Tom Sorel Minnesota DOT Commissioner to kickoff ITS American Webinar

[Jerry Schneider]

http://www.itsa.org/press_release_content/c71_a3397/News_and_Events/Press_Releases.html

I wonder if he is still interested in PRT - anybody know?

[Kirston Henderson]

On Aug 16, 2010, at 5:30 PM, Jerry Schneider wrote:

> http://www.itsa.org/press_release_content/c71_a3397/News_and_Events/Press_Releases.html
>
> I wonder if he is still interested in PRT - anybody know?
>

Sounds as if he is way back in the ITS world of trying to find better
ways of using the worn out highway systems that we have.

Kirston

[Richard Gronning]

1. It was Tom Sorel that organized the PRT Symposium in Rochester, MN.
2. It was Tom Sorel that chose Mukhtar Thakur as MN DOT'S PRT coordinator because he has the reputation of getting things done.
3. Think about it! PRT is the most advanced form of ITS.
4. MN DOT has to think about and include ALL types of solutions or the (Luddite) politicians will be all over Tom.
5. Tom Sorel already has had to defend MN DOT and his office over the 1st PRT event. I've heard stories where a few of the politicians were screaming at him in the hall of the MN Gov./DOT building. I've been told that he soothed the situation and made his point very well.
   

[Jerry Roane]

Kirston

It totally depends on mindset.  If he is smart he knows that ITS branding is one thing and "intelligent transportation" is another as two English words stuck together.  I suggest that switches in a guideway are ITS under a controlled environment.  ITS is this brand name that means other things to other people but as language I see nothing wrong with intelligent transportation.  Our system as you know uses ITS from the point the car enters the merge zone parking lot-like area and the computer drives the cars from the entrance of the merge zone to the entrance ramp of the triangular guideway.  In the process the cars are mathematically mapped to merge seamlessly so they are properly spaced when fed onto the guideway in order.  This controlled environment of the merge zone is very much ITS but the fact that it is controlled makes the control problems to solve solvable with real hardware.  I agree that ITS branding as being sold hard to the politicians is vaporware.  Significant vaporware was sold here in Austin during the dotcom bubble till the bust of the dotcom dream.  Now you will not find a single investor who wants to start up a dotcom bunch of software guys in their garage (no basements here).  ITS is a remnant of the dotcom thinking that you can hire away three software guys who were at IBM and they will by the magic of code make you a billionaire. 

You and I know about automation and making devices move under I/O control.  We have been around enough real equipment that failed and have fixed that equipment to know wires get frayed transistors get intermittent, CPUs lock up without a watchdog timer circuit etc.  been there done that.  These folks wishing for complete robotic autonomy are wishing just fine.  it is the implementation and not over selling of what is practical that has been lost or buried depending on your mindset.  In a switch you reduce the choice to left or right.  In a switch mechanism you design to keep the failure modes to naturally pick left or right as in fail SAFE.  With control electronics you want fail safe but fail means fail so you can never 100% determine that all failure modes are in the safe choice and that is where redundancy and highly reliable well tested and BURNED IN electronics come into play.  The much more difficult part is to explain how many failures you will have per one billion operations.  Once you bump into the probability of a failure in a real world system then the eyes roll back in the head but that is the issue at hand and the eyes need to stay forward through the discussion with the politician.  Very difficult.  In a controlled mechanically constrained location like a switch or a merge zone with physical constraints not that different from entering a car wash and letting the car wash pull your car through, you have an excellent chance of success because the number of failures probable is very low.  Back to the ITS brand as sold they think they can open the danger zone the entire world because they saw Bruce Willis do it in a skytaxi on the big screen.  Reality is we are no where near the level necessary to turn an Intel or AMD processor loose on the road with the rest of us.  The ITS program if not reigned in to realityland will just waste tax dollars and produce danger or junk depending on how safe the testing is designed.  Computers do not anticipate or think so the name itself is just stupid if intelligent means the computer is doing any thinking.  AI is artificial and it has another name once the adults in the room corrected the wording.  It is Expert System because the computer is great at recall if the software loops are mature and there is no power surge or momentary lapse.  Having an Internet search for cosmetic surgery gone bad on celebrity lips hit an error is one thing.  Having your expert system doing life support while doing billions of search operations and driving the car is another. 

ITS should evolve from the switch function and grow and if done that way will work well enough to end traffic and we won't need ITS off the guideway and on the roadways.

Jerry Roane

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