PRT: Public Transit Of The Future?

"After 30 years of laboring to perfect and sell the world on his futuristic public transit system, Minnesota inventor J. Edward Anderson on Thursday presented a shiny red cab that moves people along a silver track. Anderson's invention, known as PRT (for personal rapid transit) and more formally named SkyWeb Express, continues the tradition of Post-it notes, pacemakers, Honeycrisp apples and other Minnesota inventions, Olson said. "The problem with clogged streets has never been solved but I believe there is hope for that today," he said. As Anderson envisions it, cabs would operate on a guideway system elevated about 16 feet above clogged streets. Riders would mount a station platform, swipe a fare card through an electronic reader, punch in destination numbers on a keypad and then climb inside a three-seat cab slightly smaller than a Volkswagen Beetle. The system would be fully automated by computer, taking riders to their destinations nonstop while bypassing other stations along the way."