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.
