The town has a rumpled, lived-in look, however. It is not too pretty, or too overrun with boutiques. Downtown Morgantown will survive no matter what happens out on the edge of town because it basically is a bustling student ghetto. Young people will keep the place alive. There are not enough places to park, however, so relatively few nonstudents venture down into the business district.
Insufficient parking is another thing Fredericksburg has in common with Morgantown.
No solutions are on the horizon in either community. Something Morgantown does have, however, is a nifty, efficient monorail that whizzes students, tourists and others around the town and campus. Although Morgantown is a city where leaders once worried that trains would scare hogs to death, people were quick to embrace the monorail. It's been operating since the 1970s. The Free Lance-Star Publishing Company.