Riding America's FAILED FUTURISTIC Transit 

No matter how small it is, for a university to have a metro system of its own is pretty impressive

As I'm sure you know, the POD is designed for WVU students and staff, and they use their Mountaineer Card to access the system. Since the system is about 90% used by students and staff, they don't bother having alternative payments for the 10% that are not because it would be cost prohibitive to the university to process a credit card fee for 50 cents, hence the quarters.

As a WVU alumni I always knew the PRT was a big deal when it was built and is a pretty unique system but I never knew that the whole concept of skipping a station was such a massive deal. Something I rode day after day for four years and I never knew how cool it really was. Probably because it always seemed to break when needed.

Seattle Center's monorail is iconic, though the Disneyland Monorail is the true granddaddy of North American monorail systems! The Disneyland Monorail opened on June 14, 1959, as the first permanent monorail system in the Western Hemisphere, and currently operates with a Mark VII fleet that debuted in 2008. When it opened, it connected Tomorrowland to the Disneyland Hotel, but Disneyland Hotel station became Downtown Disney station in the early 2000s. The monorail actually opened with a little accident where then Vice President Nixon was abducted onto the monorail by Walt without Nixon's security! The monorail was designed by famed Imagineer Bob Gurr (who designed most of Disneyland's ride vehicles like Haunted Mansion and Autopia). Gurr and Disney were assisted by Alweg, the German company that pioneered straddle beam monorails, the same ones who helped build the Seattle Center Monorail shown here! Up until opening day, the monorail would not cooperate with them. Gurr and a German engineer worked tirelessly each night on sketching replacement parts and rushing them to the studio in Burbank so they could be built. The day before on June 13, the monorail ran as intended for the first time, but they were still worried for opening day. Gurr was in the pilot's seat, with Nixon's family and Walt on board, but the secret service agents didn't get on board as Gurr left the moment Walt told him to. He was worried, with Walt staring at him, that the monorail would break down and he accidentally kidnapped Nixon. Thankfully, it ran as intended.

The Seattle Monorail and Space Needle sure seemed futuristic to me as an 8 year old at the 1962 Worlds Fair!

I've been waiting for this video! I was a National Park Ranger at the St. Louis Arch in 2015 and have been on those pods literally thousands of times! It never gets old! Also slight correction, although the Arch and museum are a national park, the pod elevator system is actually not operated by the parks. It is technically a part of the St. Louis Metro system so the operators are city, not federal employees.

San Francisco and Seattle have something else in common. Because they are both built on hills they both use trolly busses (also called trackless trollies) because the electric motors have the necessary torque to get the bus moving on steep inclines. San Francisco and Seattle joined forces to order trolly busses so that they could get a better price.

During WVU Homecoming week, they have the PRT Cram. The record is 96 people in a PRT car. Thanks for featuring my alma mater!

Surprisingly the use of the Seattle monorail has become much more convenient way of travel for the time being. It connects people from the light rail in downtown to the hockey and basketball games that are located at the Seattle Center.

as a uw student originally from Southern California, the monorail in seattle does have a very theme-park esque experience. much like disneyland

Not sure if you can blame rubber tires for a rough ride. The Montréal Métro runs on rubber tires, and it is one of the quietest and smoothest subways I've ever ridden. Certainly not "rough". I always thought the St Louis Arch was solid, so the observation deck was a shocker. Thank you for the education.

That's not the only cool transit in St. Louis, there's also the MetroLink light-rail system which serves the airport as well as Illinois, and the really cool part about it is the Eads Bridge section. Laclede's Landing station is within the bridge, and when you get off there, you see a view of the Arch...from the bricked arches of the bridge! The bridge is named for its designer and builder, James Buchanan Eads. Work began in 1867, and it was completed in 1874. The Eads Bridge was the first bridge across the Mississippi south of the Missouri River. Earlier bridges were located north of the Missouri, where the Mississippi is smaller. None of the earlier bridges survive, which means that the Eads Bridge is also the OLDEST bridge on the river! Its foundations, more than 100 feet below water level, were the deepest underwater constructions at the time. They were installed using pneumatic caissons, a pioneering application of caisson technology in the United States and, at the time, by far the largest caissons ever built. Its 520-foot center arch was the longest rigid span ever built at the time. The arches were built suspended from temporary wooden towers, sometimes cited as the first use of the "cantilever principle" for a large bridge. These engineering principles were used for later bridges, including the famous Brooklyn Bridge, which began construction in 1870.

That was cool Mike! I had no idea there was an elevator inside the Arch. I have been on the Seattle monorail a few times but it isn’t long enough. Thank you!😊

There’s a much newer version of the POD system at Heathrow Airport in London. It operates from T5 to the drive & fly parking area, as well as to the London Heathrow Thistle Hotel. It’s free to use, each pod can hold 4 people, and you just select your destination on a touch screen before boarding. Like Morganstown, each pod goes direct to the destination without stopping. Oh, and since it goes past the end of runway 9L, if the wind direction is right you get landing aircraft flying over you as you pass.

Not just the US, the Gateway Arch is the tallest monument in the whole Western Hemisphere! Up until 2018, it was called the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial by the NPS but was redesignated as a National Park in 2018. Making it the smallest park with the designation National Park (but Thaddeus Kosciuszko National Memorial in Philly is the smallest unit in the NPS system in general). Honestly a National Monument, which is what the Statue of Liberty is, is a better designation for it because the status of a full-on National Park is meant to be land set aside to protecting the country's different kinds of gorgeous landscapes like Acadia in Maine or Arches in Utah, and an urban park with a giant arch on the St. Louis waterfront...isn't that. More info on the Arch's elevator tram: Richard Bowser developed with his father elevator equipment that could travel horizontally, diagonally, and normal vertical. He visited an elevator company in Moline, Illinois to see a friend when by chance, the company got a call from architect Eero Saarinen that they were looking for a group to take on the big project. Bowser made a return call. When Eero called back, he gave Bowser two weeks to design and present in front of the team. He knew a normal system of course wouldn't do, so for the Arch he combined elevator and Ferris wheel elements to create a unique system where a tram of eight elevator pods that by rotating, allows the visitors inside to remain leveled the entire way.

🤯I never ever expected the St. Louis Arch actually was accessible, let alone it contains those pods, what a marvel of engineering!

Anyone interested in a deeper dive into the Morgantown PRT might want to google up Tom Scott's video where he focussed entirely on the PRT.

This feels like something that an urbex channel would find abandoned. Like it has this old- time futuristic and cool feeling, but something about it feels unsettling. Its like looking at a liminal space.

The PRT was built while my dad was at WVU, opening when he was a junior. He said that it really did make it much faster getting from one end of campus to the next. He said that before the PRT was built, he had to plan/schedule his classes around travel time, especially if he had classes on two different sides of campus/town in the same day.

3:40 - "Bypassing a station...that's what makes the PRT cool...these moments don't happen on any other system." Express trains on the NYC Subway: Umm...idk abt that

I’ve done the St Louis Arch twice, but not since they remodeled the museum and park. It would be so interesting to go back. I would also love to go back and see the Space Needle again.

Hey Mike. I have been to (and in) the St. Louis arch twice and your comparison to a 5-seater space capsule is pretty appropriate. Fun, fascinating, and (as I recall) a tad on the noisy side. But, wow, the view from up top. And those PRT pods are CUTE. Thanks for all the good stuff you and your team bring us. Take care.

You got so lucky the PRT wasn't broken when you visited. My wife went to WVU and she said how this used to happen frequently.

Great series! If you want to ride the coolest monorail, go to Walt Disney World. Actually, with all the different modes of transportation (buses, Minnie Vans, trains, monorails, boats, The Skyliner, The People Mover) you could make one heck of a series all by itself.

That PRT is pretty cool! I had no idea such a thing exists

Moral of the Story: Mexican Eateries save lives.

Both the Gateway Arch and the Space Needle are so cool, in person. Nice feature!

I went to WVU- thanks for sharing! The "personal" aspect of the PRT is often only at peak times (or was back then). At slow times, it stops at every station and functions like a metro system. It also broke down a lot. It does seem like it's been sinc upgraded, however- the turnstyles used to have rickety buttons instead of screens. It's neat to have in such a small city though!

I got offered a job to be one of the Seattle monorail drivers, but life took me to the midwest instead, I still think back about how fun it would have been to cruise on the Tomorrowland rail all day. great video as always

Hey Downie, glad you had a good trip aboard the PRT! I work there and we've been making upgrades to keep improving passenger experiences! This summer we are doing major resurfacing along some of the guideway.

Seattle Center Monorail was built for tourist attraction part of the Worlds Fare they held sixty years ago. Now, it transformed into a public transit, implementing the ORCA system and renovating the Westlake Center station where they added the full-screen door shown briefly in the video. It even shows on the google maps and features the departing and arriving times.

Japan has 3 monorail systems where they are suspended i have been in all 3 of them. I highly recommend you to visit Japan if you want to have even more train experiences.

I’ve got to say I saw your preview of the pods I got curious and looked them up on my own and I feel like you didn’t do them justice. They’re pretty unique for the situation with the college and the traffic there. I saw a retro video that explains the benefits of the system and I feel like when you know the details of why they went with that system it it’s a perfect solution, it could it be a smoother ride but I think a lot of places could do really well with a system similar to that with just some modern improvements.

I have ridden all three of these. Usually I like having you expose me to what I don't know, but I really enjoyed seeing your take what I was already familiar with.

I’m so glad Pittsburgh’s inclines got a nod. Nice work!

I don't know if anyone else suggested the Gateway Arch for unique transist, but I know I did, and I'm delighted to see you visited! Glad you enjoyed your first (though very short) visit to St. Louis. Hope you come back again sometime!

This was great! If you’re ever in Houston, visit the the peoplemover at the airport. One of the only Disney built systems outside of the parks - they wanted to sell them nationwide, but sadly it didn’t take off. So definitely could be an addendum to this video!

As a WVU alum as much as you said it's still pretty cool I can't help feeling attacked, lol. It's not MEANT to be a city-wide transit system and for what it is to get around campus it does just fine. You complained about the car size but pointed out it's direct to your destination, so the likelihood you even need a larger car is slim to none. You're not often sharing with a ton of people. This little guy was a godsend during school.

I remember riding that old rail at wvu. It broke down constantly, the cars were cramped and sweaty, and it was overall bumpy and unpleasent.

Now I'm really mad at myself. I've been to Morgantown a few times now....never knew about the POD system. Maybe my next trip by there. Sadly I still haven't been to the St. Louis Arch...even though I was just a 1/2 mile away in 2002 at a Cardinals game in the old Busch Stadium. Also, I've been to Seattle...but not the monorail or the Space Needle. I gotta work on my tourist game!! Haha. Another great video!! Until next week...

East Broad Top is working on bringing back a whole train line to RobertsDale Pa and if you ever get a chance to see this beautiful narrow gauge steam locomotive and there are not that many words to describe the beautiful line in Pennsylvania and you can still see the line where it went to Mount Union along time ago. For any more ideas that you can`t think of you can still visit more of Pennsylvania like East Broad Top Strasburg Railroad and Steamtown

Thank you for doing this Video! These are places I dont ever see myself physically ever going to, so your sharing your experience is quite the treat!!

For my last year of six years in South Korea, I lived in Uijeongbu. They have a monorail there and I loved riding it. It was one of my favorite things in that city.

I went to college at WVU. I rode that dang PRT multiple times a day as a freshman lol. I've seen them packed with like 25 people for game days and other events haha. It 100% is quicker for students traveling between the 2 campuses then other modes of transport. WVU has 2 campuses

I have been on the PRT at WVU before since my cousin is a freshman there and about to be a sophomore. I love how quick it goes every time even the jolt in the beginning. I have taken it to those big brick buildings which are dorms all dorms and also other places as well. I personally think it is so fun and enjoyable to ride. Great video as always!

If you're ever in Switzerland, you can enjoy the outdoor, mountain-climbing version of the swivveling lift: The Stoosbahn

I live in Morgantown, I have never ridden the PRT. It would have been great to meet you. I watch all your uploads.

when the prt is running full capacity during the middle of the school day, it stops at every station and doesn't bypass them. it also CONSTANTLY broke down when I was going there and I always just drove to the other campus instead of relying on it to work.

I don't think we should ever build more pods or monorails, when elevated light rail is so much more efficient, but I'm really glad these weird systems continue to exist. Also, even if I would have put it on two rails instead of one, that retrofuturistic style of the monorail is just so bloody gorgeous!

Many years ago I read a book called The Rift by Walter Williams, about a huge earthquake on the fault that runs along the Mississippi River (St. Louis Fault? Cairo Fault?)... excellent book, I suggest it to everyone. One portion of the book focuses on a National Park Ranger at the Arch who had to deal with evacuating people from the Arch (down *all* those stairs!) and your video helped bring into focus the words I read in that portion. Thanks!

Adding, The PRT is principally to transport students of WVU around campus & not clog the streets with traffic. Key word "Students" hence still using quarters!

Please come over to Germany. Experiece the airport rail at Frankfurt Airport, the Wuppertal Schwebebahn, the ICE high speed train, the steam trains of different historic enthausiasts or even the narrow gauge rails to some amazing places.

So happy to see my home state of WV is home to something so quirky yet kinda cool. I've only traveled through Morgantown a few times on my way to/from Pittsburgh, but seeing the PRT makes me want to go ride it. I have to say, Mike, these quirky little transportation systems made one of the most interesting series I've seen in a long, long time. Thank you so much for sharing. I hope that maybe there are some other odd methods of transport out there you can show us one day.

You really make me look at transportation of every kind so much differently. Thank you for that, you make my travels so much better.

While you were in West Virginia I hope you rode the Cass Railroad. Nice video.

11:04- Yes, the Seattle Space Needle was built in 1962 to 'look futuristic'-which was also the same year that that Hanna-Barbera classic cartoon 'The Jetsons' premiered! Do you think the futuristic family's Skypad Apartment building looking so MUCH like the Space Needle was entirely coincidental?LOL Seriously, though. Thanks for showing us these three cities' unique venues/transports!

After years of playing Fallout 76, this is the first I realized the weird train system in Morgantown was not just an in-game creation.

Although the Seattle monorail was built in 1962 for the future of travel, technically that concept is being used in many cities, including Vancouver BC, but is called light rail instead of a monorail.

The PRT also have heated track so heavy snowfall in the winters of WV isn’t a excuse to skip classes.

I live in West Virginia but i've never rode the Morgantown one i'll have to ddo it soemday

I went to WVU 40+ years ago. The PRT was pretty new and exciting. The prototype for the future. Now at Bush International Airport in Houston they have a very similar system. Fun seeing Morgantown. It was old then, looks the same.

So excited to see the PRT!! I grew up in Morgantown and I had no idea just how special the transit system was when I was a kid - they were so normalized for me that I thought they must be in other cities. It wasn’t until I saw Tom Scott’s video on them that I realized they were a rarity. When I was little, my preschool or kindergarten took us out on the PRT as a field trip. I actually haven’t used them since then - they seem to be really just a student thing - but I admire them a whole lot now.

This was so awesome, never knew that the arch had a way to go inside of it and see the city, I thought it was a solid concrete metal object!

You should check out the upside-down railway in Wuppertal Germany, it is amazing.

Thank you Mike and the DownieLive channel for showing and giving us some amazing insights on some equally amazing and overlooked methods for moving people. LOVE IT and all your uploads!

Thanks for the tour of the three different transit types. I visited two of the three spots, St. Louis and the arch. It was an interesting ride in that special elevator and as mentioned you better not be claustafobic since the pods are so small. However having the window in the car and being able to see out at the stairs and inner skin of the arch helps. The view from the top is defiantly worth the trip. The other city I visited was Seattle and I did ride the monorail. As noted it is relatively short and only serves the two points but again is most likely the best solution they used for the Worlds fair where they wanted to feature futuristic transport and move people without surface traffic interfering. I look forward to your future adventures.

Mike this was amazing especially the ride up the St.Louis arch. Thanks for sharing another great video 😊

bypassing a station... happens on every decent train line where in-line stations have bypass tracks and there are trains that do not stop at certain stations.... lol

The most impressive part of this episode was that Mike made it in and out of St Louis without being robbed

Broo I started watching your videos this winter and I'm highkey geeking because I go to WVU and ride that PRT almost daily.

Thanks for featuring my hometown Gateway Arch! It was great to hear about it from someone who had never been there before. We native St. Louisans sometimes forget what a treasure we have right in our own...front yard.

We have express trains on the SEPTA Subway here in Philly where stations are bypassed, but there is a dedicated rail much like your bypass drive that goes past the station in the WV example you showed. Really great video!

Thanks for the info on the St. Louis Arch! I had no idea that it was an elevator or that it had a museum. Stunned!

There is an angled elevator in the town hall of Hannover (Germany) too, it's really cool to go up there, and there is glass on the floor which makes it a bit scary to look down

I got my engineering degree from WVU, so I road that system A LOT. Calling it public transit is a bit of a stretch. It is primarily designed for university students and staff as a way to connect the various campuses of the university. So it is a university transit system that is open for the public if they want to. The public take other options. Most non-university people only ride it once for the experience.

I will never forget the fear I felt at the top of that arch. Something about the way you lay on the arch to look out the windows just freaked me out! I don’t do heights very well

As a St. Louisan, probably the first time I've ever heard appreciation expressed for those elevators. Love it!

I've wanted to see a video like this for so long, thank you!

Love your channel and focus on transportation! Can I give a suggestion…all the Disney World transportation options! Monorail, steam train, gondolas, canal boats, paddle boat, etc!

Your videos are absolutely amazing. Gorgeous cinematography, great narration, great editing.

This was great I've always wanted to know about the architecture of the arch thank you much love from New Zealand

Yay! Been waiting for a new video from you. Always a highlight of my YT viewing.

I rode the Seattle monorail last fall, it was pretty cool sitting at the front watching the driver pilot the train!

Local Seattleite here: Saddest part about our monorail is we rejected the opportunity to expand it three times! Once right after construction, another in the late 70s, and one as recently as 2005. We even started staking out ground for stations in the 2005 expansion before a follow-up referendum voted down the budget and cancelled the project.

Great episode!!! Loved all your stops!

Never knew that about the arch, not just the elevators but that you could even go inside, now you've got me fascinated

As a student who goes to WVU the PRT isn’t as wonderful as it was made out to be. While yes it is a convenient way to get from the uptown campus to the downtown campus, it breaks down a lot. On a typical day it can shut down from 1-6 or sometimes be closed altogether. If your lucky it’ll only be for 10 minutes , but most of the time your stuck for 30 minutes at a time or more.Let’s not forget how long you have to wait just to get on the Pod. If it isn’t busy you won’t wait to long to get a pod, but let’s face it is a large university, it is hardly ever not busy. But overall nice vid my guy, very entertaining.

I Love the 3 Mini Episodes in an Episode. Totally worth the wait!

I loved how much effort you put in this video, and it made me realize that I really enjoyed my vacation in Seattle.

Hi Mike, have I got a few unique systems for you to try (by air, land and sea). 1 - Skyrail Midorizaka Line (It's like if a suspended monorail and an aerial lift had a baby) 2 - Asa Coast Railway (It's a bus and a train at the same time) 3 - Tateyama Kurobe Alpine Route (It's a way to cross the mountains via bus, foot, funicular and ropeway that somehow exists and is popular) 4 - Oshima (Fly from Tokyo... to another part of Tokyo, and back.) 5 - Tanegashima (Ferries in Japan are cool. Time it right and you can see a rocket launch too!) 6 - Kanmon Pedestrian Tunnel (You can walk under a busy shipping lane and between two of Japan's major islands. It's 700 meters long.)

@9:29 The Monorail here in seattle is indeed the fastest way from Seattle-Seattle Center, but it could be so much better. In tokyo the monorailk gets you from the airport (Haneda) to downtown in just 11 Minutes Seattles light rail takes over 35 Minutes. This city needs and would be so much better with a good transit system. And while the Light rail here in seattle is great for most tourists, to the people that live here including myself, its often faster to drive and has become of the most memed, and joked laughed about things in the city, (and in case that were not bad enough one of the lines supposed to open last week is noe delayed to 2025 because we misplaced litterally every single railway tie on the floating bridge (thats a problem because it connects both sides of "line 2" together the island section and the mainland subway section)

Fascinating series, Mike! Keep them coming.

Well.....I have SEVERELY UNDERESTIMATED the size of *the arch" my entire life. I thought it was like 80x smaller for some reason. I didn't even know you could go into it. Gotta love that Texas education. 😂

I ride the PRT to downtown campus every day; seems to have slowed down a lot and its a bit more jerky than it used to be, but it’s still a quicker ride than driving

I love all the mechanical noises, makes my day

I can't wait where and what you'll be visiting next! Great Job!

Jacksonville, FL has a cute little monorail system downtown with two-car trains. When I first moved there I'd take it to downtown events as it stopped right in the middle of everything going on, and it crosses the river too.

UNC Chapel Hill Hospital had PRT to connect the parking garages to the main campus. It was handy, sadly it closed in 2011.

Fun Fact: all of Denver was supposed to have a PRT system built in the 70's. They taxed themselves to build it, which is why they had $$ to construct the RTD in the 90's.

Great video! I love public transit and it's cool learning about obscure transit systems in the US. One thing I was left curious about was why these systems didn't reach wider adoption. Thanks for making the video!