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I’m looking at the date and it says 2010. That seems more futuristic to me than 2001 did for some reason. So we are in the future, where are the flying cars? Flying cars are what I call a zombie technology, an idea that just won’t die no matter how ludicrous. I’ve been researching rapid transit for many years now and what continues to fascinate me is how some ideas never die. The first zombie idea of rapid transit is Monorails which still hold their 1960s futuristic charm even though they always come up short compared to conventional rail. The second idea, and the subject of this rant post is Personal Rapid Transit (PRT).

Before I rant on I want to make on caveat which is that light fixed-gruideway transit is excellent as a more affordable option for getting a few people from point A to point B, or Terminal A to Terminal B, since they are great for airports. But this isn’t PRT in the sense I’m talking about it.

What got me thinking about this subject was the realization that over the course of a month I really only make a few different journeys. I decided to draw a map of these places and once I did I realized that I could connect them by way of (as my mind works) a subway, or PRT, system. Since most of my journeys are from my home to work, a friends place, or for afterhours fun (such is the life of a 25 year old male); mapping my routes is pretty simple. I also included a “commuter rail” line back to Boston when I want to visit my friends and relatives (cuz, you know, if I’m building my own personal subway, why not?) Also, now that you all know where I usually go, please don’t stalk me now.

The idea is simple: Take the efficiency of mass transit and combine it with the rugged individualism of the American spirit. PRT systems are usually based on the idea that while the automobile is great for getting one or a few people from point A to point B, when millions of automobiles all try to get to different point As and point Bs that the current system of roads breaks down. The answer is always some sort of fixed tramway system where everyone has their own vehicle which will be driven automatically so traffic will become a thing of the past (oh traffic, you eternal evil!) The more advanced systems have the ability of allowing a vehicle to attach and detach from the fixed system and be driven along conventional roads. This feature would be beneficial since it would free people from only being able to go where the system existed.

The designers of these systems claim that if we only had the type of investment in PRT systems or at least fixed-guideway systems (like in Minority Report) that we could cure traffic ills and increase the efficient of our roads. Well I’m here to blow the brains out of this transportation zombie. Before I do though, lest I seem like a hypocrite, I am not chastising the designers and engineers of these systems for trying to come up with a better plan or from creating pie in the sky ideas (FutureMBTA anyone?), rather I want to help channel their creative minds away from such a silly concept.

PRT is a laughably complex system. Oh, computers can handle the traffic! People, computers are boxes of metal and plastic that only do something when instructed by a human. What this means is no matter what system we build it will still be at the hands of a person (and given how technology progresses, fewer and fewer persons). Another major problem with such a system (and in my opinion traffic engineering in general) is that it strives to take a large number of individuals, all doing something slightly different, and boil them down to a number. We are not numbers (fight the system yo!) A traffic engineer will look at a road with cars on it and only see the cars, the lanes, and the number of cars per hour in those lanes. He doesn’t see the people and because of this he doesn’t design the roads for the way people actually use them.

People don’t like to wait. People don’t understand numbers the way an engineer does. Think of the age old question of what weighs more, a pound(lbs) of feathers or a pound of lead? How many people would say lead without missing a beat (or after thinking about it for a while)? This issue pertains to transportation in a key way; people don’t like to not be moving. If you are waiting on a train platform for 10 min and then on a train for another 10 min it feels like much longer than 20 min than if you were in a car driving, constantly moving but at a slower speed, the same distance taking the same time. What this means for PRT is that all those little pods moving at the same speed will, by the numbers, make traveling more efficient and cut travel times. But people don’t think about the numbers, no. Imagine you are in one of those pods trying to get your kid to school or to work. In the pictures they show people relaxing as they are whisked to their destination. But isn’t that the promise every technology makes, that your life will be simpler and you will have more free time? Has that ever been the case? What do we do with the free time but think of more work to do. People would hate waiting in line, not being able to have control of where they are going. It works for theme parks because people are there to go on the ride. But back in their real world they very much need to control where they are going.

PRT is a joke because people like to drive. If you have some many people driving to one place then you build a balanced system. The problem we have today is not that there are too many cars, it’s that we built a world that perpetually creates more cars. Mass Transit offers an efficient way of collecting many people together and transporting them effectively, but since we’ve designed a car-only world we are left with half-broken transit systems and a bazzaro world where, when more people use the bus because of higher gas prices, the bus lines get cut because the transit authorities can’t pay for the gas either. PRT is stupid because we in this country value individualism over common good. LOWER TAXES they shout, but then we are gonna need some stimulus money to fix all these pot holes. With cars we can get by but what happens when your PRT guide-way breaks down?

When I hear someone mention Personal Rapid Transit all I think of is, “We already got cars!”

A while back I asked readers of my futureMBTA site to send in their own ideas and maps for MBTA expansion ideas. I got some great ideas and I’ve posted a bunch of them up. Head over and get your mind working on what-could-be.

http://futurembta.com

This is something I’ve been wanting to do for a long time but didn’t know how to start. I present my Google Maps version of the proposed Lower Manhattan Expressway and Mid Manhattan Expressways. (I didn’t know how to draw maps to look like Google Maps but it’s pretty easy.) Now there have been maps showing these proposed highways before (they are included in my Unbuilt Highways Map of NYC) but the point of doing it up to look like a Google Map was to put these highways in a modern context (also I’m sure there are plenty of people who didn’t even know about these). We have become so accustomed to viewing the world through Google Maps (or some other online mapping software) that I feel like these maps are starting to shape our view point of the city.

A map, after all, is a representation of reality with certain things omitted (or in this case, added). As mapping software becomes even more ubiquitous now that they are in the palm of our hands (Blackberrys, iPhones, etc), I think it will become all too easy for people to just accept what they see as reality. This is a dangerous prospect but one I think can be taken advantage of when trying to communicate certain information, such as what a neighborhood you know pretty well would look like with an elevated highway slammed through it. This was true for me, at least, while I was making these; Hand erasing buildings through SoHo, TriBeCa, and the LES was an eery experience as I tried to imagine what these places would really look like if my brush was a bulldozer.

And thus I began to understand the failing of Robert Moses (well, this one anyway). He didn’t drive and lord knows he didn’t think much of these areas which he tossed off as “slums”.   There is a famous image of a young Moses standing in front of a map of the entire city (to the left).

What you need to be aware of when you are looking at a map is how it lies to you; it is a seductress. You think because it represents reality you can better understand reality, which is true only to a point. But when combined with the power and ambition of Robert Moses the maps seduction warped him and let him think that a line across the map represented far less chaos and destruction than he perceived. Adjusting lines on a map is easy and because a map is a visual design adjusting lines seems like a good way to clean up the map. But the lines on a map hide the fact that they represent something real, a street that needs to be moved, houses that need to be knocked down, families and businesses that need to be kicked out. I’m not saying that Moses wasn’t aware of these things, in fact he was keenly aware. But it was so easy and sexy to clean up the map that he was willing to do whatever it took to draw his maps to be permanent.

Oh social networking, how you’ve transformed our world. Or not really. More accurately, how you’ve given us more crap we have to check on the internet every 5 minutes. Yes Twitter is fun but I still don’t see the point. What makes even less sense is the vast array of apps that have shown up for it. It is a glorified status update! I’m not a technophobe (most Geographers seem to be) but I am waiting for the day when everyone of this generation just says “Stop!” and we all stick with one thing. Will that ever happen? Probably not; nobody is listening to tapes anymore (who listens to CDs?).

With all that said, Twittervision is pretty sweet (although it is a colossal waste of time since I am not just watching where people are tweeting instead of studying for my German final tomorrow.) The geographer in me loves adding Twitter geodata to a map, but what I really find interesting is seeing where people are tweeting from, namely first world nations or nations that are pretty well off. I have yet to see a tweet from Africa, mostly just North America, Brazil, Europe, Japan, and Australia with a few outliers here and there (India). This just further enforces my feelings that these new toys are nothing more than that. Sorry you are starving and being oppressed, I am too busy fitting my thoughts into less than 140 characters.

Looking at people communicating around the world (and seeing people do it on a map gives you a great way to visualize the global connectivity of the internet) it may seem that we are breaking down communications barriers, but are we really? I’m not talking to these people and they aren’t talking to me. Mostly they are tweeting to their friends who probably live close to them. Do you really care that there is some dude in Perth who is bored tonight? What are you gonna do, tweet him back to go hang out? I don’t think so.

Also the fact that this post will be broadcast on my Twitter is not lost on me.

Using info from NYCSubway.org I threw together this Google Map of what the old Els looked like in NYC. Some were demolished (all the ones in Manhattan) but many of the Els in Brooklyn were incorporated into the subway system (though many were demolished as well. I’m gonna put this on the Subway System Maps page.

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