17> The Role of a PRT Standard

A good PRT standard would
1. Give all decision makers (city, state, federal) the security of knowing that the system design was not rushed, coerced, short changed, tailored by self-interest.
2. Give those decision-makers the assurance that the design is suitable for competitive bidding in initial construction, expansion, and maintenance and therefore they are not utterly dependent on the initial contractor.
3. Give PRT contractors a vetted design more likely to be accepted by the public.
4. Reduce PRT contractor’s liability risks.
5. Make a PRT project easier to manage and subcontract.
6. Give customers more faith in the system
7. Allow innovation in system components outside of the standard.
8. Be divisible so that variations can be introduced without scrapping the entire standard. (A proprietary car for a standard track, for example)
9. Be designed with altruistic intent, including benefit to the environment, local contractors and other vendors, as well as commuters and the communities they pass through.
10. Be continuously updated
Did I leave anything out? Anyway, A good set of open-source specifications would greatly enhance the chances of a truly ambitious implementation. Let’s remember, a scaled down test will always go from a place where people congregate to different, similar place. In other words, companies with millions tied up in engineering and marketing and testing and selling have to recoup costs by jacking the cost of track so high that only a loop is affordable. Meanwhile cities have to ensure usage by placing stations only in congested areas. Almost by definition, then, a simple shuttle service will always be more cost-effective. Only confidence and optimism can produce a first implementation that is scaled for success.

So what would a first standard be? I would think that the first stage would be (for example) to standardize a track profile, switching and control protocol and weight limits. If there are deep-seated divisions in these matters, there could branching specifications. For example, I outline, in the last post, a method of using external power to lift cars up very steep (to vertical) slopes. A “podcar” designed for the track, weight, and switching specifications but incapable of this adaptation might be called PRTSO 100.2 compliant, but not PRTSO 100.2.5 compliant. A city could look at a proposal and decide whether this would be an issue or not. At any rate, they would know what kind of track to buy.

It is interesting to consider that, for design Darwinism to occur, one needs a number of competing designs. It is therefore not the function of this site to design a single system, but a number of competing systems to see what common threads emerge. None-the-less, it is equally important that each idea be critiqued, as though it is the one and only alternative.