[sustran] monorails and other low capacity systems

[Lee Schipper]

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