[sustran] [World Streets Editorial] The only good monorail, is an old monorail.

Eric Britton eric.britton at ecoplan.org
Wed Feb 3 01:17:46 JST 2010


 

Editorial: The only good monorail, is an old monorail.

Part I. Building knowledge and consensus via the internet

Let me be very clear as to my motives here just so there is no ambiguity on
my position. I would like no less than to drive a sharp stake through the
dark heart of this egregiously unsustainable transport concept once and for
all, so that we can concentrate our limited resources on approaches that are
capable of doing the job and meeting the sustainability challenge head on.
Which is exactly not the case with monorails. Let's have a look. 

In the world of transport, sustainable and otherwise, there are some bad
ideas that die hard, no matter how absurd. One of the more resistant of
these is monorails. Once again we are starting to hear the drum beat of
monorails being touted as a "genuine, bona fide, electrified" solution to
the problems of transport in our cites. For example just the other day it
was announced in the press that Mumbai was about to receive the first
prototype vehicle for a new monorail project in fairly advanced planning and
testing stages. Oops. Let's see if we can put this one to rest. 

[This article builds on an excellent series of discussions that you can
reference in the excellent Sustran Global South collaborative forum on
sustainable transport in the developing countries -- which you can visit at
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/sustran-discuss It is our intention to follow
this up with several more independent commentaries from expert sources.]

--> The full text of this article appears in today's World Streets
<http://newmobilityagenda.blogspot.com/>  at http://WorldStreets.org/  

--> Discussions on New Mobility Forum
<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NewMobilityCafe/>  at www.newmobility.org
(Post to NewMobilityCafe at yahoogroups.com) 

 

Read World Streets Today at  <http://www.worldstreets.org/>
http://www.worldstreets.org/

New Mobility Partnerships  -  <http://www.newmobility.org/>
http://www.newmobility.org

8/10 rue Joseph Bara,     75006 Paris,  France, Europe

           +331 4326 1323  eric.britton(at)newmobility.org   Skype:
newmobility

 



More information about the Sustran-discuss mailing list