Personal Rapid Transit

According to the Economist, Heathrow will have a "personal rapid transit" system installed soon ("Beyond the Stagecoach"). A personal rapid transit system, or PRT, relies on small, single- or few-passenger pods to whisk people to their destinations instead of the larger trains or buses of traditional systems. Unlike the avuncular old buses we're all used to, these won't have to stop at nearly every designated spot on the route, because there will be at most four people in the pod, so there will be at most four stops. When a pod must make a stop, it departs from the main rail onto a bypass to allow the other pods to make their rapid ways onwards.

Well, perhaps this is what it takes to make public transportation palatable to the general public, though in a city like Philadelphia, public transportation is already often faster than driving in the congested, narrow streets. However, one of the things that makes our underutilized public transportation systems such great assets is that they are perhaps the only truly public space where anyone spends any real time. This evening I was walking home and I passed by an open window in one of the townhouses on my block and saw a young man with cornrows sitting inside, and it made me reflect: I have no idea what most of the people on my block look like. When I leave my apartment, I hurry off to wherever I have to go, and I rarely encounter anyone on my block.

On the bus or the subway, however, one is forced to see who one's fellow citizens are, and they are not likely to conform to the expectations television may have given us. Not so long ago, I was riding on a bus in Philadelphia, and I overheard two Muslim women in full niqabs talking. You might expect veiled women to speak in hushed tones, but these women were obstreperous Philadelphians, who said things like "Girl! I tole him —" In an age when we shop for jobs and dates online, when we're constantly moving about and nothing's likely ever to be good enough, where we sort ourselves into narrow and exclusive categories, understanding the people whom chance has put next door or on the next seat on the bus is more important than ever. And if we break this public space into private-sized chunks, the chance will be lost.