[sustran] Re: monorails and other low capacity systems

[Dal Maluf]

Hello all, 
Let me share my point of view coming from a developing city (Sao Paulo/Brazil) which saw some projects like the Mumbai Monorail trying to break ground here, and now is much happier to see that they won´t happen that easily...   
For the carbon footprint discussion, if we add the total construction cost, which, by the way, should be at least 3 times what the Malaysian company Scomi is saying it would cost, plus operational subsidies, life cost analyze of the concrete, trains and energy consumption, which in India should be pretty bad (energy comes majority from coal, isn´t it?), after all of that, their “Co2 reductions” would probably not look that good at all. Even if they did construct it very cheap, private cars users will only increase! We are in the developing world with huge population increase, economic grow and revenues going up… Come on? 
But the most important thing, in my opinion, is that the MUMBAI monorail will likely not going to happen at all! If you have patience to read this long email, I’ll try to show you how their numbers for the Mumbai monorail are unreal, and, as I explain briefly Scomi background (as well as JICA’s monorail proposal) in Brazil I’ll try to show my point of view that this monorail will not be constructed as soon as the prices goes up and private financing disappears...  They might do the first 3 or 4 kms and win whatever election India might have this year, but after that, no way they will finish it… Why? 
Well. First of all, Scomi and JICA both uses pretty rough numbers to make politicians believe that monorail are good for them, but when the final costs are more than double, triple, and, even worst, when the City realize the amount of operational subsidies it would have to pay, they just give up on the project. It happened in almost all projects here in Brazil… 
Scomi did many presentations in Brazil to foster monorails for the World Cup, using the magical number (17 or 37 mi/km – which was the cost of the Kuala Lumpur monorail in 1997) sometimes in REAIS, sometimes in US Dollars, but the reality is that after 1 year of studies, most of their projects were already abandoned as the prices have just skyrocket… 
Lula (Brazilian President) has just announced that BRT are going to be built in 9 of the 12 World Cup cities, so most of Scomi work to send people to Japan, Malaysia and India, to pay for campaigns and projects, will be lost… The only two projects still alive are: one in Manaus/ Amazon Jungle (by Scomi) which should be abandoned soon… believe me…  and one extra monorail for Sao Paulo (by Jica), which I’ll talk about it better later, as I’m positive that it won’t happen either, although there are many other issues involved, which are not technical at all. 
Monorails to connect airport or leisure parks are different in my opinion, you don´t need high capacity and you can charge them 5, 10 dollars per way... But for urban transportation... come on?  
BACKGROUND INFORMATION 
These Malaysian companies have a very “controversial” background in fostering and working with monorails around the World, if we look at real numbers and deliverables. Well, let´s start with the Kuala Lumpur project, after JICA decide they wouldn’t finance the monorail project with Hitachi, so some Malaysian companies were born there to do that project. Kuala Lumpur (one of only 3 monorail really construction in these last decades) got bankrupted and the State had to pay for their debt.  If you want to learn more on that, please take a look… 
http://www.itdp.org/index.php/news_events/news_detail/special_report_monorails_back_to_the_future/ 
After that, they got some “contracts” with cities for the World Cup in South Africa, but their projects never went through, after the real costs and operational difficulties became clearer. Therefore, South Africa did BRTs instead and Rea Vaya is there to prove how BRTS can deliver a much better economical solution for our developing world cities. 
Now we come Brazil, oh yeah… my beautiful and lovely Brazil… 
We had JICA here! The Japanese cooperation agency came to Sao Paulo to help Hitachi exports some monorails. Sao Paulo is the paradise for large constructions: we have BRTs, highways, bridges, subways, everything under construction…. It’s an election year in Brazil, therefore, many projects are only launched and paid for the engineering project, although we all known they won’t be done (because there is no budget separated for the construction). Anyway, because SP has been achieving 15% increase in its budget per year these last years, they thought money wouldn’t be a problem. Therefore, the Japanese found a good opportunity to foster their beautiful monorail here. Nobody wanted it here, they were all talking about BRTs and light train to replace the subway projects, as their construction costs went really high this last decade for underground subway, but the Japanese gave us monorail project for free, sent everybody travelling to Japan, Scomi
 came in too, “help them” consider the monorail again... you known… well, therefore, the Japanese guys start studying it and it would cost "only" US$ 37mi/km. 
But then it became US$ 70mi/km, now they are saying US$ 100 mi/km or US$ 120 mi/km, which would be very close to our subway cost, which vary around US$ 170 – US$ 250mi/km. But besides the billions for the construction costs, they still need more 3 billion of private money to pay for the monorail! Come on... Just impossible… They estimate 100% transfer mode from the buses to the monorail, and, in 2012, it would increase 50% the ridership!!! Come on?
AFD (France Cooperation Agency) also gave a free project to foster Light Train in Brasilia, but as the Mayor was caught in corruption receiving money (he was filmed and it was all over television) the project is holding on in justice and it will likely not happen. It’s illegal to have the same company doing (fostering) the basic project, and also doing the construction, so Alston (French) couldn’t have won the tender as they did. Now the federal justice has stopped their project and the same thing will happened in SP. there was no basic project to do a monorail in the extension of a BRT under construction. 
I don´t think they are not going to construct it in Sao Paulo anyway, believe me… It was going to cost 1.5 billion for everything, now, it would cost 2 billion for the construction plus 3 billion in private financing to buy the monorail… and how would the Japanese banks find someone to take that loan? There are no crazy guys enough to invest in this monorail... Oh no!! The only large scale PPP ever done in Brazil was less than 500 million... Now 3 billion? Impossible... 
The reality is that they will only open the tender, pay 50 million for the company to do the basic engineering studies at an elections year, then after the costs have been elevated they would just forget about it… You known, campaign, projects… financing… campaign, forget the projects! Normal politics for Brazil, and after that, they will continue to construct BRT, as they have normally done. SP has already 130 kms of “open BRTs”, with a lot of challenges to be done, but, since the basic network creation and integration  done in 2004, it went from  5 million trips (2004) to 10 million trips/per day (2009) and many more BRTs still on planning... It´s just a political/ election games... It looks good for the mayor to say they will do monorails all over the City... Ah, and the Mayor´s brother is the Director of the Metro, so the metro would construct the monorail and help the City to finance it…
What about the other monorails done around the World? Did they work? 
The most recent elevated monorail done was the JICA/Hitachi proposal in DUBAI. As DUBAI didn’t have any financial problems, JICA was doing well to deliver.  ArabeBussiness.com, said the elevated metro would cost US$ 3.38 billion (AED 13 bi) and then it became US$ 7.6 billion (AED 28 bi). The monorail inside the Palm Jumeirah, 5.4 kms, was tender by US$ 381 million, became US$ 550 mi, but really cost US$ 1,1 billion. 
Source (1): Arabebussiness.com - Our city, our Metro - 19 September 2009 
http://www.arabianbusiness.com/568075-our-city-our-metro 
Source (2): Arabebussiness.com - Quiet please for region’s first monorail - 07 April 2007 
http://www.arabianbusiness.com/property/article/10716-quiet-please-for-regions-first-monorail 
Source (3):  Klalleej Times online - Nice and Easy, but Fares Not So Fair - 7 May 2009. 
http://www.khaleejtimes.com/DisplayArticle.asp?xfile=data/theuae/2009/May/theuae_May169.xml&section=theuae&col= 
 
Now, Dubai is having hard time to pay the operational subsides and pay back the loan to the Japanese banks, therefore, it won’t be easy to find financing for a large scale monorail for Mumbai… 
Google: Mitsubishi Construction, Mitzuo Bank, Hitachi and Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group and Dubai World, monorail and you will see what I’m talking about … A good part of the Dubai default is related to the monorail/ elevated metro projects... 
Seattle had the same monorail proposal. Their green line monorail went from 1.3 billion to 2 billion, plus more 7 billion in financing, therefore, US$ 9 billion of total cost, therefore, of course, it was cancelled by a public referendum with 65%...  http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2002612604_monorail09m.html 
I visit Seattle in January to see their small monorail done in 1962 for the World fair earlier in January 2010 because Scomi and Jica said it was a very sucessfull example, so I went there and it was broken due to mechanical repairs… look like a joke, but, it´s not... 
Seattle has a tunnel downtown used exclusively to public transportation… Their most important road downtown, the 3th, is closed for cars on peak hours, and ALL buses are free downtown in the peak hours… This was the result of the monorail project there… Bus improvements!!! Awesome! And BRTS are all over the West cost… 
Las Vegas monorail was the same (more than US$ 100 mi/km then they abandoned the rest of the project). None of the other projects which JICA, HITACHI or SCOMI tried around ever really happened. Not even in Tokyo and Osaka they did finish the first projects as they had planned… 
So, if in Japan with the technology, capital and elevated roads everywhere, they didn’t do it, why Mumbai project would actually happen? 
It’s very easy to open a tender, sign a contract, ask the private initiative to come and deliver a huge mobility project, turn key, but it normally doesn’t happen that easily… someone has to pay, there is no free lunch! And in India, if I recall well, the bus fares are so low.... How would they pay for those huge subsidies? 
My friends, I really want to continue these discussions, but you are all already tired (and bored) with such a long email, and I also have to leave anyway. But I would like to finish my thoughts on that topic and discuss it even further one day… 
If you are interested in this issue, please take a look at a small report I did to the Secretary of Transport and the Mayor of Sao Paulo about the reality of the monorail. Now, I’m sending it to the mayor (and the press) in Manaus… Let´s see how far the project will go there...
If you can’t read Portuguese or Spanish, just take a look at the pictures and data, and you will get the message… I also did some estimates of the amount of subsidies that Manaus and Sao Paulo would have to pay if the monorail was done, and the results are incredible!!!  
I did a small comparisson with what they could do with the R$ 4.5 billion for the monorail in Sao Paulo, if it was BRTS, sidewalks, bicycle… and the numbers are good. 
Conclusion: Could Mumbai pay for the real price of construction and operation? 
Brazilian cities couldn’t... 
Adalberto


--- On Sat, 1/30/10, Lee Schipper <schipper at wri.org> wrote:


From: Lee Schipper <schipper at wri.org>
Subject: [sustran] monorails and other low capacity systems
To: sustran-discuss at list.jca.apc.org
Date: Saturday, January 30, 2010, 11:15 AM


Let me weigh in on Eric Britton's side here. There are all kinds of
high-flying ideas, called Pods or personal taxis or rail taxis or
personal rapid transit or what-you-have. They are all interesting, but
as Eric says their scale is tiny compared to the access needs of two
billion people in cities around the world.  I remember taking the
Monorail from the Disneyland Hotel into Disneyland in S. California in
the 1950s.  I rode the Schwebebahn in Wuppertal in 1999 and recently
rode the experimental, low-speed Maglev in Nagoya near the site of Expo
2005. There are serious studies underway in Sweden and elsewhere because
these things have some merit. But so far that's as far as it goes.



They are fine for those who want to build them and don't care who rides
them, particularly if they are built to shuttle small numbers of people
around fairgrounds, parking lots, etc.  But please let's not waste even
precious OPM (Other peoples' money, i.e., bilateral or multilateral
assistance  funds) or our own funds when a huge need for access for
ordinary folks goes unmet.  For Asian and Latin America cities, we are
looking at corridors requiring over 1 million trips per day and cities
with 20-30 million trips/day at the beginning of development, i.e., less
than 2 trips/day/person.  How will Shanghai provide 50 million trips/day
in 2020? I don't see any evidence that these small systems can provide
much relief except where an aerial tramway or other small system has to
climb a hill for a few hundred people/hour.  The "nostalgic,
semi-underground cog-railway  in Istanbul is a  good example here.. But
we have to focus what limited funds we have on moving the masses
cleanly, smoothly, reliably, equitably, and above all rapidly.



Lee



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