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The problem is that it's very expensive to create these elevated tracks, we have them in Vancouver for our train based rapid transit network, but to make an extensive system like this would cost a huge amount of money and just wouldn't be feasible in a developed city without going underground sometimes, not if you want to go everywhere in town. My thinking is this would only work in a city built from scratch around this transit system, otherwise you can't get the land use and rights of way. I'm not sure it makes financial sense next to the alternatives for most people, it would seriously cost an arm and a leg to make an all elevated system like that.
Cars are my favorite form of personal rapid transit!
Seriously though, it seems to be the worst of both worlds. Just like public transit, you're at the mercy of the government and transit workers, so you get the lack of freedom associated with not having your own transportation, and just like cars, it's extremely inefficient.
this is not mass transit. the costs of building it are extremely high, while the passenger carrying capacity is extremely low. mass transit requires high carrying capacity to justify its costs, which PRT can never do. it might have very limited applications as a system of moving people around in an airport or in an amusement park similar to the Disneyland monorail. but will never be a serious form of mass transit.
Morgantown had a unique problem - tens of thousands of carless, broke students living throughout a spread-out small town that gets a good amount of snow in the winter. The PRT was certainly an interesting choice but it does make some sense for this unique situation.
PRT, at $20-35 million per mile, costs about half as much as light rail at $50-75 million per mile. (commuter rail has been built at $10 million in Chicago and $4 million in NM).But it doesn't carry as many people. One reason it was built in WV is the late Sen. Robert Byrd, who had the power to bring that money to Morgantown.
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