The Transportation Renaissance

About the Book

The full story of Personal Rapid Transit, a driverless, computer-controlled system of public transportation, has never before been told.

Parts of this story have been told over and over again in countless meetings with government authorities at all levels and to many potential investors. It has been described in several technical books devoted to the subject, in hundreds of technical papers, and in the published proceedings of the International Conferences on PRT which have been held, usually at the major universities.

But none of these sources tell the whole story. This is the first book to do so, and in a style that is enlightening, entertaining, and at times quite humorous. Despite his lighthearted fashion, the author shows how time and again the cause of PRT has been set back, sometimes unwittingly, by governmental and other forces, sometimes, but not always, acting in the perceived best interest of the public.

Yet the proponents of PRT have managed to struggle on. PRT today is more thoroughly engineered prior to its commercialization than any other form of transportation in history. We stand today on the threshold of its realization. It is just a question of time until many of the cities of the world will have this revolutionary form of transportation.

About the Author

Personal Rapid Transit is the name now universally applied to the concept of a public transportation system consisting of small computerized driverless vehicles operating on an elevated track or guideway, providing non-stop service between stations on the network.

Edmund W. F. Rydell received his degrees in engineering and business administration from the University of Minnesota. He has pursued careers in several areas of business and engineering, utilizing this training to good advantage. This schooling and life experiences gave him a good background for understanding and appreciating the intricacies of Personal Rapid Transit (PRT). Upon taking early retirement and starting a new career in writing, he deepened his old friendship with Dr. A. Edward Anderson, the achnowledged worldwide leading authority on PRT.

With the exception of Dr. J. Edward Anderson, perhaps few in the PRT community are better qualified to write this book than the author. He has been associated with the cause of PRT for many years, and serves on the Board of Directors of the leading company in the field, Taxi 2000, of which Dr. Anderson is President and CEO.