Advanced Vehicle Transport Files Suit Against Caltrans; Calls 101 Freeway Improvement Plan Shortsighted.

City Desks, Metro & Business Editors

LOS ANGELES--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Sept. 17, 2002

A Petition for Writ of Traditional Mandate (CCP 1085) was filed today in the Los Angeles County Superior Court of the State of California, Central District, calling for Caltrans and the U.S. 101 Freeway Corridor Improvement Study Steering Committee to include Advanced Vehicle Transport (AVT) and its Dual System transportation solution among the final transportation strategies to be explored in the $4.5 million review. The announcement was made at a news conference held at Los Angeles' Petersen Automotive Museum, which also included a demonstration of AVT's proposed system, which incorporates the use of private and commercial cars in a transit solution where commuters can travel door-to-door as they do now, without getting out of their cars, and at the same time travel safer, faster, cheaper, with less stress or lost productivity, and with no gasoline or polluting residue.

"People will never be willing to give up the use of their cars, or abandon their homes or businesses through freeway condemnation, or tolerate the ruinous effects of freeway double decking, to solve Los Angeles' transportation crisis. Nor should they have to," Frank Randak, President of Advanced Vehicle Transport, said. "Bureaucratic agencies such as Caltrans, charged with having the vision to deal with the problem, continue to merely patch up outdated and fragmented transportation systems, instead of investing in innovative technologies and establishing workable links between traditional transportation and mass transit. AVT and other such innovative systems on the drawing boards are poised to solve the problem, but they are not being given fair consideration."

Randak, a former aerospace, computer and satellite tracking engineer, who honed the Minuteman Ballistic Missile System and helped develop the Boeing 707 Radar Navigation System, further noted: "Caltrans' preferred concrete and single rail system solutions are no solutions at all. They will not significantly ease the transportation crisis and will ultimately perpetuate the problem. Los Angeles already has the worst traffic in the country." A study commissioned by the Association of American Railroads noted that in year 2000, Los Angeles commuters wasted 136 hours in traffic congestion, tops among cities with populations exceeding 500,000. Since 1970, the U.S. population has grown by 40%, while the number of registered vehicles has increased by nearly 100%. During that same period, road capacity increased by only 6%.

"The automobile is much more than a means of transportation. It is a cultural symbol. The future will include more private cars; yet escalating gridlock can be eliminated by using cars in two distinct modes -- driven in the normal manner on streets for shorter distances and loaded on automated, high-speed dedicated guideways for longer commuting distances," said Randak.

Randak continued: "The mobility of and reliance on private automobiles will never bode well for current traditional Single Mode mass transit. Only a revolutionary system like AVT, using existing technologies, can resolve transportation and transportation-related environmental problems in one fell swoop. Presently, subsidies and taxpayer dollars continue to pay most mass transit costs. These systems have not proven to be profitable, relieve traffic congestion, or deliver the ridership they promise. Dual Mode can be developed at comparative costs to Single Mode rail systems and at one-tenth the cost of freeway double decking. AVT will accommodate private cars, buses and freight and will have the capacity of five freeway lanes, moving 10,000 cars an hour. Optimum freeway capacity now can move 2,000 vehicles."

"Trains and buses are 19th century solutions to 21st century problems," said Ian Corzine, attorney for AVT. "The only way to solve our transportation quagmire and return true quality of life to metropolitan Los Angeles is to build a revolutionary system like AVT. Within the decade it will take to get such a system up and operational in a large scale, we can anticipate that most of our oil will be gone, global warming will be inescapably worse, and the air in Los Angeles will be too thick to breathe. The public needs to know what is going on."

Also named in the suit, filed by the law firm of Forgie, Jacobs & Leonard, are the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA), the Southern California Association of Governments (SCAG), the City of Los Angeles and the Las Virgenes Malibu Council of Governments.

According to the Committee's timeline, a preferred strategy for the three-year study is to be selected by December 2002 with the U.S. 101 Freeway Corridor project to be initiated by June 2004.

For a demonstration of the proposed AVT system go to www.avt-train.com and click on Media Room.