Transportation & Parking

2013 PRT Summer Shuttle Service Schedule

PRT SUMMER 2013 SHUTDOWN EXTENDED THROUGH JUNE 15th.

The Personal Rapid Transit, known as the PRT, is currently shutdown for a variety of electrical projects and non critical structural repairs to the guideway and infrastructure. The purpose of the repairs is to conduct long-term preventive maintenance of the system in an effort to improve the functionality and reliability of the service. Since those efforts have begun several additional non critical structural/concrete repairs have been discovered that will require additional time to remediate. Addressing these matters immediately is important to our goal of providing reliable passenger service as we approach the Fall Semester. As a result of these additional repairs the PRT shutdown will be extended and the system will resume the normal summer operational schedule on Monday June 17th

During this shutdown period, the University will offer free bus shuttle service through June 14th that connects all campuses and provides pick-up and drop-off at current PRT stops. The shuttle service will operate Monday through Friday from 6:30 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. Stops for the PRT Shuttle will be Mountaineer Station on Van Voorhis; Tower Station, Engineering Loop, Mountainlair (inbound towards downtown), Walnut at Chestnut, and Beechurst Station Loop (outbound towards Evansdale. A schedule for the shuttle route can be found at http://transportation.wvu.edu/prt.

In addition to the PRT bus shuttle during the period, WVU students and employees are reminded that there is free access to the Mountain Line bus service with a valid WVU ID. For more information on Mountain Line routes and services, please go to their website at www.busride.org.

For more information regarding the PRT shutdown or the available shuttle services, please contact the Department of Transportation and Parking at (304) 293-5502.

Personal Rapid Transit (PRT)

The Personal Rapid Transit (PRT) system is a unique and easy-to-use transportation solution for WVU students, faculty, staff, and the Morgantown community. There are five stations: Walnut Street Downtown; Beechurst Avenue for the Downtown campus; Engineering Sciences; the Evansdale Residential Complex; and Health Sciences. Powered by electric motors, the computer-driven cars arrive at your station within five minutes after you swipe your Mountaineer Card or employee ID.

Disruption of Service

If the PRT is temporarily out of service for longer than 15 minutes, a yellow flashing light will activate at the affected PRT stations. An additional indicator light is located at street level across from the Mountainlair on the downtown campus. Direct bus service will be provided for the portion of the system that is out of service.

Notification that service has been interrupted for a brief time is sent out to users via: WVUDOT facebook and twitter accounts. Any long-term usage announcements will be posted here as well as mix accounts, e-news and WVU Information Stations around campus.

Process

We have a team of people who work within the PRT command center who constantly monitor the PRT platform as well as the movement of the cars. They are able to know instantly when a car goes out of service. For safety reasons we ask that you do not exit the cars and go out on the guideway. This will only prolong the delay for the system to come back online. We ask that you remain calm and wait for instructions if you have to exit the car. If it is going to be out of service for any length of time, then this information is quickly disseminated through various forums of media.

ADA Compliance

The PRT was constructed long before the Americans with Disabilities Act. As such, many of the ADA compliance issues need to be retrofitted into the system where we can. We do have a flashing amber light that goes off at each affected station when the PRT is down. Additionally, we post on the variable message boards which stations are not accessible when the system goes down. In the future as the PRT modernizes, other improvements that are compliant with the ADA standards will be implemented.