# Should monorail replace passenger railroads?



## MIrailfan (May 12, 2021)

i say yes, and leave the rails to the freights.


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## Devil's Advocate (May 12, 2021)




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## MIrailfan (May 12, 2021)

Devil's Advocate said:


>



any INTELLIGENT answers


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## cirdan (May 12, 2021)

So far monorails have only been used for things like airport shuttles, at theme parks, amusement rides, interconnectors, a handful of urban commuter lines, that sort of thing. And then there is super weird stuff like the aerotrain. There is a good reason there aren't more of them, but maybe that's for another discussion. But even assuming these systems are actually value for money, there has never been a monorail for long distance or even inter city rail lines. 

If you mean something like hyperloop or maglev, maybe that's different. But monorail? No.

Furthermore, each system is incompatible and protected by patents so you basically you are locked in with a single supplier forever, if ever you want to extend or upgrade the system later.


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## MIrailfan (May 12, 2021)

cirdan said:


> So far monorails have only been used for things like airport shuttles, at theme parks, amusement rides, interconnectors, a handful of urban commuter lines, that sort of thing. And then there is super weird stuff like the aerotrain. There is a good reason there aren't more of them, but maybe that's for another discussion. But even assuming these systems are actually value for money, there has never been a monorail for long distance or even inter city rail lines.
> 
> If you mean something like hyperloop or maglev, maybe that's different. But monorail? No.
> 
> Furthermore, each system is incompatible and protected by patents so you basically you are locked in with a single supplier forever, if ever you want to extend or upgrade the system later.


interesting.


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## ehbowen (May 12, 2021)

It is much cheaper to build on the ground where feasible. Conventional railroads can be built on the ground, or on elevated structures, or underground in tunnels with very few restrictions or alterations. Monorails have to be built up in the air.

Conventional railroads have the flexibility to handle freight or passengers. Outside of a few dense corridors, two or three trains a day is quite sufficient to handle passenger load in most of the United States (yes, one a day or less is NOT sufficient, IMHO). Can you picture investing in an elevated guideway between major metropolitan areas for only three trains a day (and no freight)?

The most heavily trafficked monorail system in the United States at present is at the Disney World resort. The six-car trains seat 20 passengers in each car (40 passengers can stand in the aisles), or 120 passengers total for the full train. A single Amfleet 1 car can seat 84 passengers, with superior comfort.

I'd much prefer to invest heavily in conventional rail. Actually, it's my (admittedly untested) opinion that if a per-seat equalization subsidy could be created to compensate for the heavy expenditures on behalf of highways and airlines then the rails could again become attractive to private investment and operation.


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## MARC Rider (May 12, 2021)

Gadgetbahnen

Catbus» Blog Archive » What’s a Gadgetbahn? (cat-bus.com)



> Like for any gadgetbahn, the claim is that this new technology provides more speed, more comfort at lower cost.
> 
> But in the real world, these three aspects are always intricately connected and subject to tradeoffs – due to simple geometry and physics.
> 
> ...



The technology of conventional railroads is time-tested, and through incremental improvements, it's capable of hosting passenger trains that can run up to 300 km/hr, although for most applications, such high speed is not needed. And though building new rail lines might seem to be expensive, I could imagine that building any sort of proprietary fixed guideway transport system will be even more expensive. It's far more efficient to continue using railroads, and in places where there's competition with freight traffic, just bite the bullet and spend the money to build parallel tracks, new longs, longer sidings, whatever is needed to keep the passenger and freight trains from interfering with each other.


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## Cal (May 12, 2021)

MIRAILFAN said:


> i say yes, and leave the rails to the freights.


No, just, no.


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## Cal (May 12, 2021)

Devil's Advocate said:


>



Woah, didn't realize that was you for a second! Gotta get used to the new avatar...


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## MIrailfan (May 13, 2021)

ehbowen said:


> It is much cheaper to build on the ground where feasible. Conventional railroads can be built on the ground, or on elevated structures, or underground in tunnels with very few restrictions or alterations. Monorails have to be built up in the air.
> 
> Conventional railroads have the flexibility to handle freight or passengers. Outside of a few dense corridors, two or three trains a day is quite sufficient to handle passenger load in most of the United States (yes, one a day or less is NOT sufficient, IMHO). Can you picture investing in an elevated guideway between major metropolitan areas for only three trains a day (and no freight)?
> 
> ...


Monorail would take up less space on the ground, and is cleaner. Huge upfront cost I admit but savings over decades.


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## MIrailfan (May 13, 2021)

ehbowen said:


> It is much cheaper to build on the ground where feasible. Conventional railroads can be built on the ground, or on elevated structures, or underground in tunnels with very few restrictions or alterations. Monorails have to be built up in the air.
> 
> Conventional railroads have the flexibility to handle freight or passengers. Outside of a few dense corridors, two or three trains a day is quite sufficient to handle passenger load in most of the United States (yes, one a day or less is NOT sufficient, IMHO). Can you picture investing in an elevated guideway between major metropolitan areas for only three trains a day (and no freight)?
> 
> ...


:"
*
✔*@AmtrakAlerts
City of New Orleans Train 58 which departed New Orleans (NOL) on 5/12 will terminate in Carbondale (CDL) due to a disabled freight train blocking the tracks.

5h

"

a monorail would glide over the freight.


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## ehbowen (May 13, 2021)

MIRAILFAN said:


> :"
> *✔*@AmtrakAlerts
> City of New Orleans Train 58 which departed New Orleans (NOL) on 5/12 will terminate in Carbondale (CDL) due to a disabled freight train blocking the tracks.
> 
> ...


You think monorails never break down? There's a reason Disney has a diesel-powered monorail "tow motor" at its resorts...


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## MARC Rider (May 13, 2021)

MIRAILFAN said:


> Monorail would take up less space on the ground, and is cleaner. Huge upfront cost I admit but savings over decades.


How is it "cleaner" than an electric powered train? And just because it runs on an elevated guideway, they still have to acquire the "space on the ground" for the right-of-way.


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## cirdan (May 13, 2021)

The land value argument really only applies in dense cities where there is no other space so you put the monorail in on a higher level .

but conventional rail can do that too . The metro in Chicago for example.

you wouldn’t do that in a rural area as elevated structures are costly to build and costly to maintain . And a monorail that’s sitting on the ground is just a nuisance , for example it’s more difficult to put in road crossings .


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## railiner (May 13, 2021)

MIRAILFAN said:


> i say yes, and leave the rails to the freights.


Just curious, which type are you proposing, straddle or suspended?


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## jiml (May 13, 2021)

MIRAILFAN said:


> any INTELLIGENT answers


It was an intelligent answer to a question that wasn't.


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## jis (May 13, 2021)

jiml said:


> It was an intelligent answer to a question that wasn't.


Yeah. You mean troll question, troll response?  I tend to agree.


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## railiner (May 13, 2021)

railiner said:


> Just curious, which type are you proposing, straddle or suspended?


@MIRAILFAN...why does that question amuse you? Do you understand what I am asking?


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## Ryan (May 13, 2021)

This isn't necessarily the worst idea that I've heard....



.... but I'm having trouble thinking of any examples.


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## Cal (May 13, 2021)

IIRC, *MIRAILFAN *also brought up the idea of monorails in this thread as well...


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## MIrailfan (May 13, 2021)

railiner said:


> @MIRAILFAN...why does that question amuse you? Do you understand what I am asking?


it just does. I prefer the kind Vegas uses and Disney World.


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## ehbowen (May 14, 2021)

MIRAILFAN said:


> it just does. I prefer the kind Vegas uses and Disney World.


You do realize that the Disney monorails are limited by design to a top speed of 55 mph, but by policy are not allowed to exceed 40 mph (speed limit), don't you? Conventional rail trains can make 79 mph over track in at least halfway decent condition as long as ABS signaling or better is in place, or much more (90/125/150+) with signal improvements and more attention paid to maintenance and grade crossing separations.

Hey, there was a time in my life following a youthful visit to Disney World when I thought monorails were The Way To Go as well. But then I grew up.


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## MIrailfan (May 14, 2021)

Japan and South Korea managed to build them. High speed onestoo.


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## ehbowen (May 14, 2021)

MIRAILFAN said:


> Japan and South Korea managed to build them. High speed onestoo.


Well, you specifically referenced Disney. But okay; let's take Japan. Wikipedia shows that they currently have ten monorail lines in service. And, as far as I can see, they are all commuter service or airport transfer; I don't see a single intercity passenger transport monorail in the bunch (admittedly, I haven't looked that hard). Yet Japan has possibly the world's finest network of conventional and high speed rail lines linking all corners of the nation.

If monorails are so good, why aren't those proportions reversed?


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## railiner (May 14, 2021)

MIRAILFAN said:


> it just does. I prefer the kind Vegas uses and Disney World.


Okay...those are the most common...known as "straddle type".

Less common are the "suspended type"...








Suspension railway - Wikipedia







en.wikipedia.org





or









Miami Seaquarium Spacerail - Wikipedia







en.wikipedia.org









__





The 1964-1965 New York World's Fair - AMF Monorail






www.worldsfairphotos.com


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## cirdan (May 14, 2021)

There are also things like the French Aerotrain which was indeed designed for very high speeds. A large part of the experimental line still exists, albeit slowly disintegrating, and runs parallel to the Orleans to Paris railroad from which you can see it very well for a considerable stretch (on the right hand side while travelling North).

The Aerotrain was basically a guided hovercraft, so there was no actual physical contact between train and rail. The train could also be steered and could thus run as a conventional hovercraft (at lower speeds), which was used especially for turning the train at the end of the line. There was thus no need for switches. It was powered by aviation fuel and apparently was extremely noisy.

It was the TGV that killed it off eventually.


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## Exvalley (May 14, 2021)

Monorails have their place in urban environments where land is super expensive - especially if you can build a monorail above an existing roadway.


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## jiml (May 14, 2021)

Exvalley said:


> Monorails have their place in urban environments where land is super expensive - especially if you can build a monorail above an existing roadway.


Vegas and Seattle are perfect examples, although the latter might not have been built today.


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## jis (May 14, 2021)

But then again a large proportion of new Metro lines in crowded Asian cities are also built elevated above roads, and they are full width full gauge standard heavy rail.







Notice how they are built on single pillar in the median of the road. In the city center they go underground. Further out in the sticks they are built on ground and they can share trackage with main line railroad if need be, though currently they are all self standing separate lines to ease traffic and dispatch management.


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## jebr (May 14, 2021)

Monorails are basically gadgetbahn - you can do pretty much anything that they do just as well with conventional technology at a lower cost. There's a few examples of them, and while they're pretty cool it seems quite rare that they're any more functional than standard elevated rail.


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## MARC Rider (May 14, 2021)

ehbowen said:


> Well, you specifically referenced Disney. But okay; let's take Japan. Wikipedia shows that they currently have ten monorail lines in service. And, as far as I can see, they are all commuter service or airport transfer; I don't see a single intercity passenger transport monorail in the bunch (admittedly, I haven't looked that hard). Yet Japan has possibly the world's finest network of conventional and high speed rail lines linking all corners of the nation.
> 
> If monorails are so good, why aren't those proportions reversed?


I've ridden both the Disney World monorail and the one that serves Haneda Airport in Tokyo. The Disney world one was strictly an amusement park ride, OK for giving people a different kind of travel experience, but I personally preferred the boat shuttles for that sort of thing. The Tokyo monorail was more like rapid transit, and it was fine, but the experience wasn't really any better than just riding in a conventional rail train. 

I think that somehow in the 1950s and 1960s, the science fiction visionaries pushed this concept because they needed to conceptualize some sort of fixed guideway ground transportation for their vision of future worlds, and heaven forbid that Captain Kirk would still being riding around San Francisco in the 22rd century using 19th century technology like railroads. This sort of vision believes that all technology from the past needs to be discarded as soon as a new alternative is invented because it's "old fashioned." That might be true for some technologies, but as far as fixed guideway ground transport is concerned, I haven't heard of anything that is truly competitive with conventional railroads.


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## MARC Rider (May 14, 2021)

jis said:


> But then again a large proportion of new Metro lines in crowded Asian cities are also built elevated above roads, and they are full width full gauge standard heavy rail.
> 
> 
> 
> ...


The PATCO Speedline in southern New Jersey, opened in 1969, runs for a good part of its way on "futuristic" elevated roadway.


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## MARC Rider (May 14, 2021)

jebr said:


> Monorails are basically gadgetbahn - you can do pretty much anything that they do just as well with conventional technology at a lower cost. There's a few examples of them, and while they're pretty cool it seems quite rare that they're any more functional than standard elevated rail.


Monorails are also very inflexible. While I believe they've devised switches and such, they're much more complicated and less functional than rail switches. This makes branch lines and crossovers difficult to design.


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## flitcraft (May 14, 2021)

Love the term 'gadgetbahn'! That's a new one for me, but if there ever was a necessary neologism, this one is it.


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## neroden (May 15, 2021)

Monorails are flat-out pointless.

Current safety regulations require a side escape walkway.

As a result, it is cheaper and simpler, *100% of the time*, to replace a monorail with a standard elevated rail.


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## Devil's Advocate (Jun 14, 2021)

MIRAILFAN said:


> any INTELLIGENT answers


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## MIrailfan (Jun 14, 2021)

Devil's Advocate said:


>



he cut corners. Its the Simpsons.


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## Devil's Advocate (Jun 15, 2021)

MIRAILFAN said:


> he cut corners. Its the Simpsons.


Did you watch the video or just look at the thumbnail? There are multiple examples given for how and why monorails make little or no sense in most situations.


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## flitcraft (Jun 15, 2021)

Nobody with even a modicum of understanding of public transit thinks monorails make any sense. They work as 'toy transit' at amusement parks and large shopping malls; that's it. If you can't be bothered to click on the information given, it's hard to think that you have any serious intent in asking your question here.


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## jis (Jun 15, 2021)

That is why I thought that this entire thread has very little to do with any realistic rail advocacy specially of serious intercity kind. Like Monorails, it is toy advocacy wasting time of rail advocates. Just IMHO of course.


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## Tlcooper93 (Jun 17, 2021)

maybe in an alternate universe like “Man in the High Castle,” high speed intercity monorails could work.

despite the fact that there is absolutely no reason or evidence to suggest their usefulness....

...they look mad cool! Maybe amtrak could strap 50 cals to the front of the Zephyr like this one here.


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## jis (Jun 18, 2021)

Tlcooper93 said:


> View attachment 22969
> 
> maybe in an alternate universe like “Man in the High Castle,” high speed intercity monorails could work.
> 
> ...


This was the Super Dooper Hyperspeed transport connecting New York City to the Lackawanna Mine Number 9 multiverse portal. It is powered by a battery of what looks like some sort of jet engine in the rear. It was easily destroyed by a pile of home made bombs toppling down one tower by insurgents in the final episode. Interestingly in New York the station is underground. It emerges from the tunnel in what looks like some sort of a drainage ditch.

"Man in the High Castle" has some really strange but cool stuff of this sort.


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## Ziv (Jun 18, 2021)

How fast is "High Speed" for a Monorail? Every monorail I can find runs between 35 mph and 50 mph, except Line 3 of the Chongqing Rail System which has a Hitachi system that may run at 62 mph/100 kph. 62 mph is pretty decent for a city line but probably wouldn't work for InterCity or Long Distance.
I like Monorail for certain applications in urban mass transit, but I am not sure that current tech would work elsewhere.



MIRAILFAN said:


> Japan and South Korea managed to build them. High speed onestoo.


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## Tlcooper93 (Jun 18, 2021)

Ziv said:


> How fast is "High Speed" for a Monorail? Every monorail I can find runs between 35 mph and 50 mph, except Line 3 of the Chongqing Rail System which has a Hitachi system that may run at 62 mph/100 kph. 62 mph is pretty decent for a city line but probably wouldn't work for InterCity or Long Distance.
> I like Monorail for certain applications in urban mass transit, but I am not sure that current tech would work elsewhere.



I think our monorail supporting friend is misinformed about what constitutes high speed.


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## Anderson (Jun 23, 2021)

jis said:


> This was the Super Dooper Hyperspeed transport connecting New York City to the Lackawanna Mine Number 9 multiverse portal. It is powered by a battery of what looks like some sort of jet engine in the rear. It was easily destroyed by a pile of home made bombs toppling down one tower by insurgents in the final episode. Interestingly in New York the station is underground. It emerges from the tunnel in what looks like some sort of a drainage ditch.
> 
> "Man in the High Castle" has some really strange but cool stuff of this sort.


That train is cool...but it's also basically "The Pioneer Zephyr and the Black Beetle had a baby". The jet turbine design on the back is very much based on the NYC "Black Beetle" (a DMU they rigged up with a pair of jet engines for speed testing...or a PR stunt, depending on who you believe) but IIRC it's a three-car multiple-unit.

(Also, based on the rest of the show it seems quite clear that there's a substantial monorail system in Berlin; this suggests that you have some sort of "incumbent" supplier and thus the lines would share at least some parts and have reached critical mass for cost-effectiveness. Or, given some of the other proposed projects of that particular regime, they just didn't _care _about cost.)


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