I passed through Morgantown, WV last weekend. Since I'd always been curious about their famous PRT system, I stopped to check it out.
What I found was cool, but couldn’t be called “PRT” by any reasonable definition. The system consists of a single route with no deviations, and when I rode on Saturday trams came according to a schedule and stopped at every station along the route. There were bypass tracks around each station, so I assume the technical ability exists for trams to skip intermediate stops and go directly between any two destinations along the line, but what I experienced was absolutely no different from any elevated transit line in the world, except that the vehicles were smaller.
This is the main downtown Morgantown station, at Walnut Street.
To access the station, you come up a set of stairs and then go through gates. The platforms are then on either side. It looks like this (at Beechurst station):
The platform:
Pulling out of Walnut station:
Several trams were parked at Beechurst station:
Between stations:
Inside a tram:
Back downtown, I got off the tram and walked around a bit. Here's the tram and track above a downtown street:
The main street downtown, High Street:
This is awesome:
Even though its fabulous 1970s space age technology, the PRT showing its age and the surrounding old buildings kind of looks like a mini Chicago or Philly El on some of those shots.
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