In this form, Boeing Vertol was awarded a construction contract in 1970 to build a demonstration system in Morgantown, West Virginia.
The vehicle were quite lightweight because they could only travel at low speeds when manually guided and didn't need full crash safety or large battery packs.
Alden envisioned guideways being built in place of the existing interstate roads, but the automatic guidance allowed for much shorter headways and thereby increased route capacity, reducing the need for multiple lanes.
The initial design evolved into small four-person cars that were tested on a guideway set up in a parking lot in Bedford, Massachusetts.
The staRRcar testbeds, models 19 and 20, were built on top of a rectangular steel chassis with very small rubber wheels that resulted in a ride close to the ground.
The wedge-shaped lightweight body shell was placed on top, and the rear of the vehicle was a single piece of glass providing an unobstructed view.
[8] Professor Samy Elias of the Industrial Engineering Department at West Virginia University in Morgantown had been pressing for the development of a PRT system for their campus since the late 1960s.
The staRRcar won the selection contest and the newly formed Department of Transportation (DOT) chose the Morgantown proposal as a testbed system.
The Morgantown PRT opened for service the next year and has operated continuously since then except for a short period in 1978 for a major expansion.
Unlike older systems, DAVe does not require a separate guideway for low-speed portions of the network and can self-guide amongst pedestrians.