I decided to build the Morgantown PRT Status app after I completed my finals of the Winter 2017 semester at WVU. At the time, the only way to receive instant notification of the PRT unexpectedly having issues was to either be already standing on the platform, or to enable notifications from the WVU DOT account on Twitter. And for my first couple years on the campus, the latter is exactly what I did. But it left a lot to be desired; at the time, this WVUDOT account shared all transportation-related information on campus: PRT open/close notices, down/running updates, but also parking lot closures, ParkMobile discount codes, road maintenance, and more. It was a lot of noise. I figured there had to be something better. And so I started digging.
I knew of other apps already on the App Store that provided access to the current PRT status, but they didn’t provide realtime notifications; you still had to actively go seeking the information. But still, I was curious: where were they getting that status? My search led me to discover the WVU PRT Status API, and its admittedly sparse documentation. There was just enough information provided to know how to grab the current status, but nothing explaining what some of the provided information meant. What did “status 7” mean? What about the other 6? Or maybe even more than that? Answers weren’t readily available, but that wasn’t going to stop me. I set up a small app, just for me, to be able to readily fetch the status over the coming months as Spring 2018 began. And before long, I was able to map out what each status meant, so I could provide as much meaningful glanceable information as possible, rather than just parroting the same message blurb: it enabled me to put headlines in the app, like “DOWN EVERYWHERE” or “PARTIALLY DOWN”, and stylize the app accordingly.
With that, I had the information I needed, and could get it in realtime. I put together my app, got it wired up with a notification infrastructure, and started testing it with my friends, making sure it worked reliably, consistently, effectively. A few weeks later, I was ready to submit it to Apple for App Store Review.
I didn’t release the app with much fanfare; I wasn’t hanging flyers around campus, wasn’t really advertising the app anywhere, apart from a few posts to my meager count of followers on my personal Twitter account. I was curious to try just having faith: faith that this was an app that fixed a genuine annoyance of my own life on campus, something that I’d be content with existing just for me even if no one else really showed interest in it; faith that if I needed this, then there would be a non-zero number of others who would also have use for it. I had faith that if someone wanted an app like this, they’d find it, whether through word of mouth or organic App Store searches.
It didn’t take too long for my faith to pan out. In that first semester it was available, Fall 2018, I had already received nearly 1,000 first-time downloads. June 2019 came around, and with it, the first month of New Student Orientations since the app was available, giving me a couple hundred more downloads before the incoming freshmen were even yet on campus. And despite that, I quickly gained a couple more thousand throughout Fall 2019 as the app continued to spread through word of mouth. At this point, as more people on campus became aware of the app and shared it with others, I was curious to see how much each incoming wave of downloads every August would keep increasing!
Of course, that didn’t continue the following year; a handful of people downloaded the app anyway, but with the University making the decision to leave the PRT closed in Fall 2020, there wasn’t much need to have an app to track its status with. I was curious to see if the growth would rebound when it reopened in 2021, and was ecstatic to see that despite the year off, as folks returned to the PRT, so did their desire to know how it was doing: the Fall 2021 user acquisition returned to Fall 2019 numbers without missing a beat.
In fact, over the next couple of Falls, even though I myself had graduated and was no longer on campus every day, let alone needing to catch a ride on the PRT, I was happy to continue maintaining the app and services, seeing a rise each fall in the number of downloads, seeing its all-time monthly peak of 2,500 fresh downloads in August 2023. Throughout the years, I checked in every fall to make sure the app was still working as expected, and throughout the academic year I tried to keep up with updating the Schedule Changes in the app to reflect holidays for closures or sport events that would have extended service so that folks could plan accordingly. I launched social feeds on Twitter for those who also didn’t want the noise from the WVUDOT Twitter (although, they later split the PRT into its own, current account), along with sibling feeds on Mastodon and Bluesky to support anyone not necessarily on Twitter, as well as fixes and changes to how I provided the Twitter feed when Twitter became X.
End of Service
This brings us to, for now, the final chapter. Today, after starting to hear the distant sounds of the Pride of West Virginia’s band camp this week, the drum line getting me excited to return to Milan Puskar Stadium to cheer on the Mountaineers, I logged in to see if the PRT had yet re-opened ahead of students moving in. I’ve been working on a huge update to the app, a fully-fledged Version 2.0, and just wanted to test it against some real open/close notifications before sending it out into the wild; was it time?
I was heartbroken as I pieced together what I was seeing. The PRT had resumed operations… but my app hadn’t seemed to get the memo. Neither had any of the three social feeds.
It seems that WVU has replaced their own internal system for providing the status of the PRT on their X account; and this new system does not utilize their former API, which is now only serving old data from the end of the Spring 2026 semester.
It is with a heavy heart that I announce there is currently no way for me to restore functionality to my app, its notifications, or any of the various social feeds, if WVU only publishes the status onto their X account. Currently, even their own website no longer displays the status; they only link you to their feed on X.
I hope some day this will change, and whether it is the restoration of the previous API or an implementation of something new, I will be back at the drop of a hat to get my things wired back up and operational. With over 15 thousand first-time downloads over the last eight years, and thousands of active devices each semester, it warms my heart to know that I was able to provide this service for so many of you for so many years without asking anything in return. If I have the opportunity to bring it back, I will do it in a heartbeat.
It always made me smile when I’d meet someone new and find out that they used the app, and get to say “Yeah, I made that!” It was humbling to find out several years ago that there was even at least one RA in the dorms who shared my app with their residents to help them get around effectively for their first semester. If that was you, you have my thanks, and I’m glad I was able to help, and I hope you helped me help many more.
In the meantime, if you need to find out whether the PRT is running, visit the official X feed here.
Thanks for the memories, and Let’s Go Mountaineers.
– Bryan
developer (at) morgantownprtstat.us