Monorails - The Affordable Subway Alternative
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Monorails cost 5% - 10% of Rail Subways and can carry 45,000 passengers / hour. (Video: Chongqing Metro, a Hitachi 'large' monorail.) |
Monorails offer a cost-effective way of adding fully grade-separated public transport over major roads where no ground-level transport easement is available. The other alternative is a rail subway - but subways are up to ten times more expensive.
Monorails also could be used to replace selected inner city rail suburban services allowing express services or freight to use the ground-level heavy rail easement.
Proposed Rio de Janeiro Monorail
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A June 2011 Bombardier presentation to the City of Rio de Janeiro for an integrated transit project in Barra da Tijuca featuring monorail that would be ready for the 2016 olympic games. |
See how easily a monorail can be rolled out over major congested roads to form a fast and effective transport system.
Benefits
The high capacity Tokyo-Haneda monorail passes over the Toshiba Gardens near Hamamatsucho Station with minimal visual impact. (Google Street View) |
- Monorails are proven. Many monorail systems are in use as high-capacity public transport systems carrying thousands of passengers a day at up to 80 kmh.
- Monorails are safe. Being totally grade-separated monorails are one of the safest forms of transport.
- Monorails are independent. A new monorail system would be completely independent of existing transport modes and so unaffected by problems on other networks.
- Monorails are environmentally friendly. As well as having the energy-efficiency of other mass-transit systems, monorails are far less energy-intensive to build than a subway while having a far lower footprint than surface rail. Monorails can be installed with a minimum of disruption on the ground. Monorails have a lower visual impact than other types of elevated rail systems. Monorails can travel at over 80km/h providing an excellent alternative to cars in crowded cities.
- Monorails are cost effective. Retrofitting a subway to a crowded city is usually prohibitively expensive. Great uncertainties usually exist as to the full cost of dealing with the myriad underground services (sewers, storm water, mains water, electricity, gas, etc) as well as geological challenges such as rock and mud. Often subway systems are below sea-level creating many expensive challenges during construction and maintenance. A high-capacity dual-beam Monorail system costs around 12% per km as much as a two-track subway. (See Melbourne East-West Monorail page with submission to East West Link Needs Assessment enquiry.)
Cost
The Monorail Society has an excellent guide to Monorail Cost. Compare these numbers with the $600 - $700 million per kilometre quoted in the 2008 Victorian Transport Plan for the new rail subway under Melbourne.
Hitachi 'Large-Sized' monorails pictured below cost $70 - $80 million per km.
Monorail Cars
A large Hitachi monorail train. Left: Osaka Monorail (flickr:Hyougushi), Right: Chongqing Monorail (flickr:NotLiz) |
Hitachi monorails are characterised with an open layout allowing for loads of over 1,000 passengers on a medium-sized six-car train. If a walk-through design is used only the central monorail cars needs to be serviced by the platforms. Passengers can then move from the entry-exit car to the front and back of the monorail train. This means that the platforms can be quite small further reducing cost and visual impact.
In general monorail trips are likely to be quite quick (less than 15 minutes) so the monorail cars should be mainly for standing rather than sitting which will maximize passenger capacity.
We recommend the straddle-beam ALWEG designs shown on this page over the suspended car designs such as SAFEGE to reduce the visual impact of beams and the risk of truck-monorail collisions.
A common design should be agreed on for all of Australia's monorails to allow mass - production of all monorail components - hopefully in Australia.
Stations
Stations can be built into existing buildings increasing the value of the building. Stand - alone stations can have a small footprint if they use only a lift with surrounding stairs to an island platform rather than escalators.
Stations would not have car parks but would link into other public transport and have ample bike storage.
Station frequency would be in the 2-3km range allowing speeds of 60-70Km/h between stations.
Platform Screen Doors (PSD) are recommended for all stations both for safety and to provide protection from the weather. Using PSD's means the station roof does not have to wrap around the monorail reducing the size of the island platform to a minimum.
Asthetics
The Tokyo-Haneda monorail runs silently over the Tokyo suburbs (Google Street View) |
Monorail pillars can be part of a pleasant urban landscape as shown below on the Monorail Society page featuring the Tokyo-Haneda monorail.
This monorail silently carrys 300,000 passengers on each week day over these parklands and roadways.
Monorail Pillars
King Abdullah Financial District Monorail (Bomardier) |
Bomardier offers more asthetic pillars than those currently is use by other large monorail systems such as Hitachi. However, pillar design is independent of the monorail vehicle vendor.
Unlike earlier Bomardier monorails, these new vehicles have flat walk-through floors.
Disabled Access
Monorail systems are accessed by lift from street level. As lift floor, platform floor and monorail car floors are at the same level there is no impediment to the disabled person using the Monorail.
There is no difference in accessability compared to a subway system, the lift just go up instead of down.
Safety
Tama monorail (Image: Wikipedia) |
Monorail systems are not immune from problems caused by poor design.
- The Seattle monorail has suffered a collision between two cars on a section of track where the beams were too close together. Tracks should always be far enough apart to allow monorail cars to pass each other.
- Where monorail pylons are located on or near road or rail lines they should be built to withstand substantial impacts without collapse.
- As far as possible Monorail cars should be fire proof and provide some means of escape. For example the Moscow monorail provides a emergency walkway along the entire length of the beamway. Alternatively monorail trains should be able to couple together so that defective monorail trains can be shunted or evacuated. Hitachi recommends evacuation from one monorail train to another one on the adjacent beam, although this has never been necessary.
- If monorail beams were to cross roads with a height clearance less than other existing infrastructure then a protecting beam should be placed across the road ahead of the monorail beam.
- The monorail should draw power at multiple points and have regular back-up generators capable of at least moving the monorail cars to the next station.
It should be noted that emergency evacuation from an above-ground monorail would generally be far easier than from a subway deep in the ground.
Monorail Myths & Misconceptions
Switches at the storage facility of Osaka Monorail. (Monorail Society). |
- Monorails switches are a problem. One of the more persistent myths about monorails is that there is a problem with switches. In reality all commuter transit monorails use switches as much as conventional rail systems. For more on monorail switches (including videos) see The Monorail Societies Switch Myth page.
- Monorails can't run at ground level. The above picture shows a monorail running just above ground level. The whole point of a monorail is that there is no space for a ground level transit system.
- With Monorails you can't have level crossings. Surely the dumbest of dumb critisisms! Monorails are built so you don't have any level crossings.
- Monorails can't go through tunnels. Many monorails run through tunnels for part of their length due to the difficult terrain. Examples are Tokyo and also Chongqing in China. Chongqing monorail has several underground stations.
- Monorails are not standardized. This means you could be locked into Hitachi forever because you bought a Hitachi system to start with - and you signed a really stupid contract that said you couldn't ever use anyone else's vehicles! In reality monorails are not that high-tech and a wide range of manufacturers could build new monorail cars to fit on any particular track.
- Monorails are slow. 80kmh is fine for a transit system. If you really want fast (e.g. ~500km/h) try a maglev monorail at 500km/h.
- Monorails are low capacity. Large Hitachi monorails carry 900 passengers in a six-car train. The Tokyo monorail has carried millions of commuters for decades.
Proposed Monorail Systems
The following monorail systems are suggested. Funding for this is from cancelling much smaller and more expensive subway projects. Priority is given to servicing high-density areas or routes with little existing public transport.
Melbourne:
What a high capacity 80km/h Australian monorail could look like (Seattle monorail) |
- Highpoint - Chadstone: Highpoint Shopping Centre - Flemington Racecourse - Dynon Road - North Melbourne Station - Southern Cross Station - Kings Way - Queens Way - Dandenong Road - Caulfield Station - Dandenong Road - Chadstone Shopping Centre.
- Docklands - Doncaster: Southern Cross Station - La Trobe Street - Victoria Parade - Hoddle Street - Eastern Freeway - Doncaster Road - Doncaster Shopping Town.
- Glen Waverley - Ferntree Gully: Connecting Glen Waverley railway line to Belgrave line via Knox & The Glen shopping centres.
- Chadstone: This monorail could provide a link between three railway lines across the geographic centre of Melbourne. Oakleigh Railway Station - Chadstone Shopping Centre - Holmesglen Railway Station - Ashburton Railway Station.
Sydney:
- Paramatta Road: City to Paramatta.
Gold Coast, Brisbane & Perth
See Skyrail Transit for more information about monorail proposals in other Australian cities.
Pedal Monorail Systems??
This could be feasible in some areas, and would also help tackle the obesity epidemic!
Schweeb pedal monorai, Rotorua, NZ. Capsules can reach up to 70km/h. (Image: www.shweeb.com) |
The Monorail Alternative
The The Monorail Society
Visit the Monorail Society
for more
information about monorails.
- Why Monorail?
- Monorail Cost.
- Monorail Types.
- Tokyo Monorail - a low visual impact monorail.
- Okinawa Monorail.
- Shonan Safege Monorail.
- Seattle Monorail showing the benefits of a walk-through design.
Hitachi Monorail Systems
Hitachi Rail is the leading manufacturer of high-capacity ALWEG monorail systems with over four decades of experience.Bombardier Monorail
Visit the Bombardier site for more
information about bombardier's automated monorail 'Innovia 300' and also this PDF.
New Monorails for Mumbai
15th Oct 2008: The Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority
(MMRDA) on Wednesday passed a plan for a 9.25-km monorail project at the
Bandra-Kurla Complex (BKC). more...
New Monorail for Korea
2nd Oct 2008: Hitachi has won the contract to build Korea's first
24km monorail for $US 333 million. This monorail will be fully automated, i.e. no drivers. more...
New Monorail for Dubai
1st Oct 2008: Hitachi has delivered the monorail cars for Dubai's
new monorail. more...
Chongqing Monorail
18th Jun 2004: Stunning Chongqing monorail opens ahead of schedule. Click here or here for
photos taken from the chinese language www.cqmetro.cn (Translate using Google).