Seattle-area residents have got themselves into a real fix. They voted to impose numerous taxes on themselves to spend tens of billions of dollars building new light-rail lines to downtown Seattle. Now, cost have increased, Seattle transit ridership is down by 54 percent, and Amazon is moving workers out of downtown Seattle.
Now a group called SkyLink has proposed a solution: replace light rail with aerial gondolas. These would supposedly be higher in capacity, less expensive, and would require less displacement of homes and businesses.
SkyLink’s prediction that gondolas would cost less than a third as much as light rail is not very reassuring considering that early estimates are always low — Portland estimated that its gondola system would cost $15.5 million and it ended up costing $57 million. Moreover, Seattle is building some of the most expensive light-rail lines in the world, so being less expensive is still too expensive.
But the real problem with this idea, as with any transit system that requires dedicated infrastructure, is that it can only serve a tiny fraction of all travel needs in an urban area. The Seattle area has 11,000 miles of roads, while if the region builds all of the light-rail lines currently on the drawing boards, they will add up to just 117 miles. Those 117 miles can’t compete with 11,000, and making those miles gondolas or personal rapid transit or monorails isn’t going to make them any more competitive.
Seattle already has a mass transit system that works. It’s called motor vehicles on highways. In 2019, this system moved 44 billion passenger-miles, compared with fewer than 300 million on the light rail, streetcar, commuter rail, and monorail lines found in the Seattle area. This doesn’t even consider all of the freight moved on the highways. Rather than replace one form of insanity with another, Seattle should return to sanity by simply killing all of the transit infrastructure projects now being planned or under construction.
2040’s we’ll have jetpacks by then…..
Biggest crash we take on this idea….
1: what’s its per hour passenger capacity.
2: if it malfunctions or gets stuck how do you get out?
3: what’s its destination
4: handicap accessible
5: energy efficiency in this case electric so is inconsequential
6: construction timeframe
Perhaps they should finish the monorail first …
Several government agencies and private companies have proposed expansions to the monorail system since its inception in the 1960s. The most prominent was the Seattle Monorail Project, founded by a 1997 ballot initiative to build a citywide network that would expand coverage beyond the planned Link light rail system. The project ran into financial difficulties, including cost estimates rising to $11 billion, before being cancelled by a city vote in 2005.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seattle_Center_Monorail
You wouldn’t………..it’s more of a Shelbyville idea.
Monorail would have worked, namely because it’s ease and speed of deployment.
Using straddle beams, derailment is virtually impossible event. Since it’s elevated above All vehicle traffic, accidents with surface traffic and pedestrians are also impossible (unless the train derailed and landed on the road; again a highly unlikely scenario).
Because the system uses rubber tires for traction it’s acceleration is very smooth and it’s decelerations similar; Also translates to less system down time, less liability suits and most importantly, a safer public.
Street rail systems with grade crossings (light rail, trams, commuter rail or trollies) can’t approach this level of safety since foolhardy people often try to beat the speeding train at the crossing with disastrous results. Monorail has no Crossings, it also; unless terrain demands; doesn’t need expensive bridges, underpasses and overpasses to move.
Also underground rail is prohibitively expensive (tunneling through clay and soft soil is doable by cut and cover, but still expensive. Tunneling thru rock, expensive as shit.)
Running on rubber tires makes monorails relatively quiet compared to the loud clickety clack of metal on metal. And because of it’s infrastructure demands; it can be built without significant impact on neighborhing area; case in point, dig a hole, pour foundation, insert column; go home. Install horizontal beams, done.
Contractors and rail consultants love heavy rail. It keeps them busy for years and brings in the big bucks. And contractors rip up the entire cities infrastructure just to saddle it. You pay for it Mr. Taxpayer. As if that isn’t enough, operational costs of heavy rail are so high that Mr. Taxpayer (you again) have to subsidize it heavily for as long as it operates.