tandempower

It's the kind of thing that would be really interesting to have in a city built from scratch or from an abandoned area. The good thing about buses and smaller transit shuttles is that they can easily drive between a car-free/car-light area and other areas. The prt system has to have tracks wherever it goes and they go on existing lanes so if no lanes are left for other vehicles, operators of those other types of vehicles are going to feel crowded out.

It bothers me when people suggest that bicycles crowd out cars in this way because it's not like anyone is suggesting converting ALL travel lanes into bike lanes, only the outermost one. With PRT, you could convert an abandoned area into a car-free zone with only PRT and bike lanes, as long as there is some public transit connectivity with other areas, such as bus or train lines. I would guess the area would become a very popular residential or mixed-use area, unless the taxes and fees were too much of a deterrent to people buying in.

The ideal would be to set up a PRT factory in an abandoned area of, say, Detroit and using the business revenues to fund people buying into and refurbishing the area. The problem is that to fund the factory, you'd probably need a broader client base than just the people working for the PRT factory, unless the investors are willing to refurbish the area as part of their initial investment, in hopes that the system could be marketed to other cities with similar areas open to a car-free makeover.