Why There Are No More Monorails?

Student: Tomas Pinochet

Date: 27/04/2007

Why are there not more Monorails?

Monorails were proposes as the transport of the future in the 1960's, it was expected that the system could be the solution for increased congestion on the cities. The years have pass and the expected investment in the system has not take place. Instead most of the cities in Europe and America are financing new Light Rapid Transit (LRT) systems. This essay is a study of the possible causes of this apparently failure of the monorail systems.

The first monorail was build in Wuppertal, Germany at 1901, since then, new monorails have been built, the technology have improve and new projects are been evaluated, but all this mainly in Asia, with Japan as pioneer. Monorails in Asia have show profits and reliability, with a system that every day moves thousand

of people. The situation is completely different in western countries; the main porpoise of the existing monorails are parks, zoos and airport. Some examples are Chester Zoo in England, Disneyland Park in Florida and the Miami Metrozoo. A reasonable approximation (based on information from the Monorail Sociaty website) of the total amount of passenger in the monorails systems of the North America does not exceed 100 million, with at least half of those in the Disney parks.

There are some cities where the monorails works as a important transportation mode, the case of Seattle is important to notice, because not only it was design as the main transportation system of the city, but also, in the last years the systems have been extend. But despite the existence of some important monorails in western countries, the quantity of them is a lot less than others systems, like LRT, Trams and Subways.

Is not that the technology is not being consider at all, there have been many interesting projects for new monorail systems, specially in U.K. In the last 10 years Manchester, Portsmouth, London, Sheffield and other cities, have been studying interesting projects, but all of them have been rejected.

This apparently failure does not mean that the authorities are not financing public transport systems. In the last years there have been a strong investment on Rapid Light Rails, cities like Manchester and Sheffield have choose this system over other alternatives, and the view for the next years is showing further investments in this technology.

The figure 1 shows the operating LRT systems in black, and with red it is represented the planned or under construction systems. As it can be seen, there are 7 possible new LRT systems, and 8 already working. In the other hand there are only 4 monorails systems in U.K. and none of theme is functioned as a proper transport system of a city. The 4 systems are located in Chester Zoo, Birmingham International Airport, Blackpool Pleasure Beach theme park and Alton Towers theme park

But what is the reason of the success of LRT over Monorails? The answer to this question requires taking in to account witch are the advantage and disadvantage of the monorails.

First, elevated monorail use less land, this is a big issue if the systems is plan to be part if very dense urban areas, where the value of land is high and the construction could require big reductions of transport capacity in area. LRT systems requires a corridor that interact with other modes or a segregated one, but in both cases, the use of land is bigger than a elevated monorail. The figure 2 shows the differences of land use of both systems.

Another big advantage of monorails is that the systems does not interact with others modes, this reduce the probability of an accident and does not reduce the capacity of the existing transport infrastructure.

Also the environments impacts of the monorails are minimum, Burgess, K sustain that the rubber in some cases make less sound that the average sound of the city, and the use of electric motors allows very few emissions.

Burgess is responsible for a study of the public appreciation of the monorail. The survey shows that 1 of 3 people rated as poor or very poor the visual impact of the monorail, but that was better than the Bus, LRT/Tram and train. Also the study shows that nearly 36% rated the image of a monorail as "excellent" and that was better that the image of the other modes. There is a problem of reliability in the study, but the survey gives a proper general idea of a possible advantage of the monorail. 78% would consider using it system.

And finally there is consensus that monorails are the safest mode of transportation in a city. As an example the Wuppertal monorail have been functioning over 100 years and in all his history there is only one accident, and the cause of it was un unpredictable error by the maintenance group in charge.

Despite all this important advantage of the technology, LRT systems have important advantages that are making the system more reliable and adequate as a solution to transport problems in western cities.

First, it seems that as an average Monorail are more expensive than LRT systems. Well, the data to affirm this claim is not of good quality, and the reason is that there are many variables which influence the price of building a monorail system, factors include: Total length of the system, Topography, Geotechnical conditions, etc. This makes difficult the search of a standard cost of the system. But some studies made by the LightRailNow Group show that comparing systems with equal investment on infrastructure (tunnels, bridges, etc), monorails are more expensive than LRT systems.

One of the issues that make the Portsmouth Monorail an interesting project was the presence of privet founding that could decrease the public investment. Without the private capital, the cost it was too big for the public sector, in fact finally the project had to be discarded because of the lack of reliability of the private founding. Lomas, J. Strategic director for environment and transport on Portsmouth, explain the resolution of the council as "due to the number of significant outstanding questions in respect of the deliverability of the proposed Monorail (primarily in respect of the likelihood of the promoters securing sufficient capital funding), the City Council resolves". This example shows the significance of the cost in the decision making process of the viability of the system.

Another problem that monorail systems show is his inflexibility. Burgess sustains that "Monorails cannot share its track and the entire track it