PRT is incredibly new technology in an industry that is incredibly slow to innovate. Are you really calling PRT dead after 30 years of ideation and literally 1 medium scale project? Seems pretty premature to call it dead if you ask me.
PRT is short for Personal Rapid Transit, and it's a form of transit that basically combines some sort of fixed-guideway-like system with small-capacity individually-routable pods instead of trains. As a result, it kind of ends up with the worst of both worlds: you have the infrastructure complexity (and cost) of a train with the throughput (or lack thereof) of single-occupant cars.
(Musk's Loop idea is basically another iteration of the PRT concept.)
You do not have the infrastructure complexity and cost of trains. Because vehicles are small (pounds instead of tons), guideways are literally an order of magnitude cheaper. You can build track for $5 million per mile instead of $50 or $100 million per mile. You can build a grid system instead of arterial lines. Guideway is light so can be off the grid and easily avoid dangerous intersections with roads and other ground pathways. A single skytran guideway has capacity of 14,400 per hour - more capacity than 7 lanes of freeway or [3 tracks of at-grade light rail](https://www.liveabout.com/passenger-capacity-of-transit-2798...) and 50% more than grade-separated light rail (which is rare).
Morgantown PRT has 20-person capacity cars. That doesn't seem so inefficient. On the other hand, it only operates as a PRT during off-peak according to the wiki page - during peak hours, it's just a standard scheduled service like a train or bus.
That said, the Musk Loop type plans where the cabs/cars only carry 1-4 people - which seems similar to this SkyTran - is obviously inefficient and not really a realistic alternative to cars or mass transit systems.
You only think that because you haven't done the math. Its frustrating to hear people talk about how something is "obvious" when by "obvious" they just mean "I haven't actually put any thought into it.
A single Skytran track has more capacity than 7 lanes of freeway or 3 tracks of light rail. Does that sound "obviously" inefficient to you?
A lane of freeway can move about 1500-2000 people per hour in single-occupant vehicles. If you're moving 2k people/hour in 4-person cars on a fixed guideway, you need to have about 10 seconds between vehicles. That's about 8 seconds for a car to physically clear the switch, the switch to physically move to an alternative position, and then the trailing car to cross the space needed to come to a complete stop should the switch fail to actually work. If you claim 7× the capacity, you need to do all of that in a little more than a second.
So, yes I have "actually put any thought into it." I've put sufficient thought to recognize standard gadgetbahn claims with standard gadgetbahn levels of evidence backing them up, and thus I can respond with standard gadgetbahn criticisms.
