A Ride on the PRT in Morgantown
Just an hour and a half south of Pittsburgh is the city of Morgantown, just inside West Virginia. It’s the home of an enormous university whose two campuses, and the constant shuffling back and forth of thirty thousand students between them, created big-city gridlock problems until the unique PRT (for “Personal Rapid Transit”) began service in the middle 1970s.
PRT cars are about the size of a minivan. Each one has eight seats; there is no driver, because the system is entirely automatic. At the turnstile, you pay your 50¢ and push a button for your destination. A car rolls up shortly after that. You get in, and it goes straight where you want to go, with no intermediate stops.
This little movie will give you some idea of what a ride on the PRT is like. There is no sound; you may wish to hum a jaunty newsreel march to yourself as you watch. The movie is explicitly released into the public domain, so if you want to make a music video out of it, go right ahead.
I’ve always been interested in the various forms of public transportation out there… But I’ve never seen this! It’s fascinating – thank you for sharing this little unknown treasure!
http://www.brooklineconnection.com/history/Facts/Skybus.html
Pittsburgh very nearly had its own Skybus. I can only assume that, as with the rest of our transportation system, its cancellation was due to pressure from the Army Corps of Engineers which wants to keep the Forks of the Ohio inaccessible, should the French ever attempt to reclaim their lost Fort Duquesne.
Skybus was planned to replace the South Hills streetcar system. One could argue that the streetcar system didn’t really need replacing, and it continues to haul thousands of commuters every day.
The Skybus system was not a total loss. The technology developed for it proved very popular in airport transit systems, including the subway at Greater Pitt.