For whatever reason monorail has become the transportation equivalent of snake oil. Whenever a poorly planned rail project in implement or railfans feel the need to bash rail alternatives both groups bring up “monorail” as a comparison. What is forgotten is that many monorail systems are actually quite successful. Japanese Monorail systems are quite successful, the Seattle Center Monorail earns a profit every year which is shared with the city, and even the poorly implemented Las Vegas Monorail has a farebox recovery exceeding 100% (higher than most rail transit and bus lines in North America). In my view monorails are under-appreciated and valuable, but I don’t view them as the be all end all of mass transit solutions (nothing really is). I see them primarily as a lower cost alternative to elevated railways or for areas where labor costs are high.
Monorails ARE snake oil. The chief attraction to the public is that they look new and futuristic. However, they lack the flexibility of conventional rail in that they rarely run on the surface or in a subway, switches and crossings are problematic at best, etc. I’ve rarely seen them in operation in anything other than a loop or a short point-to-point operation.
BNSF your sources neglect one particular item. Monorails have been found to be dynamically unstable laterally above 25 - 35 MPH. That is the reason Seattle, Disney, and others run at 25 MPH MAS.
Now active controls can be added to stabilize these trains at higher speeds but if the controls suddenly fail it could be disastrous before the train can slow. Plus these active controls are very expensive even today — just look at F-117, B-2s and others do cost.
A good example of instability are racing boats when they slightly yaw or even race cars.
Note that it is possible to construct an elevated light railway with no more “shadow-print” than a monorail. Simply leave out crossties, use thin but strong longitudinal girders, one under each rail, have stainless steel low temperture expansion coefficienet gauge-bard every meter or so between rails mounted on continuos hard rubber pads on the girders, without crossties. The original cable-operated North American rapid transit line, Charles Harvey’s West Side Ptent Elevated Railway did not have crossties, which were introduced when steam replaced cable wiith far greater weight and vibration. If walkways are wanted and fill for safety between the rails/girders, this could be architectural glass, of the type used in Portman’s hotel balcony floors.
I never was comfortable calling these things monorails. They are big fat beams with wheels running on top of and on the sides of the beam. If they were to be used more extensively than as a point-to-point novelty ride, the switching arrangements would be unwieldy; you’d have to move a huge, heavy beam a considerable distance. The only true monorail would be the type where the train is suspended under the rail. I remember there was one in Dallas back in the early '60’s, I think as an attraction at a fair. I have no idea if it still exists.
I rode it in 1960 when there still was a tram line underneith, I think on the south bank of the river, long gone. It works fine. But nobody can call it a near-invisible structure! And compatibility with surface or subway operaton, forget it! It is a beautiful city, well worth visiting for its own sake.
The trams were the standard German three-truck articualted “Grossrumwagon” “DuWag” types. Fairly modern, and it was sad to see that they were abandoning the system, with a center-neutral-strip resevation line allready replaced by buses. Standard gauge too.
I’m going to bet it’s so uncommon as to never have happened. Your link doesn’t give any examples of ground level monorails, it just says they can exist.
Are there any ground level monorails? How much of their right of way is ground level, and how does it get along with the rest of our nation’s highways?
Regarding the Wuppertal Suspension Railway, something just hit me. Who on earth thought that putting an elephant in a suspended railway passenger car was a good idea?
Listowel and Ballybunion. Boynton Bicycle Railway (admittedly not ‘quite’ a canonical monorail but sertainly fits for purposes of this discussion!)
Several examples of level crossings on the former – they worked just like gates. No more complicated locking mechanisms required than on any movable rail bridge…
Switching a bit more complicated, of course, but even if using a flexible-curve style (where there are multiple support segments joined by a flexible set of contact surfaces) it’s not difficult to set up.
You wouldn’t build a hump yard, or complicated ladder tracks – but that’s already assumed.
Meanwhile, the Boynton system works fine with conventional points, although you need 'em top and bottom in some circumstances.
I would tentatively point out that a maglev system can have ground-level crossings, just as a LIM system can – nobody sane designs them because of the trash and sabotage problems, but they can be done. No reason why it can’t be done at ground-level on separated ROW, just like all those conventional toy light-rail systems that need so much track structure and alignment (and still deliver that wonderful roll-out-the-barrel streetcar ride and noise) for many purposes.
If you are going to dispute BNSF’s underlying point – that some monorail systems can be built and operated at lower cost than a new ‘more conventional’ alternative – please address that rather than using straw-man-type arguments that only redundantly demonstrate traumatic equine demise.
I don’t know what you are talkiing about with roll-out-the-barrel streetcar ride and noise. I find modern light rail systems quieter than buses and extremely smooth riding. I cannot think of a single exception in the modern North American systems I experienced before moving to Jerusalem, and the smoothness and quiet of the Jerusalem system, except for a one in a hundred car requiring maintenance that may have unusual gear noise or a flat wheel, is excellent in every respect. (They are very good about pulling such a car off line when it happens.)
I would make a sarcastic comment here, but I’ll refrain.
Memphis has claimed from the beginning that this was a transit system, and the amount spent on the cars is out of proportion to ‘historic preservation’ (and has resulted in some remarkably non-historical changes, such as the adoption of pantographs on the equipment). I can assure you that ‘deliberate simulation’ of noise, vibration, and harshness is NOT part of anything done here, and I find it somewhat hard to believe that any working transit authority that runs streetcars would voluntarily do so.
The issue is that the inherent quality of the trackwork and maintenance on the ‘hospital extension’ is not sugh as to provide a smooth quiet ride. I love the delightful noise, er, music as much as anyone (I went so far as to build a portable recording rig to tape the sounds of MP-54s on the line to Swarthmore in the early '70s) but I surely can’t say the same is true of the people who live within earshot of the ‘experience’.