But it is also expensive.

University and local government officials realize they are not likely to get the federal government to finance the expansion, as it did the original project. They are talking about coming up with local and state financing.

Image Tracy Lee, left, and April Deberry, employees at University Hospital in Morgantown, W.Va., riding the Personal Rapid Transit system. Credit... Bob Fritz for The New York Times

Not everyone thinks so highly of the P.R.T.

“The infrastructure requirements are such that it is not realistic to think it could be adopted in highly developed U.S. cities,” Jonathan E. D. Richmond, a transportation expert, said in an e-mail message from Singapore, where he is advising the government.

From July 2005 to June 2006, some 2.25 million rides were taken on the P.R.T.

After a decline in ridership during the 1990s, the number of rides has increased roughly 10 percent a year over the last five years, but nonstudent and nonemployee ridership has stayed relatively constant, about 80,000 rides a year.

Students ride as often as they like after paying a fee of $63 per semester, which pays for 60 percent of the system’s $3 million annual operating costs. The system essentially breaks even after the university picks up the cost for university employees and everyone else pays 50 cents per ride.

The P.R.T. was originally seen as a way to solve Morgantown’s student traffic woes.

Though Morgantown was and is a relatively small urban area — 63,000 people in 1970 versus 84,000 now — getting students to class on time became a challenge in the 1960s when the university outgrew its downtown campus and opened a campus in Evansdale two miles away.

The idea might have died a swift political death, but when it was proposed in 1969 it served the political needs of President Richard M. Nixon, who wanted a demonstration project to usher in an era of urban mass transit.

The system was projected to cost $13.7 million. By 1974, after $57 million had been spent, engineers were still working out kinks in the system. One researcher proposed that students be given golf carts so that at least they could ride them on the P.R.T. guide way.