J. Edward Anderson - Personal Rapid Transport

Personal Rapid Transport

He first worked on methods of structural analysis of supersonic-aircraft wings at the Structures Research Division of NACA (now NASA), and later designed aircraft instruments, including the first transistorized amplifier used in a military aircraft for the Aeronautical Division of Honeywell.

In 1963 he joined the Mechanical Engineering Department at the University of Minnesota, and directed its Industrial Engineering Division. He chaired a symposium on the role of science and technology in society, coordinated a 15-professor task force on New Concepts in Urban Transportation, and chaired three international conferences on personal rapid transit (PRT), following which he was elected first president of ATRA.

Anderson consulted on PRT planning for many organizations, and for several years he was Distinguished Lecturer for the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics. At one point, he discussed PRT with President Richard Nixon's staff. Anderson reportedly said of Nixon, " didn’t know anything about it, but we spent quite a bit of time talking to his staff."

Anderson was chosen as lead consultant to plan an automated transit system for Indianapolis, and selected the German-built Cabinentaxi -- a three-person vehicle that travels below its elevated rail in one direction and on top of it in the other. Anderson was later hired by the German builder of Cabinentaxi to act as U.S. representative, until the company abandoned work on the idea.

In 1983 Anderson co-founded Automated Transportation Systems, Inc., with two officials of the University of Minnesota. The company was renamed Taxi 2000 Corporation in 1986. While teaching in the late 1980s at the Department of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering at Boston University, Anderson organized a team of engineers from major Boston-area firms to participate in developing the PRT system.

In 1989, the Northeastern Illinois RTA initiated a program to fully develop PRT, leading to a $40M joint development program with Raytheon Company and the RTA. Massachusetts-based Raytheon purchased the rights to the Taxi 2000 technology in 1993 and developed its own version of the system concept, which it named "PRT 2000".

Raytheon developed a PRT 2000 test track and produced three vehicles which were up and running in 1995 in Marlborough, Massachusetts in a joint project with the Northeastern Illinois RTA. However, Raytheon terminated the PRT 2000 project and Phase III was never started.

Anderson became part of the effort by a committee of the business-civic group Forward Quest to install a Taxi 2000-based PRT system, the Sky Loop, into the Cincinnati area. The Sky Loop plan was submitted to the Ohio-Kentucky-Indiana Regional Council of Governments (OKI), but the proposal was ultimately rejected by OKI's Central Area Loop Study Committee.

In 2002, Anderson began selling shares in the privately held Taxi 2000, and on April 10, 2003, he unveiled the Taxi 2000 (Skyweb Express) prototype to the public and the media.

Anderson also sought public funding for PRT research and development but bills to subsidize a testing facility for Taxi 2000 were never approved. On March 8, 2004, Anderson appeared at a meeting of the Midtown Greenway Coalition board to support a proposal for that project, but in June 2004 the Midtown Greenway board endorsed a streetcar over his proposal.

J. Edward Anderson left Taxi 2000 Corporation in 2005 to start a personal rapid transit consulting firm called PRT International. He was sued by the Taxi 2000 Corporation in April of that year, alleging he had retained proprietary information from Taxi 2000, along with a company computer. The suit was settled in December 2005.