Monorail

[UptownSport]

Vision of posts, and a svelte beam installed just about anywhere, with little or no ground impact is hard for me to argue with-

* It would be next to impossible to collide with autos or pedestrians

* It could avoid existing structures by simply going up & over

* There would be zero weather impact on mobility

* Stops at skyway level would keep riders out of weather

Here is a 'hanging' monorail, evidently Russian. Remarkable how little visual impact the 'rail' has- hardly more than canternarys
Note this takes one lane of traffic, and they've use that lane to park


Notice only meters of space taken on forested area


Über interesting is that one line has run for over 100 years- a single fatality where maintenance left a clamp on the rail-
and one injured elephant

Wuppertal Schwebebahn

I'm sure there's cons in that you'd need an escape ladder in cases of drive loss, or a ladder fire truck, but aircraft operate with out this ...

[aguaman]

the main reason seattle was dead last in getting lrt was because they had a decades-long battle between monorail supporters and lrt supporters. read up on that if you want to open the monorail can of worms. they still have their monorail - it's just over a mile with two stations just as it was when built in the early 1960s. and now they have a lrt system they are continually adding to, to go along with their modern streetcar in tacoma, modern streetcar at south lake union, and their historic streetcar. they are also adding to those systems currently. they had plans for a massive expansion of the monorail system not that long ago, and after canning the idea, they are now full speed ahead with lrt - and passing the twin cities by at warp speed.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seattle_Monorail_Project

[UptownSport]

looked like opposition was cost, planning, routing, method of finance.
Seems all these items would be present in their subsequent trolly, LRT or any BRT build
Only criticism of monorail, itself, was that guideway'd create a 'wall-like' effect

[talindsay]

Consider that monorail *has to* go up high - meaning that it's less flexible and harder to adapt to varying conditions. Also consider how massive - heavy, unsightly, and expensive - monorail switches are. Factor in the very high cost of station construction and the bigger weight issues, and you can begin to see that monorail brings a host of different issues from those presented by light rail. Sure, it has advantages too, but with very little built infrastructure, expensive one-off parts, and few qualified contractors to build and maintain such a system, and you can begin to see why the Seattle monorail turned into a museum piece instead of the transportation system of the future.

I highly recommend that anybody excited by monorail go ride the Seattle line forty years on - you can begin to understand that the technology, while promising, wasn't quite fully developed. Had it been widely embraced then it might now be a good option, but you don't want to be saddled with the ongoing hassles and costs of a system where every part is custom-made.

[pfreyre]

Here's a good piece on monorails from a planner's perspective:

http://www.humantransit.org/2009/08/bri ... rails.html

[UptownSport]

Also consider how massive - heavy, unsightly, and expensive - monorail switches are.

Come 2014 I'd like to ride from west bank to franklin ave station on new LRT line w/o transfer ...

I highly recommend that anybody excited by monorail go ride the Seattle line forty years on

Or Wuppertal 40 years from it's birth- anyone that's done so would be dead by now.


anything LRT can do, monorail can do- but likely cheaper and better

[FISHMANPET]

Also consider how massive - heavy, unsightly, and expensive - monorail switches are.

Come 2014 I'd like to ride from west bank to franklin ave station on new LRT line w/o transfer ...

I highly recommend that anybody excited by monorail go ride the Seattle line forty years on

Or Wuppertal 40 years from it's birth- anyone that's done so would be dead by now.


anything LRT can do, monorail can do- but likely cheaper and better

Did you read the piece from Jarret Walker? Switching is hard on a monorail, it's not hard with regular rail. Unless you've got some different information, but I'm going to trust Jarret Walker's word more than I'm going to trust forums poster UptownSport.

I'm not sure why you're bringing up Franlkin to West Bank, there's no technical problem with a straight ride between those two stations, it's an operational problem. There's no need for a train going from Downtown St Paul to MOA and MOA to Downtown Minneapolis. Maybe someday when we have a bigger rail network we can run some lines like that, but there's no reason to pay for that switch when it won't be used.

[UptownSport]

Not cool using a personal attack instead of discussing issue-

Fact is, there's myriad monorail switches you can view by googling - It's not Walker vs. Uptown.
I'll never tire of using Wuppertal as an example- they had switches before our grandfathers were born-
If you want more recent 'monorail' examples, Maglev has switches that are elegant in their simplicity; they allow vehicle to maintain radical speeds

If you look at our system, it doesn't have a switch from CC to Franklin because switches are difficult in general-
another switch near 35 would be massive, unsightly and expensive no matter standard gauge, monorail or BRT- All one has to do is google 'switches L' for an example- Only difference in a monorail is 'guideway' is smaller than aforementioned especially if overhead

I'd post links for above to be helpful, but I'm getting the idea that minds are already made up based on a single source

[Ottergoose]

One of my friends on Facebook stumbled across this gem to tonight - turns out we already had a monorail company in the Twin Cities...

Enos Electric Railway Company of St. Paul: The railroad was incorporated under Minnesota law in 1888, had capital stock of $2,000,000, and had its principal place of business in St. Paul. In 1888, the St. Paul Board of Aldermen considered the franchise of the railroad. A company formed by Arthur E. Clark, C. H. Macidie, and other Dakota County, Minnesota, businessmen sought a franchise from St. Paul in 1887 to build an overhead monorail railroad to Minneapolis based on an 1826 plan developed in Englan, using cars obtained from the Enos Electric Railway Company of Boston, Massachusetts, using four electric motors from the Thomson-Houston Company of Boston, Massachusetts, and using electricity supplied by the Eureka Improvement Company. A 1,260 foot demonstration line was built in South Park, Dakota County, Minnesota, in 1888. The franchise was granted in 1888 with the support of the St. Paul Chamber of Commerce and the St. Paul Pioneer Press and despite protests from property owners affected by the proposed project and the discovery of an attempted bribe of a St. Paul city council member by a member of the investor group. The investor group never formally accepted the franchise and the company appears to have disbanded by 1889. J. H. Lawrence was the general manager of the proposed railroad. The Enos Electric Railway was the first suspended monorail, with a remarkable likeness to the Wuppertal Schwebebahn designed by Eugen Langen in Germany, and was tested and demonstrated on the grounds of the Daft Electric Company in Greenville, New Jersey, in 1886.

http://www.angelfire.com/mn/thursdaynig ... rrs15.html

[Ottergoose]

In other amusing transit trivia, Bombardier owns the rights to the monorail technology that's in use at the MN Zoo in Apple Valley, so, a transit fan could conceivably experience three different modes of Bombardier rail transportation here, if they so desired.

[UptownSport]

They supplied engines for our old, and I mean old, Ski-Doo's, so you could say four ...

[Ottergoose]

Ski-Doo has a form of rail-based transit available in the Twin Cities?

[min-chi-cbus]

the main reason seattle was dead last in getting lrt was because they had a decades-long battle between monorail supporters and lrt supporters. read up on that if you want to open the monorail can of worms. they still have their monorail - it's just over a mile with two stations just as it was when built in the early 1960s. and now they have a lrt system they are continually adding to, to go along with their modern streetcar in tacoma, modern streetcar at south lake union, and their historic streetcar. they are also adding to those systems currently. they had plans for a massive expansion of the monorail system not that long ago, and after canning the idea, they are now full speed ahead with lrt - and passing the twin cities by at warp speed.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seattle_Monorail_Project

It doesn't take "warp speed" to pass the TCs at warp speed when it comes to rail transit......we're convervative to a fault sometimes!

All of this monorail talk is giving me flashbacks of a certain Simpson's episode.......

[Le Sueur]

Monoraaailll! Monoraaailll! Monoraaaaaiillll! Monorail!!! Mono......DOH!

This needed to be posted after all this serious talk about Monorails.
[BBvideo 560,350]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AEZjzsnPhnw[/BBvideo]

[UptownSport]

Doesn't a doughnut save it in the end?

[min-chi-cbus]

Doesn't a doughnut save it in the end?

You know your Simpsons!

[UptownSport]

As much as I admire Simpsons writers, it's nowhere near an elephant/monorail accident.
That's gotta be at the top of the 'What (TF) were you thinking?' column.

[FISHMANPET]

Not cool using a personal attack instead of discussing issue-

Fact is, there's myriad monorail switches you can view by googling - It's not Walker vs. Uptown.
I'll never tire of using Wuppertal as an example- they had switches before our grandfathers were born-
If you want more recent 'monorail' examples, Maglev has switches that are elegant in their simplicity; they allow vehicle to maintain radical speeds

If you look at our system, it doesn't have a switch from CC to Franklin because switches are difficult in general-
another switch near 35 would be massive, unsightly and expensive no matter standard gauge, monorail or BRT- All one has to do is google 'switches L' for an example- Only difference in a monorail is 'guideway' is smaller than aforementioned especially if overhead

I'd post links for above to be helpful, but I'm getting the idea that minds are already made up based on a single source

I'm not making a personal attack, I'm saying that I trust someone who's worked in transit all over the world for over 20 years and has a book on it, over somebody on an internet forum. So you're going to have to work really hard to prove your point.

But even if I do a little bit of digging on my own, I find Wikipedia's monorail article, and it completely contradicts you. It even says that Wuppertal, your dream system, has a design that makes switching hard.

So with all of these things, what does monorail bring that light rail doesn't?

And there's no switch to allow travel from Cedar/Riverside to West Bank station because there's no operational need for it. Full stop. It's a waste of money right now, so it's not built.

[UptownSport]

Here's a (built circa 1900) Wuppertal Switch:


Throw out some BS, then challenge me to disprove it? It would be impossible to work hard enough to convince you, first you attack me, then you tell me I have to answer to someone who's "Written a book".

All true (in 1915):
Automobiles are difficult to operate because you have to use a crank to start them, constantly get flat tires, must stop and service the engine and dangerous because they only have brakes on rear axle. Plus, thousands of people are killed each year in car crashes so they're obviously deathtraps.

The Switch Myth

Even though great strides in both track and switch technologies were made in the 50's, 60's and beyond, the myth today remains a thorn in the side for monorail proponents. Partly at fault are the rail consultants and suppliers that benefit by the continuation of competing so-called conventional rail. Here at The Monorail Society, we continue to be surprised by the amount of "rail experts" that don't have a clue when it comes to the subject.

"Don't have a clue", or are paid to spread misinformation?

Your wiki article:

Current operating monorails are capable of more efficient switching than in the past. In the case of suspended monorails, switching may be accomplished by moving flanges inside the beamway to shift trains to one line or another.

an some nifty pics;









Again, Monorails.org:

Naysayers, please give it up! Monorail switches work just fine and are doing so as you read this. In fact, when is the last time you heard of a monorail switch accident? In comparison, conventional rail switches are quite capable of causing accidents. Often, switch accidents have result in system shutdowns or delays, even injuries. This isn't uncommon with conventional rail. Monorail switches on the other hand have a clean record. May the Switch Myth Rest in Peace!

And all you'd have to do is read OP to see benefits, but ignore that and throw out something from 1900

[Nick]

I will bet you five whole dollars he's not being paid to spread misinformation.

I've got to wonder with things like this (and PRT, for example) that if they're so great and have been around for decades, why are they only at Disneyland/medium-sized Appalachian state schools? It's not like there's only one transit system in the world and Bombardier has some vice-grip monopoly on planning it. If these other systems made lots of sense, don't you think we'd have them?