Although a few cities are ready to host the training facility, including Long Branch, N.J., and Duluth, Minn., Taxi 2000 is still trying to cobble together funding for the project. Even though Minnesota is the home of Taxi 2000 and many transit advocates and local officials have thrust support behind the prototype project, there's still plenty of resistance to PRT technology.

Olson, who has been heading a PRT public relations campaign in Minnesota to drum up support, says public skepticism about new technologies is a big hurdle, as are established government relationships with existing transit manufacturers. "You have 40-plus years of relationship between our legislators and bureaucracies, and a flow of money between them," he says. "We're basically recreating the battle between horse-and-buggy manufacturers and the creators of the automobile."

One of the jobs of Taxi 2000 now is to convince light and heavy rail companies that SkyWeb Express isn't here to replace existing systems (not yet, at least), but to compliment them. "I think there's a point in time when we will compete with them," says the recently appointed CEO of Taxi 2000, Morrie Anderson (no relation to Edward Anderson), "but it's really the phenomenon of introducing a new technology into an established environment." Taxi 2000's focus, then, is on partnering with light rail and heavy rail systems, extending public transit's reach into airports, inner-city areas, and shopping and entertainment centers. Because of SkyWeb's thinness ("We're talking about a track that's not much wider than your desk," says Morrie Anderson), it can link urban centers to existing light or heavy rail lines. And, unlike buses, SkyWeb Express doesn't add to street traffic (since it's elevated) or air pollution.

But in the long run, and if SkyWeb Express really works, it could encourage more people to get out of their cars than any other transit plan to date. The idea of on-demand, private service that will also ease your gas-guzzling conscience promises to be more enticing than even the sexiest-looking subway train. "We're not naïve," says Morrie Anderson, "We're not going to take everybody out of their cars, but I think with the taxi concept we start to crack that a little bit by giving them a service component that in some ways is at least comparable to a car."

Perhaps one of the best incentives for government officials and transit advocates to thrust support behind Taxi 2000 is that it's not the only PRT company out there. Taxi 2000, in fact, is in an international race of sorts with British company ULTra, based in Bristol, which boasts a PRT system similar to SkyWeb Express, except that the cars are bigger and are based on current electric-car technology: Instead of the electric track powering the vehicle like SkyWeb, the ULTra car propels itself through battery power, and the passive track just guides it.

ULTra CEO Martin Lowson claims his company is three years ahead of SkyWeb Express, mainly because it uses existing technology. They have finished all prototype testing and are hoping to sign a contract for the first commercial system in 2005. Edward Anderson, however, quibbles with Lowson's assessment of superiority, pointing out the ULTra's larger cars would cost more and add weight to the tracks, and that the electric-car system is more vulnerable to inclement weather. (Anderson, a Minnesotan after all, not only designed his monorail track to discourage snow piles, he also invented a special SkyWeb plow.) But both Anderson and Lowson agree that the rivalry means that more people around the world are becoming aware of PRT, and that's a benefit that beats their minor differences.

Still, a little competition couldn't hurt interest. That, and the idea that we could all be zipping around mountains in our own little pods, like the superheroes.

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