United States Department of Transportation
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Abstract:This report describes an assessment of the Morgantown People Mover (MPM) system, which is an automated guideway transit system extending over 5,300 meters (3.3 miles) of double lane guideway, connecting West Virginia University's downtown campus with three complexes on its new Evansdale Campus and with the Morgantown central business district. It provides demand responsive, non-stop service between any two of the five stations in small, 21-passenger automated vehicles. The objectives of the Phase II Impact Assessment is to measure and assess: 1) the contributions that the Phase II MPM has made to travel and mobility in the Morgantown ares; 2) the impact that the Phase II MPM has had on business and life in the community; and 3) the impact of the MPM construction activities on business and life in the community. The vehicles of the MPM are managed by a central computer system that maintains a vehicle inventory at each station and releases vehicles for use on demand. The study finds that the MPM technology is a technical success. The vehicles perform as designed with a high degree of reliability. They satisfy service demands with few delays. Most technical problems that do occur are handled promptly and with only minor delays to passengers. The MPM carried almost three million passengers during the first full year of operation, attracting nearly fifty percent of those travelers who could conveniently use the service. The report points out that the MPM is more reliable than the bus system it replaced, but on the other hand, waiting times for buses were shorter and the wait more comfortable, and the bus operating costs were only one-third of the MPM operating costs. Students are by far the heaviest users of the system. Both users and non-users have a high opinion of the system. Users, however, uniformly object to the waiting times, which are perceived to be unacceptably long. Because of the inefficiency of dispatching vehicles to meet each individual trip request, a vehicle is delayed in filling a demand for five minutes or until fifteen passengers have requested service between the same origin and destination stations. Although esteemed by all resident groups in Morgantown, the MPM's commercial success must be judged marginal. Its service is slightly better than the buses that it replaced and its impacts on the local economy have been marginal. The authors point out that the marginal benefits fall for short of justifying the MPM's high capital and operating costs.
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