01-25-2016, 06:32 PM
(01-25-2016, 06:20 PM)jamincan Wrote: I've actually found this thread pretty interesting. Examples like Wuppertal and Chongqing show that there's nothing inherently unworkable about monorails.
Correct. I don't claim them to be generally inferior technology. What they are not is superior or the "transportation of the future" as it so often claimed.
Quote:The reason so many systems have failed in the past is likely the fact that they haven't had the investment necessary to actually make them systems instead of short novelties.
Correct, most are built as toy systems for vanity purposes. Seattle is an example of substandard routing through the commercial district for show purposes, while the main transportation routing would have been completely different. In the case of Seattle, the actual rational routing was suggested in the early 2000s with the Ballard line, but the project never fully got of the ground.
Quote:That said, speaking strictly from aesthetics, monorails don't seem modern to me at all. They have a certain nostalgic quality to them akin to the Jetsons. Futuristic, maybe, but in a very dated way.
Indeed the Mark VII monorail currently in service was designed to resemble the original Mark I from 1958.