quality of life. In the long run, everyone pays a price.

Clearly, our national and state governments ought to be taking a keen interest in this issue. Strong regions mean collective national, state strength.

But there’s lots of opposition to doing any more (or as much as we did historically) to help housing. And there’s a local angle, too.

Because: Who is it who turns out, in local zoning and permit hearings, to block the way for the teachers and firefighters and nurses to live in the town or neighborhood? Quite often, it’s folks who already figure they have their home or McMansion. So they dream up fears about the perils of allowing less-valued-housing to be introduced nearby, on the theory that they (anyone less affluent) might reduce values. Or cut off someone’s fancy view. Or trigger costly new enrollments in the local schools. Or cause a bit more traffic.

Of course there are occasional abuses in new development: ugly new structures, exploitive physical placement, perils to water tables, big traffic impacts on neighboring jurisdictions who have no voice in the permitting. Sound local and regional planning systems are essential to prevent or mitigate those problems. Another reason that intergovernmental regional collaboration isn’t just “nice”; it’s imperative for residents quality of life.

But the complainers — especially as infill development gains headway in many regions — too often seek to prevent almost any type of new development near their homes. One senses many people believe that the American Dream stops with them. The same reasoning, I’d argue, that says “Give me my tax breaks first, I’m productive, you’re not.”

This is not the kind of attitude, I’d postulate, of which great global regions are built….

Or do I have it all wrong? … Your comments are welcome.