This video has an error: an interviewee from the university said that the “PRT never shuts down”. That's not true: it's had some reliability problems, and it's closed on University holidays and semester breaks. That line shouldn't have made the edit. Sources for this are in the description or on the full corrections page: www.tomscott.com/corrections/
Yes, it does close for several weeks at a time, as I found out to my great dismay when I detoured through Morgantown in May 2004 to photograph the system. It was between semesters. I detoured through again a month later and it was not only up and running but the staff was kind enough to give me a tour of the control center. I got some great pics.
WVU Alumni and Morgantown resident here. The most commonly accepted excuse for missing a class or being late to a test? The PRT Broke Down. It's wonderful, but it's far from perfect. There were more than a few times over the course of my college years that I spent more than an hour roasting in a car while the rescue jeep waited for the tracks to be cleared so it could come out and push us. Saw a crash once, and another that caught on fire. The refreshment they are talking about has been going on for literally over 10 years. No Joke, My freshman engineering course in 04 took us on a tour of the maintenance facility. Basically. don't be fooled. It's cool, but it still has issues. Definitely a better alternative than buses on our Narrow ass main throughways.
Im an alumni too, 04, and 2011. I hated and loved the PRT. At times it did break down. I was riding it one time from Evansdale to Walnut station and a transformer exploded right above me and fireballs showered the car. But I have to say the worst part was being squished like sardines in a car just not trying to be late to class.
He periodically does a shout-out on a video or on Twitter asking for suggestions, and I think his standard video description includes a similar request.
Eh, I've sorted through similar stuff for a client before. We got a handful of obviously troll stuff, a fair number of "If you're ever in the area we should get drinks" kind of suggestions, but of stuff that were actual emails of "This is something you should go see" I would say the majority were of things the channel could have actually done something useful with. People tend not to take the time to post up "You should come see our totally normal corner store that has nothing I find remotely interesting about it...", but they DO send emails of "You should come see our mostly normal looking corner store because: [it has something weird/unusual/or actually kind of interesting]" Basically, if someone finds something interesting enough to bother emailing a youtube personality about it, then odds are good that it probably has something interesting enough about it to make workable content.
The computer was originally a DEC PDP-11 which was around during the Apollo era and was what Unix was developed on. As replacement parts became increasingly unavailable, the computer system was revamped to a PC in the 80's and students were used to convert the software. If it were not for the inexpensive but talented student labour, I doubt the system would have remained operational.
It's the same reason the Alien Isolation video game chose to show the same archaic tech being used as seem in the original film Alien. 60s-70s computer tech is just very cool visually.
Until the 90's or so, they used computers full of wires made before modern circuit boards, and a lot of it still runs on vacuum tubes. That 70s-style control room isn't an aesthetic choice, parts of it literally hadn't been replaced since the 70's at the time this video was made.
real reason is that it wasn't adopted as much as other methods at the time as well as it wasn't well known. As mentioned in the video WVU has essentially been using a prototype for the past 3 decade
There is a much better more efficient proposal from Doug Malweki called Skytran or sometimes Unimodal check it out it kicks ass as a concept and it is something that we could build with tech that we know and understand. I think nasa is putting some money into it but it should be top priority. It is similat to this but about 200 K/hr
As someone who's at WVU and used the PRT for 2 years, no. The system works by you swiping in and choosing a destination, then waiting on a platform with other people who have done the same thing, with some platforms set to go to either one of two systems. Then a car shows up, and shows where it is going, and, if the platform has enough people on it, it is bedlam to try and get into that car before it fills. Each car has a capacity of 12-20, depending on how sardine-like the people onboard are willing to be.
Not quite. This system is technically called "Group Rapid Transport", not "Personal Rapid Transport". When you enter the system, you specify your destination - and in as much as each car holds 20 people, you are likely to be sharing your ride with strangers that are heading to the same dropoff point.
Hey, current WVU student, I thought this was really interesting and well done. I wanted to mention that I am a big fan, and just happened to be looking around about the PRT, because about a week ago, a boulder fell and hit one of the PRTs. Wild.
@@Nightwishmaster no way dude. I started at 2012 and it was WIDELY known to break down by all those prior to my class. Like so much that we warned not to rely on it during the summer new freshman session prior to us being students. Were you part of the 70% drop out rate, too?
"We have run forty years without any major incidents." Except for that one time when a giant boulder fell from a hill side, crossed a four lane and then hit a PRT car.
I started at WVU in the Fall of 1975 - the last semester for the buses. The next semester they started the PRT. It was much better than waiting 20+ minutes per bus, plus they had enclosed stations to wait in. As for the number of people it moved, they said it was moving 20,000 students per day, up and down all the hills in Morgantown (not a place where you can walk or bike between campuses which are 5-6 miles apart) at something like a 98% efficiency. Not bad for a prototype! And it wasn't just Senator Byrd's influence, but that WVU had one of the best Engineering schools in the nation and diverse enough climate to test the system. How can someone visit Morgantown and NOT see the PRT? When they designed it, they did not know what type of cars they would be using, so they build the trails to carry full sized train cars.
The original bid was for three passenger cars. The company which won the bid went bankrupt and the contract was sold to Boeing. It was traditional transit LRT lobbyists that pressured for the use of larger pods and more expensive guideways and the guideways was built before the specs for the vehicles were finished so the curves were too tight for the vehicles hence the pods had to be redesigned to have four wheel steering, thereby increasing the costs. Snow was also an afterthought so the expense of steam heating the guideways was also unanticipated. I suspect the original three car pods were meant to be rail base hence frequent use would eliminate the need for snow clearing but the move to rubber tires and concrete guideways created the need for snow clearance.
PRT is more efficient for the individual passenger, but less efficient for the most. It works well for university campuses and airport parking lots, but simply won't be efficient enough for a whole city, where the transit demands and requirements are much different. In a university campus, you want to get a student from building A to building B. In a city, you need to get a huge mass of people from their homes to work every morning, and back the other way every evening - and PRT simply can't scale for this: Can you imagine every single person on the Piccadilly line of the London Underground (on rush hour) using one of these? you'd need hundred of thousands of pods, many of which going to a similar destination... and for that, a train is much more efficient. That's why PRT isn't everywhere. That's why PRT isn't "the future of transit". It's a specific solution for a specific problem. Anyway, I liked the video! interesting as always.
Well yes. If you only consider a single variable for your argument. In reality, the interactivity of each component in a complex system such as a city becomes unpredictable when a massively important property such as transportation changes. Transportation is what shapes a city. And the shape of a city is affected by transportation. It's a feedback loop. Assuming that tomorrow Uber introduces cheap electric self driving vehicles, and clients as well as employees can reach any area of the city in the exact same way with the exact same level of comfort, the incentive to move businesses outwards will now create negative pressure towards much less populated areas. This pressure would extend to nearly every aspect of city life . Housing prices would shift. Workplaces would change. Entertainment would be affected. All that in a way which is difficult to predict.
I'd argue there's also no better place for it than Morgantown. Why? The hills in Morgantown make buses extremely inefficient and walking/biking quite hard. But this system can navigate the hillsides with ease.
Yes but there are cities of a certain size where such a system would work well - a number of American cities are like this. A system similar to this but with modern technology and at a slightly larger scale would probably be excellent for my city. Though it wouldn’t be identical it would likely be sufficient since full blown rail is a bit too much, the capacity would be underutilized in all likelihood. This kind of system isn’t for mass transit, it’s personal rapid transit. That said I do think there’s a question of scale that could make it function well for mass transit but it would be suboptimal
@@badbeardbill9956 I think it can work perfectly well as a sort of auxillary lines to full-scale metro, light rail, and tram operation. Like, you have these huge lines, that take thousands of people in every train, then you have smaller, less populated lines where you can switch to a tram, and then, for the last mile, you have these. I think with full-scale integration of robot cars, this is probably about what it would look like. In most cases, people won't own the cars for city commute, it would be like all these kicksharing scooters scattered around town.
Thank you for taking the time to talk about the WVU PRT. While I am way past being a student I have watched the PRT with admiration. Anyone who has ever heard of WVU knows about the PRT. For my money it is still genius. IMPORTANTLY, IT KEEPS 4000 PEOPLE AN HOUR OF THE ROADS. That is the amazing story. Green before green was green.
I'm a current student. It breaks down from general over time use, but it is still fundamental for how we get from ace to place. Long walk, unreliable bus system, and paying way too much for parking and driving on nearly nonexistent roads is not good enough, safe enough, or fast enough for much students are pushed. That's why we love the PRT. It's not perfect, but neither are we so its perfect for us.
Thomas tried to talk with the freight engine, but he was very cross indeed! (In Ringo Starr's voice.) I combined the Little Engine That Could, with Thomas the Tank Engine, and Tom Scott to make: "Tom Scott, the Little Tank Engine that Could".
Hey, my dad was part of that project! He helped write the operating system for the computer(s) that controlled everything when he worked at Boeing in the early 70s.
0:51 That line aged well... For those of you who don't understand, there have been a vehicle crash and a landslide since this video was made, and both have caused the PRT to stop operating temporarily. Also, they closed it this semester and have a PRT replacement bus system due to COVID-19.
Ironically, the WVU system differs from modern proposals in that there are merge lanes where vehicles can wait for a break in the traffic they are merging with, essentially it has buffers. Modern proposals often involve end to end route scheduling before the vehicle leaves the stations hence the only buffering occurs at the stations themselves.
It really is. That part of the Appalachians is gorgeous and it's one of my favorite places in the US. Try going to Seneca Rocks some time, if you get the chance.
That's how most people in WV describe their sisters and cousins. WV is beautiful, but when it comes to backwoods, hillbilly, image of America, that whole deliverance thing, WV is undoubtably the epicenter of that stuff.
Its people like you (@Peter R) who keep bringing back the hillbilly stereotype into otherwise pleasant conversations about WV. Do us all a favor and stop. Simply put, it is not true and it is demeaning to WV's citizens.
Being an avid player of Fallout 76, I wondered what the real light rail system in Morgantown looked like, and found you video. It's mind boggling, the research Bethesda did in the making of Fallout 76. While the pods look different in the game, they're still pods, that roam all over town, from the college, to the airport. Speaking of the airport, Bethesda did make it very small for some reason, but like I said, the attention to detail is amazing.
@@yikes6969 In the alternate timeline its different. At least Bethesda did quite a bit of research about what was real, and then made their own alternate reality.
it's because it's a small municipal airport, to actually fly anywhere, you would go to pittsburgh airport, and wvu has a bus that runs from morgantown to pittsburgh for that reason, also the prt doesn't go to the airport
I use to live in Morgantown. The PRT does break down and when it does, you have to wait until it comes back up or you get to walk the track. With the power off of course. I had to walk up the big hill one time in the winter all the way to the Engineering building. That was fun.
I was a student at WVU from '98-'03. During orientation in the fall of '98 they bragged about how the campus never shuts down due to snow because the PRT never shuts down. It happened in the Spring semester of '99 and in the Spring semester of '03. It was so cold and we had so much snow that the electric coils that are under the track couldn't keep the concrete clear of snow. It was 1 day in 99 and 2 days in 03.
I just now found this video, and it was uploaded the year I graduated from WVU. I relied on the PRT every day of my life as a student. I lived on the Evansdale campus, but almost all of my classes were on the Downtown campus. Can definitely confirm that it shuts down...a lot. So cool to see you cover this!
@kevmv1 numerous game breaking bugs, rapacious, insulting monetization, and a company that treats its customers with contempt expecting them to be abused repeatedly and be thankful for the opportunity to be abused? What could we be thinking...
I wish our town had a transport system like this. It's location is uniquely ideal for it. Even space available for it. Covered it would run year round. With cargo units shopping could be a whole new convenience. All deliveries done by cargo pods. Shops with live media of produce and products that are delivered close to home.
I'M FROM MORGANTOWN AND GRADUATED FROM WVU!!! Was not expecting to see this on the trending page! Some footage of the tracks near the alumni center would've added a nice touch :)
Love it, when visiting Morgantown, as a public transportation fan, I spent an hour of my visit to a whole circuit, the PRT is awesome and a great bit of genius like you shared. It's great seeing all the places you go...
Great video Tome! Loved that you came to Morgantown to talk about the PRT. As a WVU student, I have relied on the PRT for transportation for 5 years now. Although sometimes frustrating with breakdowns, it has continued to be a reliable source of transportation for the university. No doubt the PRT has become part of the charm of our unique college town.
Hey, I've actually used that system for transportation! My friend picked me up at the bus station and we took it back to her house. Having just ridden a Peter Pan bus across Pennsylvania, it was really surprising to be led onto a totally unique public transit system I'd never heard of, especially since it was midday on a weekend during summer break, so there were no other passengers around, let alone any operators.
I read about this in an old World Book Encyclopedia Year Book. The University was having to schedule more than ten minutes between classes because faculty and students were getting gridlocked in traffic. After this rapid-transit system opened, the university went back to permitting only ten minutes of leeway between classes.
I've been watching your videos for years, and I have no idea how I never found this one! I am a Morgantown native and have lived around the PRTs all my life. So glad you could come and see a little slice of heaven and our cool 70's view of the future.
Morgantown is a black hole, basically. The only way out is not having enough money for college xD All the students who do stay basically get sucked up here and become townies.
Morgantown and WVU are basically synonymous at this point. The city is successful because of the university. A bit of history: A long time ago, early in the state's history, the government was trying to decide where to put the university and the prison. They had two locations in mind: Morgantown, and Moundsville(which is right next to where I live, Wheeling). They gave both of these places a choice in what they'd get. Morgantown chose the university, Moundsville chose the prison. At the time, the prison was the better option, as it generated jobs and money. Relatively few people went to college, so it wasn't seen as very good. Nowadays, Morgantown is booming because of WVU, and Moundsville has nothing. As a side note, the city I live in, Wheeling, has a very interesting history as well, and is quite unique among West Virginian cities. I'd love it if Tom came here, though I don't know what he'd cover. Plenty of history though.
The University is more of a parasite to the actual city at this point, though. Because WVU is a land grant university, the city doesn't get money from their ownership of the land. The university builds new buildings seemingly every day here, too (exaggeration). Anyhow, the town and the university, while basically being synonymous, have some obvious differences especially if you live in the city. I wonder if WVU would help out Morgantown financially.
MacDeth That happens to so many students and the city they graduate in. I attended 4 different universities and lots of my friends are stuck in Hartford, Milwaukee, Winona, and Minneapolis. You get a good job your senior year, then you graduate and the job wants you to stay, gives you a raise, and boom, you're stuck. But you're stuck with job security.
West Virginia University Graduate here class of 2013, the PRT used to STOP ALOT. Students used to open the front window and walk on the rails to the station. Who ever attempted WVU had great adventures with PRT stocking or being late. Great to see a video on Morgantown thu, I miss that place. Beautiful.
This is by far the most interesting and informative channel I know. There are so mamy cool things and places around the world that are unknown. A couple of years ago I was in a huge, abandoned, underground radio station with most of equipment still in there. Unfortunately now it's a private object and you can't get there, such a shame. Thanks for doing a great job!
I go to WVU... Trust me the PRT does close down a lot. Not once or twice a month, but more like at least twice a day. It also doesn't just close down for a few minutes, but rather a few hours. In the winter it just gets worse. I get that it was a cool idea, but it was a good idea in 1975. I'd much rather have a monorail.
jonas it’s not that bad. It stops for a minute or two sometimes, and it has days when it’s down for a few hours at a time, but it mostly just cuts down on the number of buses they need to run from Beechurst to Evansdale
LOVE this video! Go Mountaineers! Im a WVU grad of 2000. The PRT was a great way to get around town, not just for class, but night outtings too. Freshman were discouraged from bringing cars to campus and to use PRT. Thanks for making this video to bring recognition to WVU and it enginuity.
I've been going to WVU now for 4 years and there isn't a day it doesn't shut down. There's a website to check the status of it. Also it no longer has the non-stop option. Each car stops at every stop now.
@@williamsires6647 According to Wikipedia, it has an 'off-peak' and a 'circulation' mode. The 'off-peak' mode is the nonstop one, while the 'circulation' mode is the stopping one.
Its is constantly running, but not always open for use because there aren't enough people during certain times to pay someone to operate and manage cars and passengers. Maybe you should have stayed in college longer than that weekend. Thinking and common sense can make an impact on what you say and even your life as a whole. Try it sometime.
One of the best episodes in a while (not that other recent episodes haven't been good mind you)! Fascinating that they built this control system based on ICBM launch system.
WVU alumnus here also, graduated in 1972 and watched this system being built while I was there. Endless noise in the downtown campus and many delays on the Evansdale Campus, but it was interesting to watch the system being constructed. Never have ridden on it.
4IN14094 the population is to blame. 1 politician has no real power over 300.000.000 people. But people decide to give power to the wrong people. The political system in that country is doomed anyway now. You have to have several billions to be able to become president. Which isn't how a democracy should work. Look at other devoloped countries like England, Norway, Sweeden and probably alot more, A political campaign can't exceed a specific price, media is bound to give an objective view over situations, and can't be paid to do anything else.
I live in Morgantown, and our PRT is really hard to miss unless you're just passing through town on the highway, or if you're on the wrong side of the river. But, because it was built a long time ago, it was programmed using Fortran. That's the same language used for the IBM machine used by NASA, if anyone has watched Hidden Figures. But, it is a real letdown that nobody really knows about what's in our town. Even if it is SO COOL. Morgantown is in the Appalachian region, so there aren't steep mountains, but rolling, stacking hills. I've grown up in Morgantown my whole life and it is so amazingly cool; I don't want to live anywhere else.
I am a huge fan of your TH-cam channel and have spent many evenings, including this one, going "down the rabbit hole" watching video after video of yours. I was thrilled to find this one. I had lived in Morgantown for 12 years although I only rode the PRT twice.
35 years late! Haha. Also Mr. Scott when a politician brings back money to his state, such as this transit system, its called " Bringing home the bacon.". Just a fun fact!
It’s really cool to see videos about my home state with fun facts that aren’t about coal. It’s important, yes, but coal isn’t the only thing WV has. This and the Quiet Zone video are really neat, and tbh they taught me stuff I didn’t even know. Thanks for featuring WV!! 😊😊
Tom, I have been going through most of your videos in the last week because I really admire your style. I am starting my own channel in a month or two and I wanted to tell you that you've been a large inspiration for me. Thanks for what you do! :)
There's a stylized version of this system in fallout 76 built around the morgantown "vault tec University" instead but its still cool that it's in there
that is clever design that help public transportation more efficient. Subway can carry thousands people in a day because no traffic, however it stops at all stations. This system is more efficient than subway's.
Harry Goodwin That would be really inconvenient. Imagine you get out of bed and get stuck on the stairs for three hours. But you can’t just climb out and walk the rest of the way. Your stuck!
Growing up in Morgantown, I never really thought about what an innovative system the PRT was, it was just always there so it was part of the furniture, so to speak, in town. Seeing such a similar system in use at Heathrow is fascinating. Until relatively recently, all of the PRT cars had U.S. Dept of Transportation logos on them and were painted in a bland gov't-issued color scheme, showing their origins as an experimental system; just a tiny piece of trivia for you. Also, there has apparently only been one recorded collision between PRT cars, in 2016. Not bad for a system that has been in use since the 70's! With availability in the high 90+% rate, it actually works quite well, and anything that takes traffic off the streets in Morgantown is a godsend!
Tom, do you plan on doing Dolly Sods while your in the area. It's a former artillery range turned into a national park with unexploded rounds still in the park. Also it's location gives a unique climate and ecosystem in the state.
+icedragon769 Perhaps because there really isn't a reason to think that it wasn't recorded/edited/uploaded on the same day, unless specifically stated? People who don't make and edit videos probably don't know what goes on behind the camera; it wouldn't be unreasonable to think that this video was put together in a day, as it's only 4 minutes. Of course, a lot more work goes on behind the scenes, but some people don't know that, so they assume that it was put together on the same day. I've uploaded videos that I recorded a year from the upload date, but there really isn't anything in the video that would suggest I recorded it a year ago.
WVU Alum here. I loved the PRT and I hope they only ever upgrade it and never ever get rid of it. As it is though, I remember it breaking down quite a bit. But when it worked, it worked great.
I went to WVU! I had no idea you came here! Looks like this video was released while I was still completing my undergrad in Computer Science. Neat! The PRT is great when it works, but it's awful when it doesn't. I've had countless times being late to class being stuck midride. It's a great system, but it has its downsides.
I saw this one yesterday, and was SHOCKED!!! I graduated from WVU in 1998! PRT and "Morganwhole!" I DID NOT see this one coming. I spent 6 years in Morgantown. Oh my goodness. I never imagined you'd be there. I got my Bachelor's in English there. Wow!!
I've only been subscribed for a few months and I am already hooked on watching your videos! I find every one of them, no matter what they are about, so interesting and as soon as I see them I have to watch it
This is neat that you made a video about this because I live 30 minutes away from Morgantown and my grandparents live next door to the guy who helped create this.
Good morning and welcome to Morgantown Transit System. This automated train is provided for the security and convenience of the Morgantown community. The time is 8:47AM.
In my years at WVU the only time the school closed that I remember was a freak snowstorm, and they hadn't prepared the steam system for the amount of snow, so the PRT had to be closed. Beyond that, PRT stories are some of the best college stories.
I grew up about an hour away from the school. My sister got her degree there, and my dad helped design some buildings there. Also I worked on the PRT through Thales. I helped design some of the control panels used in the project.
*could We always run the risk a couple ignorant politicians paving the way for a near global ban after a few freak accidents and nobody later ever bothers to change it since they are either still scared of their danger, or its been so long of a ban some just get used to it.
It's not really a glimpse as the PRT has a central control room. If we have driverless cars, there'll be so many that there won't be a central control room.
"The PRT never shuts down" That is a blatant lie. WVU student here and I can assure you it shuts down all the time and goes semesters at a time before it is running again. They constantly shut down in the middle of the ride, leaving you in the heat or the cold; they randomly stop at high speeds causing you to fall to the floor or hit a hall or person, or causing the car behind them to crash into it at a high speed. The PRT sucks! It is shut down this semester due to COVID.
This system truly was ideal for Morgantown. In a city that's spread out over flat ground, buses and light rail are much better, and cheaper, options. Morgantown is very small and very hilly. There are three campuses at WVU. They are not that far apart but because of the hills there is no direct route between them. You have to wind around narrow streets through mostly residential areas. The PRT system connects the three main campuses, the downtown, and an area where several dorms are located. The line follows beside the old B&O railroad grade from downtown and the main campus, then climbs the hill up to the engineering campus, then turns back towards the dorms, then goes over to the medical campus, close to the football stadium. When I was a student there it had two modes of operation. When you pay (usually using a WVU ID card) you punch in your destination. During busy times you wait at the station for a car going to your destination. When enough people have selected that destination the next available car indicates it is going to that destination. Everyone piles on. There are only 8 seats and enough standing room for maybe 10 people. The car then goes non-stop to that destination. It's great because you can just read or study on the way and not have to think about driving. During off peak hours a car will stop at every station to pick up and drop off people. This makes it more economical. The cars as suggested in the video steer themselves. The track is basically nothing but an elevated concrete road. The cars steer to the left or right and follow the metal curb. There are electrical pickups above the curb. On the open straight sections the cars steer to the left and follow the curb. When a car approaches a station, if it is going to stop at that station, it slows down and steers towards the exit ramp on the left or right. If the car is not stopping it continues to steer along the main road. Winters can be very cold and icy in Morgantown, so the track on the steep hill is heated, I believe with steam pipes (the University is heated with a boiler plant). In the event of a shutdown (very rare) specially equipped jeeps can be used to connect to the cars and pull them to the next station. It's not the smoothest ride in the world, concrete roads are usually a bit wavy, but with pneumatic tires instead of steel wheels, it's not bad.
I think the real reason we keep building new systems for buses and rail is that both of those systems have been working for decades. More than a century for rail, nearly a century for buses. And you can point to thousands of existing systems that work. Now add that the vast majority of new ideas for transportation systems never work. Or at least suffer spectacular failures for decades before they finally work. Some guy comes along and pitches some great new idea for ... a maglev system for getting around the university campus. And it turns out there are unanticipated problems, and after spending tens of millions of dollars there's about 100 feet of track and a vehicle that never worked. That second point makes people who spend tax dollars to build transportation systems shy about trying anything that they can't point to hundreds of working examples of. They are afraid of being the latest in a long line of people who put money into something that "obviously was never going to work". Sadly, even a handful of successes can't overcome that kind of inertia. Sure there are successful transit monorails in Germany, Japan, and Australia, but there are only a few in each of those places. I mean, in the plus column, there is a working PRT system in West Virginia that has been going for 40 years. But in the minus column? " Nobody has ever built one with more than 8 stops" for starters. Sure building one that has 80 stops would be a straightforward process, but those exact words have been spoken by dozens of people in the past who turned out to be overselling their product and/or the amount of development that went into it. Essentially, nobody has built another one of these because nobody wants to be the guy who spent $100 million on a system that doesn't work. Nobody wants to take that risk. I mean, if you had to be the guy who made that choice (and would lose his job and be mocked for the rest of his life if it all goes wrong), .... you'd probably put it into rail, wouldn't you?
The problem with PRT, and the reason it's pretty much never been taken seriously, is that it doesn't scale well, and combines the higher overhead of mass transit with the low capacity [people carried per unit time per unit guideway space] and low efficiency of automobiles. Traditional trains can carry far, far, more people for a given amount of right-of-way. In a big city, capacity _really_ matters, and PRT can't supply it; in a small town, capacity isn't as important, but cost is, and PRT doesn't do well on that front compared to simpler transportation methods (walking / bicycle / car). For certain niche cases (and maybe this is one), maybe it works out ok, but it's not a good general solution.
Because they both pretty much work & are cost-effective for applications where you have a significantly large volume of people. Other systems like monorails haven't been as successful due to higher capital & maintenance costs for the tracks.
Miles Bader I think that if used in the right applications, this could make a lot of sense. While it wouldn't make sense as a public transit system, you could use it in smaller applications, such as getting people to and from schools, it would have quite a bit of usage. Or, have this for getting people to different cities. If you could have a family in each car, rather than 60 people in each car, it might seem more appealing than being jammed into an an inclosed space, like a train or plane. Furthermore, if controlled correctly, this could be a fast system. If you replaced the sensors with real time trackers, you could easily control the trains speed so they can go quick, until there is a possible danger, such as another car, or a person, in the tracks. But that is my opinion, and like you said, it wouldn't make sense replacing bigger systems such as subway systems.
Miles Bader, not every city is big. It is unfair to compare a train (in which people have to stand up) with this (where everyone gets a seat). Compare the London PRT against road cars (that have 5 seats but only 1 traveller). A lot of freeways are 10 lanes wide - and each lane is 3.3 metres wide - while the pods in the London PRT are 1.5 metres wide. How much traffic can the London PRT carry if it was given a 3.3 metre wide lane and each pod had a powerful battery?
in august of 2021 i was standing at the entrance. the speaker said push the button and enter, it is free. i was by myself. there are several gates in every direction. the sign read the time the prt would arrive and which gate. at exactly the designated time a prt arrived. it was empty. i boarded and rode to the preselected designation. absolutely amazing. it closes in the summer or part of the summer. i watched it practice, by itself, several days before it opened, nuts, they just ride along, watching your train set as a child.
I go to this school and last year in the 2020 spring semester, there was a rock slide that landed on the PRT track and actually hit one of the "pods". No one was hurt but the PRT was shutdown for about a week and the situation with trying to use buses in Morgantown city traffic was an absolute nightmare.
When I went there is the early 2000's it did not cost students anything that I can remember. All I did was swipe my student ID and it let me through the turnstile and I selected my destination.
Its not that uncommon, especially locals and former students riding from the high apartment concentration around Medical to Walnut to go drinking downtown.
Awesome video Tom, love the old-style control room and the mimic board. We have developed the same type of system except elevated. Our plan is to connect cities with our high-speed system at a fraction of the cost of traditional high-speed rail.
![ค้าง (STILL) - GEMINI [ OFFICIAL MV ]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/Ftxx3hk5vkU/mqdefault.jpg)
This video has an error: an interviewee from the university said that the “PRT never shuts down”. That's not true: it's had some reliability problems, and it's closed on University holidays and semester breaks. That line shouldn't have made the edit. Sources for this are in the description or on the full corrections page: www.tomscott.com/corrections/
Don't worry, I doubt anyone will give you grief over it :)
See? This is why we can't trust you, even if you have the most trust-able face I've seen in my life.
Yes, it does close for several weeks at a time, as I found out to my great dismay when I detoured through Morgantown in May 2004 to photograph the system. It was between semesters. I detoured through again a month later and it was not only up and running but the staff was kind enough to give me a tour of the control center. I got some great pics.
I believe the reliability was 97% so it is highly reliable, far more reliable than conventional transit.
I go to wvu, and it is historically very common for the prt to shut down due to technical issues, often multiple times a day...
WVU Alumni and Morgantown resident here. The most commonly accepted excuse for missing a class or being late to a test? The PRT Broke Down. It's wonderful, but it's far from perfect. There were more than a few times over the course of my college years that I spent more than an hour roasting in a car while the rescue jeep waited for the tracks to be cleared so it could come out and push us. Saw a crash once, and another that caught on fire. The refreshment they are talking about has been going on for literally over 10 years. No Joke, My freshman engineering course in 04 took us on a tour of the maintenance facility.
Basically. don't be fooled. It's cool, but it still has issues. Definitely a better alternative than buses on our Narrow ass main throughways.
you're an alumnus, not an alumni. alumni is plural.
I'm still jealous though
Was the fire started by a couch?
@@stacysilverman6366 pedant. nobody likes prescriptivism.
Im an alumni too, 04, and 2011. I hated and loved the PRT. At times it did break down. I was riding it one time from Evansdale to Walnut station and a transformer exploded right above me and fireballs showered the car. But I have to say the worst part was being squished like sardines in a car just not trying to be late to class.
How the hell do you always find such cool, obscure topics for these videos?
Lots of channels with stuff like this mostly rely on people emailing in and saying "Hey, here's something cool you should go check out!"
He once recommended atlasobscura.com, in which both of his last two video topics are included.
Karl Kastor I had been browsing that awhile back and was trying to remember what site it was, so thank you. Also there goes today's productivity...
He periodically does a shout-out on a video or on Twitter asking for suggestions, and I think his standard video description includes a similar request.
Eh, I've sorted through similar stuff for a client before. We got a handful of obviously troll stuff, a fair number of "If you're ever in the area we should get drinks" kind of suggestions, but of stuff that were actual emails of "This is something you should go see" I would say the majority were of things the channel could have actually done something useful with.
People tend not to take the time to post up "You should come see our totally normal corner store that has nothing I find remotely interesting about it...", but they DO send emails of "You should come see our mostly normal looking corner store because: [it has something weird/unusual/or actually kind of interesting]"
Basically, if someone finds something interesting enough to bother emailing a youtube personality about it, then odds are good that it probably has something interesting enough about it to make workable content.
I love the look of that control room. Something about 70s-style physical switches and lights.
The computer was originally a DEC PDP-11 which was around during the Apollo era and was what Unix was developed on. As replacement parts became increasingly unavailable, the computer system was revamped to a PC in the 80's and students were used to convert the software. If it were not for the inexpensive but talented student labour, I doubt the system would have remained operational.
It warms the same part of my heart as the “data tapes” in Star Wars do. It’s another era’s idea of futuristic tech aesthetics.
@@adams3627 You mean the 9 track reel to reel tape drive with the unlabeled tape reel loaded.
It's the same reason the Alien Isolation video game chose to show the same archaic tech being used as seem in the original film Alien. 60s-70s computer tech is just very cool visually.
Until the 90's or so, they used computers full of wires made before modern circuit boards, and a lot of it still runs on vacuum tubes. That 70s-style control room isn't an aesthetic choice, parts of it literally hadn't been replaced since the 70's at the time this video was made.
How have I never heard of this? It's the efficiency of public transport without the pressure of having to acknowledge other people!
real reason is that it wasn't adopted as much as other methods at the time as well as it wasn't well known. As mentioned in the video WVU has essentially been using a prototype for the past 3 decade
There is a much better more efficient proposal from Doug Malweki called Skytran or sometimes Unimodal check it out it kicks ass as a concept and it is something that we could build with tech that we know and understand. I think nasa is putting some money into it but it should be top priority. It is similat to this but about 200 K/hr
As someone who's at WVU and used the PRT for 2 years, no. The system works by you swiping in and choosing a destination, then waiting on a platform with other people who have done the same thing, with some platforms set to go to either one of two systems. Then a car shows up, and shows where it is going, and, if the platform has enough people on it, it is bedlam to try and get into that car before it fills. Each car has a capacity of 12-20, depending on how sardine-like the people onboard are willing to be.
Not quite. This system is technically called "Group Rapid Transport", not "Personal Rapid Transport". When you enter the system, you specify your destination - and in as much as each car holds 20 people, you are likely to be sharing your ride with strangers that are heading to the same dropoff point.
tscoffey1 Aww, still, at least I can be alone when I drive
Hey, current WVU student, I thought this was really interesting and well done. I wanted to mention that I am a big fan, and just happened to be looking around about the PRT, because about a week ago, a boulder fell and hit one of the PRTs. Wild.
Danny Riggleman Actually the Boulder was on the track and the prt ran right into it. If that boulder had hit the prt they would all be dead.
Honestly, it's a VERY West Virginia reason for stuff to be broken.
Are you sure you were a student? Cause it would shut down every two seconds and anytime it dropped below 30degrees.
@@frankied.roosevelt6232 How recently were you a student? I went to WVU from 2007-2011 and it never shut down once during that time.
@@Nightwishmaster no way dude. I started at 2012 and it was WIDELY known to break down by all those prior to my class. Like so much that we warned not to rely on it during the summer new freshman session prior to us being students. Were you part of the 70% drop out rate, too?
When I played Fallout 76 I thought the pods in Morgantown where the result of the alternate timeline. I had no clue these things where real!
Same
WAIT THIS IS IN FALLOUT?
And they're as functional as the game at launch 😂
@@brawler8839 Fallout 76 which was set in West Virginia. A lot of the landmarks are kind of accurate as well.
"We have run forty years without any major incidents."
Except for that one time when a giant boulder fell from a hill side, crossed a four lane and then hit a PRT car.
To be fair you can't blame that on the technology.
@@daredaemon8878 I don’t but it’s still a major incident.
That occurred more recently than this video was recorded
@@adamkerman475 to be fair that's the town's road maintenance not the actual university's fault
@@daredaemon8878 Tom Scott has a video on Switzerland having the technology to prevent boulder collisions like that
“The PRT never shuts down.”
Unless it gets hit by a BOULDER
LMAOOO iykyk
More like "unless the wind blows on it wrong"
the prt never shuts down except if yo mama sits in it
Unless covid hits
I started at WVU in the Fall of 1975 - the last semester for the buses. The next semester they started the PRT. It was much better than waiting 20+ minutes per bus, plus they had enclosed stations to wait in. As for the number of people it moved, they said it was moving 20,000 students per day, up and down all the hills in Morgantown (not a place where you can walk or bike between campuses which are 5-6 miles apart) at something like a 98% efficiency. Not bad for a prototype! And it wasn't just Senator Byrd's influence, but that WVU had one of the best Engineering schools in the nation and diverse enough climate to test the system.
How can someone visit Morgantown and NOT see the PRT? When they designed it, they did not know what type of cars they would be using, so they build the trails to carry full sized train cars.
The original bid was for three passenger cars. The company which won the bid went bankrupt and the contract was sold to Boeing. It was traditional transit LRT lobbyists that pressured for the use of larger pods and more expensive guideways and the guideways was built before the specs for the vehicles were finished so the curves were too tight for the vehicles hence the pods had to be redesigned to have four wheel steering, thereby increasing the costs. Snow was also an afterthought so the expense of steam heating the guideways was also unanticipated. I suspect the original three car pods were meant to be rail base hence frequent use would eliminate the need for snow clearing but the move to rubber tires and concrete guideways created the need for snow clearance.
The busses didn't go away when the PRT shut down. Perhaps the number of busses was cut back, but they certainly didn't go away.
PRT is more efficient for the individual passenger, but less efficient for the most. It works well for university campuses and airport parking lots, but simply won't be efficient enough for a whole city, where the transit demands and requirements are much different.
In a university campus, you want to get a student from building A to building B. In a city, you need to get a huge mass of people from their homes to work every morning, and back the other way every evening - and PRT simply can't scale for this: Can you imagine every single person on the Piccadilly line of the London Underground (on rush hour) using one of these? you'd need hundred of thousands of pods, many of which going to a similar destination... and for that, a train is much more efficient.
That's why PRT isn't everywhere. That's why PRT isn't "the future of transit". It's a specific solution for a specific problem.
Anyway, I liked the video! interesting as always.
If you ever seen Morgantown it's mostly a university
Well yes. If you only consider a single variable for your argument. In reality, the interactivity of each component in a complex system such as a city becomes unpredictable when a massively important property such as transportation changes. Transportation is what shapes a city. And the shape of a city is affected by transportation. It's a feedback loop. Assuming that tomorrow Uber introduces cheap electric self driving vehicles, and clients as well as employees can reach any area of the city in the exact same way with the exact same level of comfort, the incentive to move businesses outwards will now create negative pressure towards much less populated areas. This pressure would extend to nearly every aspect of city life . Housing prices would shift. Workplaces would change. Entertainment would be affected. All that in a way which is difficult to predict.
I'd argue there's also no better place for it than Morgantown. Why? The hills in Morgantown make buses extremely inefficient and walking/biking quite hard. But this system can navigate the hillsides with ease.
Yes but there are cities of a certain size where such a system would work well - a number of American cities are like this. A system similar to this but with modern technology and at a slightly larger scale would probably be excellent for my city. Though it wouldn’t be identical it would likely be sufficient since full blown rail is a bit too much, the capacity would be underutilized in all likelihood. This kind of system isn’t for mass transit, it’s personal rapid transit. That said I do think there’s a question of scale that could make it function well for mass transit but it would be suboptimal
@@badbeardbill9956 I think it can work perfectly well as a sort of auxillary lines to full-scale metro, light rail, and tram operation. Like, you have these huge lines, that take thousands of people in every train, then you have smaller, less populated lines where you can switch to a tram, and then, for the last mile, you have these.
I think with full-scale integration of robot cars, this is probably about what it would look like. In most cases, people won't own the cars for city commute, it would be like all these kicksharing scooters scattered around town.
Thank you for taking the time to talk about the WVU PRT. While I am way past being a student I have watched the PRT with admiration. Anyone who has ever heard of WVU knows about the PRT. For my money it is still genius. IMPORTANTLY, IT KEEPS 4000 PEOPLE AN HOUR OF THE ROADS. That is the amazing story. Green before green was green.
I'm a current student. It breaks down from general over time use, but it is still fundamental for how we get from ace to place. Long walk, unreliable bus system, and paying way too much for parking and driving on nearly nonexistent roads is not good enough, safe enough, or fast enough for much students are pushed. That's why we love the PRT. It's not perfect, but neither are we so its perfect for us.
Now only if the would expand it to the stadium and ruby better
@@Icedra-wo8nh Morgantown is already chaos with traffic i wouldn't want to know how bad it would be without the system
He's been waiting his entire life to make that Little Engine reference...
...but in fairness haven't we all? Haven't we?
What reference?
He winked at it too, it was cute
Cat Stevens If we lived in a cartoon world there would've been an animated twinkle effect. It was that kind of moment.
How about that wait Tom had from when he made the intro in London to finishing it in WV?
Thomas tried to talk with the freight engine, but he was very cross indeed! (In Ringo Starr's voice.) I combined the Little Engine That Could, with Thomas the Tank Engine, and Tom Scott to make: "Tom Scott, the Little Tank Engine that Could".
Hey, my dad was part of that project! He helped write the operating system for the computer(s) that controlled everything when he worked at Boeing in the early 70s.
0:51 That line aged well...
For those of you who don't understand, there have been a vehicle crash and a landslide since this video was made, and both have caused the PRT to stop operating temporarily. Also, they closed it this semester and have a PRT replacement bus system due to COVID-19.
Wouldn’t busses be *worse* for COVID?
@@FNordstal Exactly what I was thinking
@@FNordstal i was deadass just about to say... Wouldnt a PERSONAL RAPID TRANSIT be literally the best thing for a pandemic?
@@princejaxisblack8789 PRT ain’t personal, holds like 10-15 people in a car
This channel has the best like to dislike ratio ever
Tom is a natural political person
if he was a lawyer he would be scary good .. of a lawyer, no person
Also has the nicest comments' section.
***** would you like a cookie ? life is better with cookies
it does certainly have the best average one, however I have seen better ratios.
And look at all this punctuation! And the grammar! Is this real life? Is this TH-cam??
*"Because every journey is non-stop"*
And TH-cam Player decided that it's a good time to have a buffer problem.
Ironically, the WVU system differs from modern proposals in that there are merge lanes where vehicles can wait for a break in the traffic they are merging with, essentially it has buffers. Modern proposals often involve end to end route scheduling before the vehicle leaves the stations hence the only buffering occurs at the stations themselves.
♪Transport pods♪
♪Take me home♪
♪To the place♪
♪I belong♪
♪West Virginia University♪
♪Mountain Mama♪
♪Transport pods♪
♪Take me home♪
"A meteor strike has occured! Seek shelter immediately!"
More like “Take my to my dorm” 😆
@@IronShocker77 i wonder how many Irishmen go to WVU..
@@kwibloupthesomething why such a question lmao? Im not Irish but can irish people not go there?
I love this
West Virginia looks stunning.
It really is. That part of the Appalachians is gorgeous and it's one of my favorite places in the US. Try going to Seneca Rocks some time, if you get the chance.
Truly, unless you have a problem with the color green, the scenery is gorgeous. You don't have to leave the interstates to see it, either.
That's how most people in WV describe their sisters and cousins. WV is beautiful, but when it comes to backwoods, hillbilly, image of America, that whole deliverance thing, WV is undoubtably the epicenter of that stuff.
Don't know why I have to keep reminding people but Deliverance takes place in Georgia not WV.
Its people like you (@Peter R) who keep bringing back the hillbilly stereotype into otherwise pleasant conversations about WV. Do us all a favor and stop. Simply put, it is not true and it is demeaning to WV's citizens.
Being an avid player of Fallout 76, I wondered what the real light rail system in Morgantown looked like, and found you video.
It's mind boggling, the research Bethesda did in the making of Fallout 76.
While the pods look different in the game, they're still pods, that roam all over town, from the college, to the airport.
Speaking of the airport, Bethesda did make it very small for some reason, but like I said, the attention to detail is amazing.
PRT doesnt go anywhere the airport in real life. And it is small as hell. I think it only does flights out to Pittsburgh and DC
@@yikes6969 In the alternate timeline its different. At least Bethesda did quite a bit of research about what was real, and then made their own alternate reality.
it's because it's a small municipal airport, to actually fly anywhere, you would go to pittsburgh airport, and wvu has a bus that runs from morgantown to pittsburgh for that reason, also the prt doesn't go to the airport
I love how the used ballistic missile electronic controls, "POD ready to go, Launch!"
I use to live in Morgantown. The PRT does break down and when it does, you have to wait until it comes back up or you get to walk the track. With the power off of course. I had to walk up the big hill one time in the winter all the way to the Engineering building. That was fun.
I was a student at WVU from '98-'03. During orientation in the fall of '98 they bragged about how the campus never shuts down due to snow because the PRT never shuts down. It happened in the Spring semester of '99 and in the Spring semester of '03. It was so cold and we had so much snow that the electric coils that are under the track couldn't keep the concrete clear of snow. It was 1 day in 99 and 2 days in 03.
I just now found this video, and it was uploaded the year I graduated from WVU. I relied on the PRT every day of my life as a student. I lived on the Evansdale campus, but almost all of my classes were on the Downtown campus. Can definitely confirm that it shuts down...a lot. So cool to see you cover this!
That control room is so retro-future and I love it
One detail that quietly impresses is that you select your destination at the turnstile, not at the platform or inside the car.
when you realize the pods from morgantown in fallout 76 are based on these
Imagine playing fallout 76
When you realize most people haven't played that crappy game.
I personally love Fallout 76, but that’s probably in no small part because of the novelty of having a major title set in my oft-ignored home state.
@@sanguinespirit2397 imagine not
@kevmv1 numerous game breaking bugs, rapacious, insulting monetization, and a company that treats its customers with contempt expecting them to be abused repeatedly and be thankful for the opportunity to be abused? What could we be thinking...
I wish our town had a transport system like this. It's location is uniquely ideal for it. Even space available for it. Covered it would run year round. With cargo units shopping could be a whole new convenience. All deliveries done by cargo pods. Shops with live media of produce and products that are delivered close to home.
I'M FROM MORGANTOWN AND GRADUATED FROM WVU!!! Was not expecting to see this on the trending page! Some footage of the tracks near the alumni center would've added a nice touch :)
Just came from the recent mistakes video. Was quite surprising to see the place I currently am in a Tom Scott video.
Just the fact that you mentioned West Virginia is going to get me with Country Roads stuck in my head. Great.
Love it, when visiting Morgantown, as a public transportation fan, I spent an hour of my visit to a whole circuit, the PRT is awesome and a great bit of genius like you shared. It's great seeing all the places you go...
Are parking lots called car parks in Europe?
+steveocho Yes! I normally try and keep my dialect somewhere over the Atlantic, but I totally forgot that. "Parking" would have worked fine!
steveocho hi
In the UK, yes. The rest of Europe doesn't speak English as their native language. ;)
steveocho yeah mate,
Technically Ireland isn't a part of the UK but they do speak English.
Great video Tome! Loved that you came to Morgantown to talk about the PRT. As a WVU student, I have relied on the PRT for transportation for 5 years now. Although sometimes frustrating with breakdowns, it has continued to be a reliable source of transportation for the university. No doubt the PRT has become part of the charm of our unique college town.
This is amazing, one of the coolest things tom has shown us in a while. Never new something like this existed
Hey, I've actually used that system for transportation! My friend picked me up at the bus station and we took it back to her house. Having just ridden a Peter Pan bus across Pennsylvania, it was really surprising to be led onto a totally unique public transit system I'd never heard of, especially since it was midday on a weekend during summer break, so there were no other passengers around, let alone any operators.
I read about this in an old World Book Encyclopedia Year Book. The University was having to schedule more than ten minutes between classes because faculty and students were getting gridlocked in traffic. After this rapid-transit system opened, the university went back to permitting only ten minutes of leeway between classes.
I've been watching your videos for years, and I have no idea how I never found this one! I am a Morgantown native and have lived around the PRTs all my life. So glad you could come and see a little slice of heaven and our cool 70's view of the future.
Now I want to visit Morgantown
Morgantown is a black hole, basically. The only way out is not having enough money for college xD All the students who do stay basically get sucked up here and become townies.
Morgantown and WVU are basically synonymous at this point. The city is successful because of the university.
A bit of history: A long time ago, early in the state's history, the government was trying to decide where to put the university and the prison. They had two locations in mind: Morgantown, and Moundsville(which is right next to where I live, Wheeling). They gave both of these places a choice in what they'd get. Morgantown chose the university, Moundsville chose the prison. At the time, the prison was the better option, as it generated jobs and money. Relatively few people went to college, so it wasn't seen as very good.
Nowadays, Morgantown is booming because of WVU, and Moundsville has nothing.
As a side note, the city I live in, Wheeling, has a very interesting history as well, and is quite unique among West Virginian cities. I'd love it if Tom came here, though I don't know what he'd cover. Plenty of history though.
The University is more of a parasite to the actual city at this point, though. Because WVU is a land grant university, the city doesn't get money from their ownership of the land. The university builds new buildings seemingly every day here, too (exaggeration). Anyhow, the town and the university, while basically being synonymous, have some obvious differences especially if you live in the city. I wonder if WVU would help out Morgantown financially.
And yet somehow, The Ohio State University (also a Land Grant University) is not only not a parasite to Columbus, it's a boon.
MacDeth That happens to so many students and the city they graduate in. I attended 4 different universities and lots of my friends are stuck in Hartford, Milwaukee, Winona, and Minneapolis. You get a good job your senior year, then you graduate and the job wants you to stay, gives you a raise, and boom, you're stuck. But you're stuck with job security.
West Virginia University Graduate here class of 2013, the PRT used to STOP ALOT. Students used to open the front window and walk on the rails to the station. Who ever attempted WVU had great adventures with PRT stocking or being late. Great to see a video on Morgantown thu, I miss that place. Beautiful.
the thing breaks down every day!
source: I'm a student here
Absolutely! What rubbish!
Any proof?
@@SolemnDrip a literal life saver
This is by far the most interesting and informative channel I know. There are so mamy cool things and places around the world that are unknown. A couple of years ago I was in a huge, abandoned, underground radio station with most of equipment still in there. Unfortunately now it's a private object and you can't get there, such a shame. Thanks for doing a great job!
I go to WVU... Trust me the PRT does close down a lot. Not once or twice a month, but more like at least twice a day. It also doesn't just close down for a few minutes, but rather a few hours. In the winter it just gets worse. I get that it was a cool idea, but it was a good idea in 1975. I'd much rather have a monorail.
It shuts down now due to the upgrading of the system. The new stuff does not play well with the old stuff.
jonas it’s not that bad. It stops for a minute or two sometimes, and it has days when it’s down for a few hours at a time, but it mostly just cuts down on the number of buses they need to run from Beechurst to Evansdale
I made a website analyzing it when it goes down because I got so fed up with it
@@6438zombie
Any proof?
LOVE this video! Go Mountaineers! Im a WVU grad of 2000. The PRT was a great way to get around town, not just for class, but night outtings too. Freshman were discouraged from bringing cars to campus and to use PRT. Thanks for making this video to bring recognition to WVU and it enginuity.
"PRT Never shuts down".
I went there on a nice weekend and it wasn't running.
Best Friend Venom Like some buses and trains, the PRT does not run on Sundays.
I've been going to WVU now for 4 years and there isn't a day it doesn't shut down. There's a website to check the status of it.
Also it no longer has the non-stop option. Each car stops at every stop now.
@@williamsires6647 According to Wikipedia, it has an 'off-peak' and a 'circulation' mode. The 'off-peak' mode is the nonstop one, while the 'circulation' mode is the stopping one.
Its is constantly running, but not always open for use because there aren't enough people during certain times to pay someone to operate and manage cars and passengers. Maybe you should have stayed in college longer than that weekend. Thinking and common sense can make an impact on what you say and even your life as a whole. Try it sometime.
I've lost count on the number of times it's shut down within operating hours...
One of the best episodes in a while (not that other recent episodes haven't been good mind you)! Fascinating that they built this control system based on ICBM launch system.
Ive been on this before, i feel so special! :)
The PRT is a nice ride, for just 50 cents! It even has platform screen doors now.
WVU alumnus here also, graduated in 1972 and watched this system being built while I was there. Endless noise in the downtown campus and many delays on the Evansdale Campus, but it was interesting to watch the system being constructed. Never have ridden on it.
I'd like the U.S. government spend more money in that type of transports ☺
the U.S used to be a forefront of technology like this.
Its a shame they started falling in the 70-80s.
oaaserud Politicians are to blame.
4IN14094 the population is to blame.
1 politician has no real power over 300.000.000 people. But people decide to give power to the wrong people.
The political system in that country is doomed anyway now.
You have to have several billions to be able to become president.
Which isn't how a democracy should work.
Look at other devoloped countries like England, Norway, Sweeden and probably alot more, A political campaign can't exceed a specific price, media is bound to give an objective view over situations, and can't be paid to do anything else.
It won't happen because of oil lobbyists and their unlimited pool of money.
Sid Su No problem, just strap a V8 to every pod.
I live in Morgantown, and our PRT is really hard to miss unless you're just passing through town on the highway, or if you're on the wrong side of the river.
But, because it was built a long time ago, it was programmed using Fortran. That's the same language used for the IBM machine used by NASA, if anyone has watched Hidden Figures.
But, it is a real letdown that nobody really knows about what's in our town. Even if it is SO COOL. Morgantown is in the Appalachian region, so there aren't steep mountains, but rolling, stacking hills.
I've grown up in Morgantown my whole life and it is so amazingly cool; I don't want to live anywhere else.
These would be great if they replaced roads, just click a button on an app, it come to you and then you tell it where to go!
No crashes, no traffic
It would be great. But people like owning their own vehicle. Which is a shame.
well.. that would be self-driving Uber.
"Welcome to Johnny Cab"
It would be cool if you could pay money and own your own personal one then? Like maybe have it in a private garage and bam.
I am a huge fan of your TH-cam channel and have spent many evenings, including this one, going "down the rabbit hole" watching video after video of yours. I was thrilled to find this one. I had lived in Morgantown for 12 years although I only rode the PRT twice.
Whoa. You were 10 miles from me and I didn't even know it! :-)
Chevee Dodd Same here, though a little further away. Glad to know WV isn’t all bad
I rode the PRT all the time as a student and it will always remain my one true love
35 years late! Haha. Also Mr. Scott when a politician brings back money to his state, such as this transit system, its called " Bringing home the bacon.". Just a fun fact!
Mmmm... bacon...
And when a different politician brings money to some other state, it's called "Pork Barrel."
Ross Parlette
Ehh.
It’s really cool to see videos about my home state with fun facts that aren’t about coal. It’s important, yes, but coal isn’t the only thing WV has. This and the Quiet Zone video are really neat, and tbh they taught me stuff I didn’t even know. Thanks for featuring WV!! 😊😊
Kinda cool to watch when I’m sitting in my dorm room at WVU now thinking if the PRT will be broken down tomorrow morning when I have to get to class
Tom, I have been going through most of your videos in the last week because I really admire your style. I am starting my own channel in a month or two and I wanted to tell you that you've been a large inspiration for me. Thanks for what you do! :)
More infrastructure videos!!
There's a stylized version of this system in fallout 76 built around the morgantown "vault tec University" instead but its still cool that it's in there
That sounds like an excellent method of transport for shuttle journeys. We need more autonomous vehicles!
that is clever design that help public transportation more efficient. Subway can carry thousands people in a day because no traffic, however it stops at all stations. This system is more efficient than subway's.
I need one of these to get me from bed to breakfast in the morning.
Harry Goodwin That would be really inconvenient. Imagine you get out of bed and get stuck on the stairs for three hours. But you can’t just climb out and walk the rest of the way. Your stuck!
Growing up in Morgantown, I never really thought about what an innovative system the PRT was, it was just always there so it was part of the furniture, so to speak, in town. Seeing such a similar system in use at Heathrow is fascinating. Until relatively recently, all of the PRT cars had U.S. Dept of Transportation logos on them and were painted in a bland gov't-issued color scheme, showing their origins as an experimental system; just a tiny piece of trivia for you.
Also, there has apparently only been one recorded collision between PRT cars, in 2016. Not bad for a system that has been in use since the 70's! With availability in the high 90+% rate, it actually works quite well, and anything that takes traffic off the streets in Morgantown is a godsend!
Tom, do you plan on doing Dolly Sods while your in the area. It's a former artillery range turned into a national park with unexploded rounds still in the park. Also it's location gives a unique climate and ecosystem in the state.
+Sigma476 I've already left WV, but maybe some other time! Although that might be a bit difficult to get access to…
Why does everybody seem to think that youtube videos are always uploaded the same day they're made?
+icedragon769 Perhaps because there really isn't a reason to think that it wasn't recorded/edited/uploaded on the same day, unless specifically stated? People who don't make and edit videos probably don't know what goes on behind the camera; it wouldn't be unreasonable to think that this video was put together in a day, as it's only 4 minutes. Of course, a lot more work goes on behind the scenes, but some people don't know that, so they assume that it was put together on the same day. I've uploaded videos that I recorded a year from the upload date, but there really isn't anything in the video that would suggest I recorded it a year ago.
Its a national park you can just show up its open to camping and everything.
MirroredReality
WVU Alum here. I loved the PRT and I hope they only ever upgrade it and never ever get rid of it. As it is though, I remember it breaking down quite a bit. But when it worked, it worked great.
West Virginia is surprisingly fascinating.
weirdskyfan64 It’s really not
@@meganmartin1604 I'll take your word for it
I went to WVU! I had no idea you came here! Looks like this video was released while I was still completing my undergrad in Computer Science. Neat! The PRT is great when it works, but it's awful when it doesn't. I've had countless times being late to class being stuck midride. It's a great system, but it has its downsides.
3:50 Chicago has it, Dallas has it... Many airports do have this!
It is still emerging technology and mostly only done on small scale, but it's around
So does Ogdenville, North Haverbrook, and it's sure put them on the map!
I saw this one yesterday, and was SHOCKED!!! I graduated from WVU in 1998! PRT and "Morganwhole!" I DID NOT see this one coming. I spent 6 years in Morgantown. Oh my goodness. I never imagined you'd be there. I got my Bachelor's in English there. Wow!!
I've never heard of the PRT before today, and then on the same day I hear a story about it on National Public Radio and see Tom Scott's video. Weird.
My mother was at WVU when this opened and I used it when I was there a few years ago. So very nice to see you take a look at this, Scott.
I would really like to try a system like this my self....
Captian you are not the only one !
good to know ^.^
Captian me too
I could use the one at Heathrow on my way to fly to West Virginia to try that one!
I've only been subscribed for a few months and I am already hooked on watching your videos! I find every one of them, no matter what they are about, so interesting and as soon as I see them I have to watch it
Wow, that's pretty cool. Wish this was the standard and not a rarity.
Vivienne Gucwa It’s not that great
This is neat that you made a video about this because I live 30 minutes away from Morgantown and my grandparents live next door to the guy who helped create this.
“The PRT never shuts down” I’m sorry WHAT ????
Good morning and welcome to Morgantown Transit System.
This automated train is provided for the security and convenience of the Morgantown community.
The time is 8:47AM.
Every time I'm visiting England I'm taking a ride at the pods it is a great thing every airport should have it
It's a shame many haven't heard of this! My dad told me stories about this when I was a kid and I couldn't believe it until I saw it back in 2016
"Welcome to the Black Mesa transit system..."
In my years at WVU the only time the school closed that I remember was a freak snowstorm, and they hadn't prepared the steam system for the amount of snow, so the PRT had to be closed.
Beyond that, PRT stories are some of the best college stories.
This time on Tom Scott:
"I'm on a train, again!"
I grew up about an hour away from the school. My sister got her degree there, and my dad helped design some buildings there. Also I worked on the PRT through Thales. I helped design some of the control panels used in the project.
Love the Wonder Woman logo, Robert Byrd was famous for more than just pork barrelling and Tom Scott must earn epic travel miles.
It's the flying WV for West Virginia University, you knob.
i maintain this is the only interesting TH-cam video that's ever been made about West Virginia that isn't about drugs or coal mining
It is a small glimpse of how self driving cars could take over our modern traveling
*will.
*could
We always run the risk a couple ignorant politicians paving the way for a near global ban after a few freak accidents and nobody later ever bothers to change it since they are either still scared of their danger, or its been so long of a ban some just get used to it.
It's not really a glimpse as the PRT has a central control room. If we have driverless cars, there'll be so many that there won't be a central control room.
With a bit of luck, we might already be, or soon will be, past the threshold were a universal ban could still take effect without too much difficulty.
For those asking about the propulsion system, he did provide the manual. TD;LR for manual: Electric powered rail.
"The PRT never shuts down"
That is a blatant lie. WVU student here and I can assure you it shuts down all the time and goes semesters at a time before it is running again. They constantly shut down in the middle of the ride, leaving you in the heat or the cold; they randomly stop at high speeds causing you to fall to the floor or hit a hall or person, or causing the car behind them to crash into it at a high speed. The PRT sucks! It is shut down this semester due to COVID.
this videos 6 years old and somehow he beat you by 3 years
This system truly was ideal for Morgantown. In a city that's spread out over flat ground, buses and light rail are much better, and cheaper, options. Morgantown is very small and very hilly. There are three campuses at WVU. They are not that far apart but because of the hills there is no direct route between them. You have to wind around narrow streets through mostly residential areas. The PRT system connects the three main campuses, the downtown, and an area where several dorms are located. The line follows beside the old B&O railroad grade from downtown and the main campus, then climbs the hill up to the engineering campus, then turns back towards the dorms, then goes over to the medical campus, close to the football stadium. When I was a student there it had two modes of operation. When you pay (usually using a WVU ID card) you punch in your destination. During busy times you wait at the station for a car going to your destination. When enough people have selected that destination the next available car indicates it is going to that destination. Everyone piles on. There are only 8 seats and enough standing room for maybe 10 people. The car then goes non-stop to that destination. It's great because you can just read or study on the way and not have to think about driving. During off peak hours a car will stop at every station to pick up and drop off people. This makes it more economical. The cars as suggested in the video steer themselves. The track is basically nothing but an elevated concrete road. The cars steer to the left or right and follow the metal curb. There are electrical pickups above the curb. On the open straight sections the cars steer to the left and follow the curb. When a car approaches a station, if it is going to stop at that station, it slows down and steers towards the exit ramp on the left or right. If the car is not stopping it continues to steer along the main road. Winters can be very cold and icy in Morgantown, so the track on the steep hill is heated, I believe with steam pipes (the University is heated with a boiler plant). In the event of a shutdown (very rare) specially equipped jeeps can be used to connect to the cars and pull them to the next station. It's not the smoothest ride in the world, concrete roads are usually a bit wavy, but with pneumatic tires instead of steel wheels, it's not bad.
Admit it. We're still using buses and light rail because "That's the way we've always done it."
I think the real reason we keep building new systems for buses and rail is that both of those systems have been working for decades. More than a century for rail, nearly a century for buses. And you can point to thousands of existing systems that work.
Now add that the vast majority of new ideas for transportation systems never work. Or at least suffer spectacular failures for decades before they finally work. Some guy comes along and pitches some great new idea for ... a maglev system for getting around the university campus. And it turns out there are unanticipated problems, and after spending tens of millions of dollars there's about 100 feet of track and a vehicle that never worked.
That second point makes people who spend tax dollars to build transportation systems shy about trying anything that they can't point to hundreds of working examples of. They are afraid of being the latest in a long line of people who put money into something that "obviously was never going to work".
Sadly, even a handful of successes can't overcome that kind of inertia. Sure there are successful transit monorails in Germany, Japan, and Australia, but there are only a few in each of those places.
I mean, in the plus column, there is a working PRT system in West Virginia that has been going for 40 years.
But in the minus column? " Nobody has ever built one with more than 8 stops" for starters. Sure building one that has 80 stops would be a straightforward process, but those exact words have been spoken by dozens of people in the past who turned out to be overselling their product and/or the amount of development that went into it.
Essentially, nobody has built another one of these because nobody wants to be the guy who spent $100 million on a system that doesn't work. Nobody wants to take that risk. I mean, if you had to be the guy who made that choice (and would lose his job and be mocked for the rest of his life if it all goes wrong), .... you'd probably put it into rail, wouldn't you?
The problem with PRT, and the reason it's pretty much never been taken seriously, is that it doesn't scale well, and combines the higher overhead of mass transit with the low capacity [people carried per unit time per unit guideway space] and low efficiency of automobiles. Traditional trains can carry far, far, more people for a given amount of right-of-way. In a big city, capacity _really_ matters, and PRT can't supply it; in a small town, capacity isn't as important, but cost is, and PRT doesn't do well on that front compared to simpler transportation methods (walking / bicycle / car).
For certain niche cases (and maybe this is one), maybe it works out ok, but it's not a good general solution.
Because they both pretty much work & are cost-effective for applications where you have a significantly large volume of people. Other systems like monorails haven't been as successful due to higher capital & maintenance costs for the tracks.
Miles Bader I think that if used in the right applications, this could make a lot of sense. While it wouldn't make sense as a public transit system, you could use it in smaller applications, such as getting people to and from schools, it would have quite a bit of usage. Or, have this for getting people to different cities. If you could have a family in each car, rather than 60 people in each car, it might seem more appealing than being jammed into an an inclosed space, like a train or plane. Furthermore, if controlled correctly, this could be a fast system. If you replaced the sensors with real time trackers, you could easily control the trains speed so they can go quick, until there is a possible danger, such as another car, or a person, in the tracks. But that is my opinion, and like you said, it wouldn't make sense replacing bigger systems such as subway systems.
Miles Bader, not every city is big.
It is unfair to compare a train (in which people have to stand up) with this (where everyone gets a seat). Compare the London PRT against road cars (that have 5 seats but only 1 traveller).
A lot of freeways are 10 lanes wide - and each lane is 3.3 metres wide - while the pods in the London PRT are 1.5 metres wide.
How much traffic can the London PRT carry if it was given a 3.3 metre wide lane and each pod had a powerful battery?
in august of 2021 i was standing at the entrance. the speaker said push the button and enter, it is free. i was by myself. there are several gates in every direction. the sign read the time the prt would arrive and which gate. at exactly the designated time a prt arrived. it was empty. i boarded and rode to the preselected designation. absolutely amazing. it closes in the summer or part of the summer. i watched it practice, by itself, several days before it opened, nuts, they just ride along, watching your train set as a child.
You went to WV!? I missed out :(
Crobisaur No you really didn’t I can assure you of that.
@@meganmartin1604 I think they meant they wanted to meet Tom.....
I go to this school and last year in the 2020 spring semester, there was a rock slide that landed on the PRT track and actually hit one of the "pods". No one was hurt but the PRT was shutdown for about a week and the situation with trying to use buses in Morgantown city traffic was an absolute nightmare.
How much does it cost to ride ?
My fees for it were tied into my tuition, that was 15 years ago though.
When I went there is the early 2000's it did not cost students anything that I can remember. All I did was swipe my student ID and it let me through the turnstile and I selected my destination.
free for students, 50 cents for anyone without an ID (people just ask students to do it)
I've lived here for 2 years and i've only seen one person ever actually put coins in the turnstile.
Its not that uncommon, especially locals and former students riding from the high apartment concentration around Medical to Walnut to go drinking downtown.
Awesome video Tom, love the old-style control room and the mimic board. We have developed the same type of system except elevated. Our plan is to connect cities with our high-speed system at a fraction of the cost of traditional high-speed rail.
Wouldn't be surprised if Robert Byrd found a way to get a submarine base built in west va
Don't laugh that off too quickly. WV already has the largest inland port (Huntington Tri-State) in the USA.
ABB! I used to sell their wares for the utility industry across the U.S. to keep the grid up and running. HUGE COMPANY right there. And super diverse.
Now THIS is podracing!
I used to ride the PRT everyday as a freshman. Glad to see others think it's cool!