World’s First Fully Automated Transit System Still Far Ahead at Age 20 : People mover: More than 35 million passengers have traveled about 12 million miles across a hilly West Virginia campus without an accident.

Nearly 20 years after its molded fiberglass cars began rolling along on an electrified, concrete guideway, West Virginia University’s people mover still represents the leading edge of rapid transit technology.

“There’s nothing else like it. Engineers and planners from all over the world still come to see it,” said Samy E. G. Elias, associate dean for research at the University of Nebraska’s College of Engineering and Technology at Lincoln.

Tom Shamberger, business manager for WVU’s 3.3-mile Personal Rapid Transit System, called “the PRT” by most, said a group from Japan was the most recent delegation from overseas to take a ride and a look.

Among those booked on the tour were a city mayor and planners from Japan’s national land agency and traffic office, Shamberger said.

Other recent visitors included a delegation from Ohio State University seeking ways to unsnarl campus traffic and members of the Chicago Transit Authority, which is considering a similar system for Chicago’s Loop.

Planners from Detroit and Miami also took a ride before building circular rail systems in the downtown areas of their cities.

Elias said the system, which links WVU’s sprawling campuses, was the world’s first mass transit system fully operated by computers. There are no drivers.

About 40 others have been built, but Morgantown’s remains the only one that offers passengers nonstop service to their destinations.

San Francisco’s Bay Area Rapid Transit System or BART, which came on line several years before the Morgantown system, uses drivers. There are no drivers on the PRT.

A partially computerized transit system at Dallas-Ft. Worth International Airport came on line at about the same time as the PRT. The Texas system’s cars are tied to a guideway and depend on a switching system to lead the cars, Elias said.

“The PRT’s computers turn the tires just like an automobile and steer the vehicles into and out of programmed stations automatically,” Elias said. “The PRT cars are not tied to a rail or anything else. There’s still nothing else like it.”

“We wanted to design a transportation system that would be fully automated, feasible, safe, economical and that people would ride in,” Elias said.

“We take it for granted now, but the cars run up to 30 miles an hour, with 15 seconds between them. With no driver, we didn’t know how people would react.”

The reception has been good. Since testing of the system began in 1972, more than 35 million passengers have traveled about 12 million miles across WVU’s hilly campus without an accident, according to Robert Bates, PRT director.

Elias’ frustration with Morgantown’s tangled traffic on narrow, mountain roads in the late 1960s was the catalyst for the $126-million project that turned the eyes of transportation experts worldwide to this Appalachian town of about 25,600 people 80 miles south of Pittsburgh.

“The two main roads were choked with traffic and exhaust,” Elias said. “With all the traffic headed for Maryland or Pittsburgh going through town, too, it was really a mess.

“It was not uncommon to spend 45 minutes to get from one end of town to the other. A fender-bender stopped everything.”

A new president, Richard M. Nixon, a newly created Department of Transportation, plus the support of Sen. Robert C. Byrd, former Sen. Jennings Randolph and former Rep. Harley O. Staggers Sr., all West Virginia Democrats, combined to get the project rolling, Elias said.

“It was 1970. Nixon had come along and brought former Transportation Secretary John Volpe with him,” Elias said. “Volpe was saying that the government should find ways to encourage people to stay in small towns instead of moving to overcrowded cities.”

Volpe chose Morgantown as the site for the world’s first fully automated transit system.

The federal government picked up the cost of laying the guideway and building the cars. Local, county and state governments donated land and picked up the tab to buy parcels needed for the more than 8 miles of guideway that crisscross the campuses.

The system was plagued by cost overruns and doubts about its effectiveness during its early years, Bates said.

One federal official even argued that the system should be dismantled. Its image wasn’t helped when several cars stalled during the system’s October, 1972, dedication that featured Tricia Nixon Cox, Nixon’s daughter.

Some charged that the dedication had been rushed by Volpe so that Nixon’s reelection campaign could get some political mileage out of the project.

Since then, the system has been operating virtually trouble-free, Bates said.

In its fleet of 71 cars, each car is driven by a 70-horsepower electric motor. A car can seat eight and can carry up to 20 passengers. Air-bag suspension systems cushion the ride. Sensors within the air bags keep the doors open, sound a horn, and shut down the motor in the event of overloading.

The PRT’s rubber-tired, air-conditioned, 9,000-pound cars can transport up to 4,800 passengers an hour along the guideways that stretch from WVU’s medical school, past coal-laden barges and towboats on the Monongahela River, to the university’s downtown campus.

Pipes carrying a heated, antifreeze mixture keep the guideways clear of snow and ice during the winter.

Passengers usually wait less than five minutes for one of the white, gold and blue vehicles, Bates said. When demand is low, the system’s computers stop the cars at each of the PRT’s five stations.

A technician monitors 27 closed-circuit television screens showing the platform and other areas around each stop looking for suspicious individuals and people who try to ride without paying.

The cars are equipped with a two-way radio telephone and fire extinguisher. Bates says no assaults or major security problems have occurred on the system since its opening.

“We don’t even have a graffiti problem,” Bates said. “We’ve probably spent less than $10,000 to clean graffiti from the cars during the past 20 years.”

A one-way fare anywhere along the system costs 50 cents. Cards, good for unlimited travel during a semester, cost $45. The system operates from 6:30 a.m. to 10:15 p.m. on weekdays and from 9:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturdays. It does not run on Sundays.

“It’s nice because I don’t have a car and it’s a pretty convenient way to get around,” said Pat Trischler, 19, a Wheeling sophomore. “My parents like it too because they don’t have to buy me a car.”

Gayle Cruz, 18, a freshman from Toms River, N.J., and Michelle Turner, 17, of Suitland, Md., like the ride but not the hours.

“They know it’s the only transportation we have between downtown and the dorms,” Cruz said. “They should open it up 24 hours.”