I have been shocked that they can make friends cars and cities. If you want to understand it just open Google maps and look how highways goes in urban area long time with high attention.
You described Japanese transit perfectly: "In Japan, transit is seen as a universal good." The analogy I use in the US is that "Japan runs on mass transit like America runs on Dunkin'". In that context, it doesn't matter if it's a monorail, some other gadgetbahn or OG rail, if it's plugged into the rail transit interconnectivity matrix for Tokyo and goes where people want to go, it will do well. Monorails don't work when the gadgetbahn is sold as a panacea for a community without accompanying connectivity and development. Also nice description of string graphs. You are reminding me of senior year of high school where for homework one night we had to graph two trains on a time-versus-distance graph -- a rudimentary string diagram. I figured it out, no one else in my AP Physics Class did, the teacher spent the entire next day explaining how to do the graph, I took a nap, then at the end I raised my hand and told the class "yeah I was an intern for NJ TRANSIT last summer and we had entire walls covered in these but with hundreds of trains..."
I've lived in Japan for over 21 years now and have never owned a car. On rare occasions I have used a taxi, but mostly I used buses and trains which can take you to many places. Not every place, but many. (Helps that my wife speaks fluent Japanese. On our last vacation we stayed at a cheap hotel in the mountains west of Yamagata (5000 yen / person) where dam that created a lake floods every spring and flooding the trees. It was scenic, quiet, restful. The local train service hadn't been repaired since the Tohoku earthquake so the train system set up a bus line to each station. When we got to our destination, the hotel agreed to pick us up....for free! Sweet.)
The key is in fulfilling demand vs trying to create demand. If there is no demand there won't be any riders no matter how awesome the technology of your gadgetbahn.
I like the "public good" concept. I live in a heavily road (car) dependent place; we indirectly encourage people to use roads by giving them a lot of funding (gas taxes pay for less than the full cost). And then we under-fund trains. Pay for good train infrastructure and the cost to KEEP using it is cheap, so the public benefits
Here in São Paulo we have a monorail that has around 124k users per day, and it's a good option that is not even close to its full capacity, is getting some love from the population from its launch because it attends a very unattended part of the city. The problem is, that this is the first one in Brazil and we have a lot of issues related to the technology, from cars crashing (due to human error) to equipment falling from the trains in the street below (due to a bursting tire). So it has a lot of potential and people is liking it but the company itself is having trouble making it good and stable.
The variety in service pattern is really what makes Japanese mass transit efficient, to squeeze convenience out of given infrastructure. Similar local, express services are provided on most commuter rail lines in Tokyo, with various patterns depending on the time of the day. It is very confusing at first, but extremely convenient for the locals once they get used to it. The problem of lost capacity as the result of diversified service pattern, mentioned in the video, is also a (sort of) paradox railway operators face in Tokyo. Since competition between rail lines requires them to run fast services, but running too many express results in lost absolute capacity (thus overcrowding). Also, many companies in Tokyo tackle overcrowding during rush hour by method of distance separation (遠近分離), meaning trying to separate passengers by those who travel longer distances and shorter distances. Express trains will pick up passengers from suburbs afar, and skip stations in urban areas until they drop them all at interchange or terminus. This is because stopping at urban stations with trains already packed with commuters from suburbs, only causes longer boarding times (and decreased train frequency) as people try to get on to the crowded train. It is better in the real world to skip stations for these trains, and not stop until the city center. To compensate, local or semi-express trains will begin service mid way along the line to pick up passengers traveling shorter distances near urban centers, while express train skips these station. This can occur in multiple layers, like the Odakyu line which has Rapid Express, Commuter Express, Commuter Semi-Express, and Local trains (in rush hour) that picks up passengers from different geographical locations within the line, while maintaining competitiveness in time taken to travel to city center from major regional hubs against other railway companies. On the other hand, Tokyu Den-en-toshi Line turns all Express trains into Semi-Express train during rush hour, which stops at all stations on the most crowded section to maximize capacity (same strategy as Tokyo monorail). So, I believe this diversification of service pattern and capacity is a complicated balance that cannot only be solved by ideal capacity maximization. Sorry for the long rumble, I think this is a fascinating topic.
I love our monorail in Okinawa (Naha, Yui Rail). The two-car trains are pretty short compared to other Japanese monorails, but it’s very affordable and very frequent. Very quiet too.
I'm not a fan of monorails, but I will always be a cheerleader for the Shonan Monorail and the Chiba Urban Monorail, both of which are suspended systems. Those two seem to have achieved incredibly small ground infrastructure footprints, and are the two systems that won me over on the mode.
I quite like the RapidKL monorail line from Central to Tikiwangsa its doubletracked for the most part and frequent enough to be useful and great interchange with the rest of the network & suburban trains
If you do plan to do rail lines made for the Olympics, please discuss the operations of existing rail for the Olympics as well! There are quite a lot of stories to be had, such as when Dallas lent around 1/3rd of its fleet of trains to Salt Lake for the 2002 Olympics! Another suggestion would be to make a video on the feasibility of express services on dual-track rail lines with overtakes and crossovers. I have pitched several concepts for express lines on DART and I'd like to know if the concept as a whole is feasible. Great video Reece, just about all of your videos are some of the most well-made transit-related videos on the platform.
Since you brought up Monorails I thought it would be fitting to give a shout-out to the late Kim Peterson who founded The Monorail Society and was one of the biggest champions for promoting Monorails in many industry and transit fan circles. I don’t know if his site is still up but it’s worth looking him up cause he had an incredible resource on what’s good on Monorails.
I would like to talk more about Olympic rail projects that can have a significant impact to the city's public transit. I have here some examples of Olympic projects you can talk about: Tokyo 1964: Shinkansen, Munich 1972: the S-Bahn and U-Bahn, Montreal 1976: the Metro, Salt Lake City 2002: TRAX, Athens 2004: Athens Metro, Torino 2006: the Metro, Beijing 2008: Metro and High Speed Rail, Vancouver 2010: Skytrain Canada Line, London 2012: the Stratford Rail Hub and HS1, Rio 2016: the BRT and Paris 2024: Grand Paris Express
I have been following your channel for quite a while now. The great thing about this channel, is that so many of your ideas and teachings are universally applicable, across differing economies. Infact, the insights that I get about people-centric and purpose-centric transit are so good, I believe such channels are a vital part of extrinsic learning for policymakers. Kudos to you and keep up the good work !
1:42 - That's Chongqing, China's Liziba (李子坝) station. Though it's been open for years, it's now become a tourist attraction because the station is inside an apartment building. (You have to exit the station on the 6th floor to access the apartment building, since the apartment/station is built on a hill.) Also, there's no elevator, so hopefully the escalators work. Edit: As for the monorail itself, my experience on them was great. I lived in a building next to one, and though you could hear them going by, they weren't loud at all. I thought for a while that all Chongqing's trains were monorail, but they aren't.
Agreed. Traveling through tunnels all the time is boring to me. I like to be able to look around when traveling. Monorails allow this much more easily than other forms of rail transportation.
I think the thing that makes systems like monorails "gadgetty" is that they resemble typical systems but have significant and novel differences. This novelty comes with well understood issues. But it doesn't automatically make these sorts of systems bad. It really depends on the upside that these novel differences bring to the system. I think a great example is BART. It famously uses a wide gauge to improve the stability of the rolling stock that was intentionally very light weight. The weight of the rolling stock was limited by the lightweight viaducts used along much of the route in Oakland. Did this use of uniquely lightweight cars on a unique track gauge mean that BART was locked into custom rolling stock for ever? You bet! Did the use of lower cost viaducts mean that more BART could be built for the available money? Also yes. For this reason, it doesn't matter that BART is a little bit gadgetty. I think the same logic should be applied to any slightly novel system.
The main thing that makes it 'gadgety', really, is the lack of standardized support infrastructure (causing logistical issues with construction and maintenance) and their use in places where their advantages aren't relevant, resulting in increased cost with no benefit. When used where their advantages over regular rail are relevant enough to exceed their disadvantages relative to regualar rail... they're not really a gadgetbahn, or at least are right down the lowest end of the scale. When used where their advantages don't actually offer sufficient benefit to outweight their disadvantages, they are absolutely a gadgetbahn and regular rail should have been built there instead. The same is true of all gadgetbahns really, save that for an awful lot of them, unlike monorails, there is no actual real world situation where their advantages actually Exist. Monorails aren't in that catagory. And it's looking like Maglavs may have finally escaped from that catagory too... hopefully. That said, pretty much anything with 'pods' is somewhere between a gadgetbahn and a flat out scam, so...
You're correct to say that there is no generally accepted standard for monorails, like there are for steel-on-steel railways. It's worth noting, however, that modern monorails do use the same signalling equipment as their traditional counterparts, which can include ECTS. This means that although you do get some vendor lock-in when building a monorail, it's only limited to the rolling stock. They're still a poor choice for most cities though.
Another aspect that makes monorails make a lot more sense in Tokyo than most other places is how tightly fit together everything is, so having a line in the sky that does not take up much in the way of ground-level surface area is a big benefit
This is exactly how express service on the very underated Keio Inokashira line from Shibuya to Kichijoki runs as well and you can visually see it standing at either terminal station: Locals depart first, then about 5 minutes later, the express trains depart. The only passing station is right in the middle, Eifukucho station where they meet and allow for cross platform service switching. In fact Keio runs a bit of clockface running with this relatively simple service scheduling, where off peak locals depart Shibuya at :01,11, 21, 31~ and expresses go :06, 16, 26, etc past the hour as an example. Now my main point of contention has always been why most services in North America don't run express services outside of the NYC Subway and 2 CTA L trains...
It seems like in China, monorails are seen in the same category as a light metro rather than necessarily a gadgetbahn (just one possible option for a medium capacity rail line). It'll be interesting to see how many get built there. I remember seeing quite a few in planning phases while researching. Definitely some drawbacks but certainly a fun and sorta wacky looking way of achieving the same sorts of things as a conventional urban rail line
I think it's starting to include medium-low speed maglevs as China is starting to build more of them. The tightening of restrictions on building full metros in the last few years means that over 55 cities cannot build one. The last city to get approval and built was Luoyang (which I think is pretty lucky) which is a small-medium city by China's standards. But I think other cities will start on planning a light metro as it has half the requirements of a full metro.
@@Justin-xk7yj for sure. i bet it's a bummer for the cities that are just barely below requirements, but hopefully this will be a good substitute. I imagine the even smaller cities will be looking at modern trams and bus lanes/BRT to ease traffic now that they've been implemented on corridors of bigger cities that didn't warrant a metro line.
Honestly monorails aren't that bad. They are cheap to construct, have a small footprint and cheap to maintain. They do have downsides, but sadly few want to discuss the technical aspects of a monorail and want to reduce to a joke that was the Simpson's episode (Matt Groenig likes monorails and was upset how that episode was received). The main problems are the rubber tires. They are horrible for track switching and a monorail system has to go through a lot of them as they wear out fast. For safety reasons rubber tired transit systems also have to have redundant axles and tires to maintain stability during inevitable blowouts. But these extra wheels hurt efficiency and increase indirect costs. The Vegas monorail goes through ~360 tires per year for just a limited line. I think monorails are good for smaller cities where space is challenging and few interconnecting lines. But in bigger cities where raw speed/capacity/frequency/interconneting are paramount, metal wheels (conventional trains) are a better option.
@@dangouge5281 You're only the thousandth person to say that... The Simpsons needed an episode where the town wasted money on an unneeded and expensive highway project (which happen all the time). Roads are incredibly expensive...a simple freeway interchange itself can cost 1 billion dollars to rebuild.
@@AaronSmith-sx4ez agreed. I would love them to have some kind of Robert Moses character manipulating Mayor Quincy into building a bunch of highways and ruining neighbourhoods.
I have been watching trains running every 2 minutes on the Bangkok Yellow Line monorail before it opens to the public in a couple of weeks, from a webcam I set up in my apartment which overlooks it (although I am currently in London!). This is a high-capacity system, the stations are huge and can accomodate trains double the length of the initial stock. This and the pink line will give Bangkok 64 Km of monorail and 53 stations. Many commentators dont think it will cope with the demand though. Your point about evacuation is addressed by having a walkway the whole length of the line between the guideways.
You should check out Line 3 of Panama Metro. Japan is quite involved in that project, Japan government is funding the project and the project manager is the japanese Nippon Koei. Because of difficulties in the terrain and very steep slopes (due to the hills) in the vast majority of the route, monorail was selected as the adequette solution instead of traditional rail. It'll use Japanesse Technology. Rolling stock, the signaling systems, telecommunication systems, power systems, control center, platform screen doors and depot equipment for the monorail are being provided by Hitachi and it's capacity will be 20,000 passengers per hour per direction.
Speaking of gadgetbahns, have you noticed that the future and last update for Cities Skylines was paying hommage to the not regretted TVR guided bus that ceased service in Nancy not so long ago? They include it in the new list of many trolleybuses for the game !
I’ve always loved the hanging Shonan monorail. The hills in the area grant them advantages over bus or rail and being a tourist heavy area it’s always more reliable than buses. I’m not sure if it’s still there but the defunct remains that went to dreamland is also nostalgic.
Really loving this channel. I always learn something from it--like monorails are disliked by planners. Really really didn't know that. And sure, legacy Olympic projects would be interesting.
I’ve been a longtime watcher and I think this is one of your best videos yet. Your explanation about track passing and frequency using the string diagram is phenomenal - easy to understand and intuitive. I’d love to see a full video on this using other examples, particularly the Swiss system as you mentioned. Keep up the amazing work.
The Tokyo monorail has a special place in my heart because you could see it from just behind my grandparents house. It was the backdrop for many moments in my early years, both good and bad.
Chongqing also has underground monorail - one of the two lines goes underground in the densest central part of the city (even cooler since it comes out of the side of a hill and immediately becomes elevated). The other line goes underground under intercity train lines at Chongqing North Railway station. I'd argue that Chongqing actually does monorail better than anywhere else, given how much monorail they have and how high the ridership is on their two monorail lines.
Thanks for the clear explanation about the management of service on a single line and of the string diagrams. I have tried to figure that out myself many times but I was missing some details.
As an ex-castmember at Disneyland, that's why we removed free priority queues (in Disneyland Paris, the only Disneyland that used to do it for free) because express queues were slowing the regular queue, which means people were even more eager to use the free express queue. (it was free because it was limited to one free pass/ride/day)
That was a fascinating video. I travelled on my first monorail ever this year, in Daegi, S Korea. This almost 24 km, driverless, Hitachi-based system is also the subject of an excellent film by Luke Starkenberg.
Great video. I think Haneda has at least two more videos in it you could consider. The existing Keikyu line and it's kind of whacky Kamata station but maybe more interestingly, the planned Haneda Airport Access Line by JR which will re-use an existing freight line that goes almost all the way to the airport and is also almost connected to the Rinkai Line offering potential greatly improved access to Haneda from Chiba (and eventually western Tokyo though that connection is a lot trickier/costlier).
KQ is a fun one. Besides the part where they (along with parts of the Toei Asakusa and Keisei Lines) are the very few non-Shinkansen railway lines in Japan that run on *standard gauge,* it also has a morning liner service that goes from Haneda to Narita (it's also the _only_ service that specifically skips Keikyu-kamata).
It will be great if you talk more about the cost of various projects. Like cost of construction/ duration of construction. Number of thousand people using it etc. It will help people see past some of the shinny penny syndrome
In Bangkok they are building some mono rail lines. Because of the frequent flooding subways are not really a option. And Mono rails are less a eye sore then the skytrains.
I live within close walking distance of the Haneda monorail. It's part of my everyday commute. Also nice to have an easy straight shot to the airport whenever we travel. Though I hate the seat layouts of the older cars.
Shounan monorail is another interesting monorail in Japan. It uses overhead tracks, and is a single track line, and has a tunnel. It was made by Mitsubishi.
Train Graphs are so useful. One of the most influential books on information design (The Visual Display of Quantitative Information; Edward Tufte) has an abstract of a train graph on its front cover (that of the PLM mainline in France, which I think was where it was first used). There's also an explanation on YT by Hannah Fry on the Numberphile channel. And it's good to see that a monorail can be useful! Excellent video as always. That bit at the end where the track hops over the highway is impressive, even if the view is foreshortened.
The lower space impact, that a monorail viaduct has, as compared to a normal elevated rail line, is the biggest advantage of monorails. If this allows you to build elevated instead of tunneling, then you can save a lot of money.
Nop, it's very difficult to build it due to lack of manufacturing of components, in Brazil we are struggling with this for 9 years,every company that make components always go to bankruptcy. There's no demand for this to maintain the production, metro has a lot of competitors in the market of trains and components, but monorail doesn't have many.
The Japanese are really good at planning for dispatching that can allow frequent trains with express service. This is lacking in almost every else in the world.
Subway trains and monorail trains have roughly the same amount of construction costs on a per-passenger basis. A monorail line has about a quarter of the capacity of a subway line, and a monorail line is about a quarter less expensive to build. For these reasons, a place such as the West side of Los Angeles may be a good candidate for monorail systems because the high residential and employment densities, as well as the major activity centers, are spread evenly across a relatively broad area. Four parallel monorail lines may be more useful to people than a single subway line is. Also, subways often take decades to build. Overall travel time is of primary importance, but the West side of L.A. is also difficult to navigate politically. The area is where much of the region's economic activity and high-paying jobs are centered, but the area also has a concentration of very rich people who, on one hand, have objections to all elevated rail, including monorails, on the mistaken belief that they, intrinsically, reduce property values and who, on the other hand, would probably be more inclined to use public transit, themselves, if doing so offered elevated views above ground in southern California. Most of the criticisms of monorail systems seem to revolve around the fact that they are not being used more broadly, but that fact seems like a chicken-and-the-egg situation.
There is also a extremly good monorail in Germany. The "Wuppertaler Schwebebahn" is build above the River, the Wupper, along the whole city is build. It works that good, because the city is almost exclusively build in the Wupper-Valley, so the Schwebebahn can be used by nearly everyone int the city. It is also very old, build in the early 20th century.
Thanks this is a amazing video ! I like that you can also point out it's shortcomings, but i like this japanease way of thinking; just extract the best from what you've got and people won't care that it's a gadgetbahn
The Cairo monorail, under construction (Bombardier consortium), is three times longer than the Tokyo monorail. The project is proceeding quickly, testing is commencing.
The USA has done so little for so long that maybe it is time to consider a monorail across the Sepulveda Pass in LA. It could be built fast and can climb the steep grades.
There are still a few issues for the Tokyo Monorail though: 1. Travellers find it difficult to carry large luggage onto small monorail trains 2. Concrete tracks are deteriorating more severely than expected, but track replacement requires a complete shutdown of the line for some time unlike conventional rail 3. Transfer between monorail and JR in Hamamatsucho is still not too convenicent So JR is building a new railway line to Haneda Airport to provide far better convenience, meanwhile they can renovate the monorail when the new JR line opens.
I think roller coasters hold the key to simple elevated track that can handle sharp curves and sudden steep grades. Linear induction motor coils along the whole track (think Dallas Wedway Peoplemover) could provide propulsion and braking to the individual cars/trains. The track could basically look like roller coaster track except that instead of doing loops, it's ascending quickly out of the station and running flat or along land contours for half a mile or so above a walkway but only blocking the sun when there's a train.
I wish the monorail from Vancouver's Expo 86 still existed in Vancouver (and not in a British theme park). Even after what happened in Brockway, Ogdenville, and North Haverbrook, that would be great for just the downtown core.
I really hope this can be replicated, here in Monterrey they just started construction on 2 of 3 new lines that will double the length of the existing system, but they are all monorail.
"space between the trains" This is quite literally the argument for HS2. Get high speed rail off the West Coast Mainline, and you massively increase capacity as all the other trains on that line will be going at roughly the same speed.
I think what a lot of people are unhappy about is the staggering cost of HS2. Our friends the Japanese are building a god damn 280km MAGLEV line, 90% of which is TUNNELLED(!!), for under half the cost of the UK's conventional rail project!!
Would have love if you have tackled the economics of this line, how much it had cost to build and how much it costs to run, to know if the technology it uses (ie, monoraill! MONORAILL!!! ... and now everyone reading this has the Simpsons song in their heads) has a negative or positive impact. To be fair about "monorail are not standard", most of urban transits are tailored to their particular needs, some on a per-line basis, and it's rare to have a standardized thing. Even railways are different between countries, and having trains capable of running on different overhead wires power supplies and signaling system is very specific and expensive (and that's why planes and trucks here in Europe wins everything when a border crossing is needed). Anyway, Japan makes cool stuff and at this point to keep up on the world, they should build transit systems based on giant four-legged cat-shaped MechaBus.
Why monorails are gadgetbahns and filling in only a few nieches: They the most extreme case of an elevated metro, sufferring from crippling overspecification: Excellent for a grade separated, elevated line but it's only excellent as a grade separated, elevated line. Their permanent elevation means they can't be really put on the ground (this does force grade separation, at least) while putting them below grade is a bit of a waste (they require larger tunnels, for example), the rails are bulky (especially saddle monorails) and slow to switch which doesn't allow a high speed and frequency service when branching/interlining comes up. The advantages is what Reece has mentioned: They use their guideway as rails (smaller footprint) and smaller turn radii, the latter because from my knowledge (correct me if I'm wrong) they're equivalent to narrow gauge tracks which also have better turning radii than tracks with a broader spacing. Most of them (with Wuppertal's is steel-on-steel as a notable exception) also run on rubber tyres which come with the same ad- and disadvantages as with a rubber-tyred metro. What's really impressive IMO of the Haneda Monorail is the express service and the tail track terminus because of the aforementioned track switching.
Chuo line also operates the same way where there are express trains passing at specific stations but only in the off peak and on peak there are no express trains
If I remember right the problem with the elevated stations that came with the monorail system in wuppertal is accessibility for disabled people. The system is more than a 100 years old and people didn't consider accessibility to that time. Making it accessible is very expensive
Glad someone mentioned the Osaka Monorail. I rode it a few times when I lived there and was the first ever monorail for me. But can I get some love on the hanging "Wuppertal" style monorails found in Chiba and Ofuna/Fujisawa/Enoshima/Shonan?
My take away, only use a monorail if 1) you need to go up/down gradients normal tracks can't handle. 2) go around corners normal tracks can't handle. And 3) have little space to use for transit. If you have all three problems, a monorail may be warranted.
Thank you so much for this video, its soo informative!! do you mind doing a video about Egypt's mega monorail project? I think think some people would like to hear your point of video after watching this
Most trains in Japan express services, at least on lines heading out of Tokyo to more suburban areas. In fact, they run MULTIPLE express services, a lot of line diagrams/schedules have like 5 parallel lines running, because there's a bunch of variants of express service.
Nobody mention the oldest still running "Monorail" (a suspension monorail) in Wuppertal, Germany? Opened 1901 and build as short transit railway because the Wuppertal (Valley of the Wupper River) is a deep and narrow valley where there was no place to use a conventional railway or add streets to reply the need of better infrastructure. Therefore they decided to build a suspension railway mostly on top of the only available space: The River.
I've ridden the Haneda monorail - it works, it's clean and efficient, it gets you to your destination. The older trains were a bit luggage-unfriendly, the newer ones are better. However there is one thing in it which sucks regally, and that is Hamamatsucho station. The fact that it connects only to JR is a bummer, because it adds one more transfer if you need to get on to the Metro. OK, Daimon station is close to Hamamatsucho, but you need to get out of the station to transfer, a bummer again. If only they would extend it to Shimbashi....
Seeing that one specific monorail line can get a video, I hope in the future we get a video for automated guideway transit in Japan like Yurikamome, Kanazawa Seaside Line, Kobe Port Liner, etc.
A lot of monorails are set up to fail. For instance, the Las Vegas Monorail stations are quite a distance from the hotels on the strip, hardly helpful in a city with blistering heat much of the year. They also never extended it to the airport or convention center, a boon to car services and taxis, but a bane to commuters.
In my hometown of Cebu, two monorail lines have been proposed to be built. The Central Line, which will run from downtown Cebu City to Talisay City and the Airport Line, which will run from Cebu City to the Mactan Airport.
I think monorails will be easier to construct because imagine closing two lanes (most of our roads have a maximum of 4 lanes) just for an LRT that takes too long to finish, worsening the traffic.
First step to building a successful monorail: Build it with the intent of transporting the "public" to major destinations and NOT just some billion dollar vanity project by "experts"
Imo there is another type of monorail that, unless built somewhere without ridership, is automatically good. High speed maglev, for the simple reason that it provides a service normal trains simply cant. In addition to that the benefits of a maglev get more pronounced as speed increases (energy and noise savings) while the drawbacks are partialy shared by regular high speed rail, the more the faster it goes (expensive dedicated track, high cost, few companies make them)
It's a very convienient monorail. I stayed near Hamamatsucho in 2019 and it took only 18 minutes to Haneda Internationsl terminal. I thought there would be expresses during the morning peak taking only 11 minutes but this video explained why this wasn't the case. I also think the Portliner system in Kobe warrants a video of its own. That serves Kobe airport as well as a convention centre, IKEA, parks and residential areas.
As someone who lives in a city where a monorail line is an integral part of its transit, I never understood the west seemingly monorail-phonic views where they have proven much more than just mere gadgetbahn
Couldn't passing loops also enable night service on a metro line default. You could isolate one track for maintenance and run the other as a less frequent version service, which at night it already would be.
I'm not a fan of monorails except for the novelty factor but the more I learn about Brightline West's plans for their Rancho Cucamonga to Las Vegas line I think perhaps a conventional "old school" rubber tired monorail may have been the better choice after all. That is given all the constraints imposed by Brightline West's route selection pretty much guaranteeing a single track mainline for perpetuity, steep grades and a curvy route better suited for cars than HSR. At least with a monorail the median should be able to accommodate dual guide beams (aka "rails") not constraining the service to the current proposed single track operation. The elevated guideway also would not create a barrier to wildlife crossings as the current proposal which basically forms a massive barrier down the middle of I-15 insurmountable except at a few select wildlife crossings. Sure it would not be as fast as conventional HSR but the current routing imposes speed constraints anyways. A monorail is after all a bus on a guideway so it seems fitting for it to run along freeway medians. The operational dynamics are similar to road vehicles after all. For future connection to CA HSR a monorail could still extend to Palmdale and they could share platforms with conventional rail. There could always be through ticketing between CA HSR and Brightline West where the services don't need to utilize a common ROW as long as there are seamless connections between the modes.
Monorails seem so underrated to me. Is that the Seattle line shown in the beginning? You have the pillars on sidewalks and pedestrian islands as well as between lanes . You could easily build this all over cities in mant cities. Youd have to redesign the entire road system if you went for light rail (metro?) or whatever it's called and subways are too dang expensive
Japan with all their Toyota, Honda, Mitsubishi, Nissan etc., still managed to be on top of both Automotive sales, and Public Transportation heaven.
I have been shocked that they can make friends cars and cities. If you want to understand it just open Google maps and look how highways goes in urban area long time with high attention.
Government actually is investing on public transport since it existed allows it to do so
(Unlike america with their lobbying)
You described Japanese transit perfectly: "In Japan, transit is seen as a universal good." The analogy I use in the US is that "Japan runs on mass transit like America runs on Dunkin'". In that context, it doesn't matter if it's a monorail, some other gadgetbahn or OG rail, if it's plugged into the rail transit interconnectivity matrix for Tokyo and goes where people want to go, it will do well. Monorails don't work when the gadgetbahn is sold as a panacea for a community without accompanying connectivity and development.
Also nice description of string graphs. You are reminding me of senior year of high school where for homework one night we had to graph two trains on a time-versus-distance graph -- a rudimentary string diagram. I figured it out, no one else in my AP Physics Class did, the teacher spent the entire next day explaining how to do the graph, I took a nap, then at the end I raised my hand and told the class "yeah I was an intern for NJ TRANSIT last summer and we had entire walls covered in these but with hundreds of trains..."
Extremely complex string diagrams are one of those things that us just very satisfying, great comment!
I've lived in Japan for over 21 years now and have never owned a car. On rare occasions I have used a taxi, but mostly I used buses and trains which can take you to many places. Not every place, but many. (Helps that my wife speaks fluent Japanese. On our last vacation we stayed at a cheap hotel in the mountains west of Yamagata (5000 yen / person) where dam that created a lake floods every spring and flooding the trees. It was scenic, quiet, restful. The local train service hadn't been repaired since the Tohoku earthquake so the train system set up a bus line to each station. When we got to our destination, the hotel agreed to pick us up....for free! Sweet.)
The key is in fulfilling demand vs trying to create demand. If there is no demand there won't be any riders no matter how awesome the technology of your gadgetbahn.
I like the "public good" concept. I live in a heavily road (car) dependent place; we indirectly encourage people to use roads by giving them a lot of funding (gas taxes pay for less than the full cost). And then we under-fund trains.
Pay for good train infrastructure and the cost to KEEP using it is cheap, so the public benefits
Always makes my heart warm and fuzzy when my favorite puplic transport youtuber talks about our local transit system. 🥰
Thanks for watching!
I agree, when he talked about Perth, it made me smile as no one recognises Perth anymore.
@@Pigeon_journey Perth Gang
@@MitchellOrd yeah!!!
Here in São Paulo we have a monorail that has around 124k users per day, and it's a good option that is not even close to its full capacity, is getting some love from the population from its launch because it attends a very unattended part of the city. The problem is, that this is the first one in Brazil and we have a lot of issues related to the technology, from cars crashing (due to human error) to equipment falling from the trains in the street below (due to a bursting tire). So it has a lot of potential and people is liking it but the company itself is having trouble making it good and stable.
The variety in service pattern is really what makes Japanese mass transit efficient, to squeeze convenience out of given infrastructure. Similar local, express services are provided on most commuter rail lines in Tokyo, with various patterns depending on the time of the day. It is very confusing at first, but extremely convenient for the locals once they get used to it.
The problem of lost capacity as the result of diversified service pattern, mentioned in the video, is also a (sort of) paradox railway operators face in Tokyo. Since competition between rail lines requires them to run fast services, but running too many express results in lost absolute capacity (thus overcrowding). Also, many companies in Tokyo tackle overcrowding during rush hour by method of distance separation (遠近分離), meaning trying to separate passengers by those who travel longer distances and shorter distances. Express trains will pick up passengers from suburbs afar, and skip stations in urban areas until they drop them all at interchange or terminus. This is because stopping at urban stations with trains already packed with commuters from suburbs, only causes longer boarding times (and decreased train frequency) as people try to get on to the crowded train. It is better in the real world to skip stations for these trains, and not stop until the city center. To compensate, local or semi-express trains will begin service mid way along the line to pick up passengers traveling shorter distances near urban centers, while express train skips these station. This can occur in multiple layers, like the Odakyu line which has Rapid Express, Commuter Express, Commuter Semi-Express, and Local trains (in rush hour) that picks up passengers from different geographical locations within the line, while maintaining competitiveness in time taken to travel to city center from major regional hubs against other railway companies. On the other hand, Tokyu Den-en-toshi Line turns all Express trains into Semi-Express train during rush hour, which stops at all stations on the most crowded section to maximize capacity (same strategy as Tokyo monorail). So, I believe this diversification of service pattern and capacity is a complicated balance that cannot only be solved by ideal capacity maximization.
Sorry for the long rumble, I think this is a fascinating topic.
Absolutely a fascinating topic! Trying to manage network capacity is super interesting and involved!
I love our monorail in Okinawa (Naha, Yui Rail). The two-car trains are pretty short compared to other Japanese monorails, but it’s very affordable and very frequent. Very quiet too.
It's quite an interesting system!
I would love to go on that one day!
I love how even Okinawa has rail transit
I'm not a fan of monorails, but I will always be a cheerleader for the Shonan Monorail and the Chiba Urban Monorail, both of which are suspended systems. Those two seem to have achieved incredibly small ground infrastructure footprints, and are the two systems that won me over on the mode.
Unfortunately the chiba monorail line loses lots of money in operation due to the poor planning
I recommend you check out the Wuppertal Schwebebahn, also incredibly small ground infrastructure footprint.
You nailed it right at the beginning. "not standard".
In this context, "not standard" = expensive to operate. (and build)
So if passenger monorail was standardized, would it be close to the same cost constructing other light rail transit modes on a per-km basis?
I quite like the RapidKL monorail line from Central to Tikiwangsa its doubletracked for the most part and frequent enough to be useful and great interchange with the rest of the network & suburban trains
If you do plan to do rail lines made for the Olympics, please discuss the operations of existing rail for the Olympics as well! There are quite a lot of stories to be had, such as when Dallas lent around 1/3rd of its fleet of trains to Salt Lake for the 2002 Olympics! Another suggestion would be to make a video on the feasibility of express services on dual-track rail lines with overtakes and crossovers. I have pitched several concepts for express lines on DART and I'd like to know if the concept as a whole is feasible.
Great video Reece, just about all of your videos are some of the most well-made transit-related videos on the platform.
I appreciate it! Thank you! Will take this all into account!
Since you brought up Monorails I thought it would be fitting to give a shout-out to the late Kim Peterson who founded The Monorail Society and was one of the biggest champions for promoting Monorails in many industry and transit fan circles. I don’t know if his site is still up but it’s worth looking him up cause he had an incredible resource on what’s good on Monorails.
I would like to talk more about Olympic rail projects that can have a significant impact to the city's public transit. I have here some examples of Olympic projects you can talk about: Tokyo 1964: Shinkansen, Munich 1972: the S-Bahn and U-Bahn, Montreal 1976: the Metro, Salt Lake City 2002: TRAX, Athens 2004: Athens Metro, Torino 2006: the Metro, Beijing 2008: Metro and High Speed Rail, Vancouver 2010: Skytrain Canada Line, London 2012: the Stratford Rail Hub and HS1, Rio 2016: the BRT and Paris 2024: Grand Paris Express
So so so many!
I have been following your channel for quite a while now. The great thing about this channel, is that so many of your ideas and teachings are universally applicable, across differing economies. Infact, the insights that I get about people-centric and purpose-centric transit are so good, I believe such channels are a vital part of extrinsic learning for policymakers. Kudos to you and keep up the good work !
Thanks for watching! I appreciate it!
1:42 - That's Chongqing, China's Liziba (李子坝) station. Though it's been open for years, it's now become a tourist attraction because the station is inside an apartment building. (You have to exit the station on the 6th floor to access the apartment building, since the apartment/station is built on a hill.) Also, there's no elevator, so hopefully the escalators work.
Edit: As for the monorail itself, my experience on them was great. I lived in a building next to one, and though you could hear them going by, they weren't loud at all. I thought for a while that all Chongqing's trains were monorail, but they aren't.
Cool to point it out. Don't know if there are other monorails systems besides Chongqing in China
Yes, I was showing it just to talk about Monorails in general~!
@@RMTransit Yes I understand, and thank you for your informative video!
@@lenmienyiwar Wuhu, at the south of Nanjing, has a monorail system using Bombardier Innovia trains.
Actually Chongqing monorail used the same technology as Japan’s monorail systems, the first rolling stocks was directly imported from Hitachi.
I really like monorails and I'm glad they're getting some love.
Agreed. Traveling through tunnels all the time is boring to me. I like to be able to look around when traveling. Monorails allow this much more easily than other forms of rail transportation.
Fantastic idea using the string diagram to explain frequency. Would love to see more of that or even a dedicated video!
This was a fascinating lesson on both monorails and transit capacity/efficiency. Thanks for the education!
Thanks for watching!
I think the thing that makes systems like monorails "gadgetty" is that they resemble typical systems but have significant and novel differences. This novelty comes with well understood issues. But it doesn't automatically make these sorts of systems bad.
It really depends on the upside that these novel differences bring to the system. I think a great example is BART. It famously uses a wide gauge to improve the stability of the rolling stock that was intentionally very light weight. The weight of the rolling stock was limited by the lightweight viaducts used along much of the route in Oakland. Did this use of uniquely lightweight cars on a unique track gauge mean that BART was locked into custom rolling stock for ever? You bet! Did the use of lower cost viaducts mean that more BART could be built for the available money? Also yes.
For this reason, it doesn't matter that BART is a little bit gadgetty. I think the same logic should be applied to any slightly novel system.
The main thing that makes it 'gadgety', really, is the lack of standardized support infrastructure (causing logistical issues with construction and maintenance) and their use in places where their advantages aren't relevant, resulting in increased cost with no benefit. When used where their advantages over regular rail are relevant enough to exceed their disadvantages relative to regualar rail... they're not really a gadgetbahn, or at least are right down the lowest end of the scale. When used where their advantages don't actually offer sufficient benefit to outweight their disadvantages, they are absolutely a gadgetbahn and regular rail should have been built there instead.
The same is true of all gadgetbahns really, save that for an awful lot of them, unlike monorails, there is no actual real world situation where their advantages actually Exist. Monorails aren't in that catagory. And it's looking like Maglavs may have finally escaped from that catagory too... hopefully. That said, pretty much anything with 'pods' is somewhere between a gadgetbahn and a flat out scam, so...
Monorail! Monorail! Monorail!
It's quite infectious!
@@RMTransit worked for Ogdenville!
@@MontytheHorse AND North Haverbrook!
Mono-doh....!
You're correct to say that there is no generally accepted standard for monorails, like there are for steel-on-steel railways. It's worth noting, however, that modern monorails do use the same signalling equipment as their traditional counterparts, which can include ECTS. This means that although you do get some vendor lock-in when building a monorail, it's only limited to the rolling stock.
They're still a poor choice for most cities though.
Another aspect that makes monorails make a lot more sense in Tokyo than most other places is how tightly fit together everything is, so having a line in the sky that does not take up much in the way of ground-level surface area is a big benefit
This is exactly how express service on the very underated Keio Inokashira line from Shibuya to Kichijoki runs as well and you can visually see it standing at either terminal station:
Locals depart first, then about 5 minutes later, the express trains depart. The only passing station is right in the middle, Eifukucho station where they meet and allow for cross platform service switching. In fact Keio runs a bit of clockface running with this relatively simple service scheduling, where off peak locals depart Shibuya at :01,11, 21, 31~ and expresses go :06, 16, 26, etc past the hour as an example.
Now my main point of contention has always been why most services in North America don't run express services outside of the NYC Subway and 2 CTA L trains...
I would argue that São Paulo monorail is the best implementation of a monorail being a high density one.
It seems like in China, monorails are seen in the same category as a light metro rather than necessarily a gadgetbahn (just one possible option for a medium capacity rail line). It'll be interesting to see how many get built there. I remember seeing quite a few in planning phases while researching. Definitely some drawbacks but certainly a fun and sorta wacky looking way of achieving the same sorts of things as a conventional urban rail line
I think it's starting to include medium-low speed maglevs as China is starting to build more of them.
The tightening of restrictions on building full metros in the last few years means that over 55 cities cannot build one. The last city to get approval and built was Luoyang (which I think is pretty lucky) which is a small-medium city by China's standards. But I think other cities will start on planning a light metro as it has half the requirements of a full metro.
@@Justin-xk7yj for sure. i bet it's a bummer for the cities that are just barely below requirements, but hopefully this will be a good substitute. I imagine the even smaller cities will be looking at modern trams and bus lanes/BRT to ease traffic now that they've been implemented on corridors of bigger cities that didn't warrant a metro line.
Honestly monorails aren't that bad. They are cheap to construct, have a small footprint and cheap to maintain. They do have downsides, but sadly few want to discuss the technical aspects of a monorail and want to reduce to a joke that was the Simpson's episode (Matt Groenig likes monorails and was upset how that episode was received). The main problems are the rubber tires. They are horrible for track switching and a monorail system has to go through a lot of them as they wear out fast. For safety reasons rubber tired transit systems also have to have redundant axles and tires to maintain stability during inevitable blowouts. But these extra wheels hurt efficiency and increase indirect costs. The Vegas monorail goes through ~360 tires per year for just a limited line. I think monorails are good for smaller cities where space is challenging and few interconnecting lines. But in bigger cities where raw speed/capacity/frequency/interconneting are paramount, metal wheels (conventional trains) are a better option.
Tell that to the residents of Brockway, Ogdenville, or North Haverbrook! (Downvote me if you must, I can't help myself.)
@@dangouge5281 You're only the thousandth person to say that... The Simpsons needed an episode where the town wasted money on an unneeded and expensive highway project (which happen all the time). Roads are incredibly expensive...a simple freeway interchange itself can cost 1 billion dollars to rebuild.
@@AaronSmith-sx4ez agreed. I would love them to have some kind of Robert Moses character manipulating Mayor Quincy into building a bunch of highways and ruining neighbourhoods.
If we can just get a Steel Wheeled Monorail, then we’re set.
@@ericlotze7724 Track switching would still be a pain.
That was a lot more technical and interesting than I expected! Thanks for explaining the string diagram.
This might be my favourite video of yours yet! Loved the string graph explanation and I really learned a lot, thanks :)
I have been watching trains running every 2 minutes on the Bangkok Yellow Line monorail before it opens to the public in a couple of weeks, from a webcam I set up in my apartment which overlooks it (although I am currently in London!).
This is a high-capacity system, the stations are huge and can accomodate trains double the length of the initial stock. This and the pink line will give Bangkok 64 Km of monorail and 53 stations. Many commentators dont think it will cope with the demand though.
Your point about evacuation is addressed by having a walkway the whole length of the line between the guideways.
You should check out Line 3 of Panama Metro. Japan is quite involved in that project, Japan government is funding the project and the project manager is the japanese Nippon Koei. Because of difficulties in the terrain and very steep slopes (due to the hills) in the vast majority of the route, monorail was selected as the adequette solution instead of traditional rail. It'll use Japanesse Technology. Rolling stock, the signaling systems, telecommunication systems, power systems, control center, platform screen doors and depot equipment for the monorail are being provided by Hitachi and it's capacity will be 20,000 passengers per hour per direction.
I cannot stop myself from smiling when at 9:37 the monorail goes up and over that hump. I wonder what that feel like for the passengers.
I am so hyped to going to Tokyo in the summer. I will finally be able to see all this insane transit infrastructure in real-life
Speaking of gadgetbahns, have you noticed that the future and last update for Cities Skylines was paying hommage to the not regretted TVR guided bus that ceased service in Nancy not so long ago? They include it in the new list of many trolleybuses for the game !
I’ve always loved the hanging Shonan monorail. The hills in the area grant them advantages over bus or rail and being a tourist heavy area it’s always more reliable than buses. I’m not sure if it’s still there but the defunct remains that went to dreamland is also nostalgic.
I rode it two months ago! Smooth, quick ride with great views.
Really loving this channel. I always learn something from it--like monorails are disliked by planners. Really really didn't know that. And sure, legacy Olympic projects would be interesting.
I’ve been a longtime watcher and I think this is one of your best videos yet. Your explanation about track passing and frequency using the string diagram is phenomenal - easy to understand and intuitive. I’d love to see a full video on this using other examples, particularly the Swiss system as you mentioned. Keep up the amazing work.
The Tokyo monorail has a special place in my heart because you could see it from just behind my grandparents house. It was the backdrop for many moments in my early years, both good and bad.
Chongqing also has underground monorail - one of the two lines goes underground in the densest central part of the city (even cooler since it comes out of the side of a hill and immediately becomes elevated). The other line goes underground under intercity train lines at Chongqing North Railway station. I'd argue that Chongqing actually does monorail better than anywhere else, given how much monorail they have and how high the ridership is on their two monorail lines.
The fact their station is inside of an apartment makes this a lot cooler, it shows what monorails are truly capable of in tight spaces.
Yep! Theres tons of interesting elements to their network!
I never thought I'd see "gadgetbahn can be good' on this channel. Now to watch it.
Thanks for the clear explanation about the management of service on a single line and of the string diagrams. I have tried to figure that out myself many times but I was missing some details.
Thanks! I think they are a very useful tool!
@@RMTransit Indeed. It would be interesting a video with explanation about railway management on a line of different types.
As an ex-castmember at Disneyland, that's why we removed free priority queues (in Disneyland Paris, the only Disneyland that used to do it for free) because express queues were slowing the regular queue, which means people were even more eager to use the free express queue.
(it was free because it was limited to one free pass/ride/day)
That was a fascinating video. I travelled on my first monorail ever this year, in Daegi, S Korea. This almost 24 km, driverless, Hitachi-based system is also the subject of an excellent film by Luke Starkenberg.
In panama, they (the japanese) are building a monorail for their 3rd metro line, that will cross the panama canal through a tunnel
Great video. I think Haneda has at least two more videos in it you could consider. The existing Keikyu line and it's kind of whacky Kamata station but maybe more interestingly, the planned Haneda Airport Access Line by JR which will re-use an existing freight line that goes almost all the way to the airport and is also almost connected to the Rinkai Line offering potential greatly improved access to Haneda from Chiba (and eventually western Tokyo though that connection is a lot trickier/costlier).
KQ is a fun one. Besides the part where they (along with parts of the Toei Asakusa and Keisei Lines) are the very few non-Shinkansen railway lines in Japan that run on *standard gauge,* it also has a morning liner service that goes from Haneda to Narita (it's also the _only_ service that specifically skips Keikyu-kamata).
@@johnnycheung5536 at least some airport express trains run direct from Shinagawa to Haneda without stopping at Kamata.
It will be great if you talk more about the cost of various projects. Like cost of construction/ duration of construction. Number of thousand people using it etc.
It will help people see past some of the shinny penny syndrome
In Bangkok they are building some mono rail lines.
Because of the frequent flooding subways are not really a option.
And Mono rails are less a eye sore then the skytrains.
in Brazil we also have a monorail in the city of São Paulo
Yep! Video on SP soon!
I live within close walking distance of the Haneda monorail. It's part of my everyday commute. Also nice to have an easy straight shot to the airport whenever we travel. Though I hate the seat layouts of the older cars.
Shounan monorail is another interesting monorail in Japan. It uses overhead tracks, and is a single track line, and has a tunnel. It was made by Mitsubishi.
Conversely, "The world's greatest monorail is a wacky airport express train". Damning monorails with faint praise.
I enjoy your enthusiasm throughout every video.
Hoooooo, Monorails!!! :D But seriously, those string diagrams are really good explained!
Kuala Lumpur also has monorails made by Scomi a local based company
Yes for Olympic legacy transit. Sydney 2000. The Airport Line plus the Olympic Park Station with it’s Spanish Solution platforms.
Train Graphs are so useful. One of the most influential books on information design (The Visual Display of Quantitative Information; Edward Tufte) has an abstract of a train graph on its front cover (that of the PLM mainline in France, which I think was where it was first used). There's also an explanation on YT by Hannah Fry on the Numberphile channel.
And it's good to see that a monorail can be useful! Excellent video as always. That bit at the end where the track hops over the highway is impressive, even if the view is foreshortened.
The lower space impact, that a monorail viaduct has, as compared to a normal elevated rail line, is the biggest advantage of monorails.
If this allows you to build elevated instead of tunneling, then you can save a lot of money.
Possibly for sure, though I think that's an uncommon comparison
Nop, it's very difficult to build it due to lack of manufacturing of components, in Brazil we are struggling with this for 9 years,every company that make components always go to bankruptcy. There's no demand for this to maintain the production, metro has a lot of competitors in the market of trains and components, but monorail doesn't have many.
Japan really is a Public Transport heaven. The Netherlands is too.
It can get awkward in The Netherlands sometimes tho
The Japanese are really good at planning for dispatching that can allow frequent trains with express service. This is lacking in almost every else in the world.
How does this be comparable to Swiss transit systems?
Subway trains and monorail trains have roughly the same amount of construction costs on a per-passenger basis. A monorail line has about a quarter of the capacity of a subway line, and a monorail line is about a quarter less expensive to build.
For these reasons, a place such as the West side of Los Angeles may be a good candidate for monorail systems because the high residential and employment densities, as well as the major activity centers, are spread evenly across a relatively broad area. Four parallel monorail lines may be more useful to people than a single subway line is.
Also, subways often take decades to build.
Overall travel time is of primary importance, but the West side of L.A. is also difficult to navigate politically. The area is where much of the region's economic activity and high-paying jobs are centered, but the area also has a concentration of very rich people who, on one hand, have objections to all elevated rail, including monorails, on the mistaken belief that they, intrinsically, reduce property values and who, on the other hand, would probably be more inclined to use public transit, themselves, if doing so offered elevated views above ground in southern California.
Most of the criticisms of monorail systems seem to revolve around the fact that they are not being used more broadly, but that fact seems like a chicken-and-the-egg situation.
Its not a quarter of the cost 😂
There is also a extremly good monorail in Germany. The "Wuppertaler Schwebebahn" is build above the River, the Wupper, along the whole city is build. It works that good, because the city is almost exclusively build in the Wupper-Valley, so the Schwebebahn can be used by nearly everyone int the city. It is also very old, build in the early 20th century.
Thanks this is a amazing video !
I like that you can also point out it's shortcomings, but i like this japanease way of thinking; just extract the best from what you've got and people won't care that it's a gadgetbahn
The Cairo monorail, under construction (Bombardier consortium), is three times longer than the Tokyo monorail. The project is proceeding quickly, testing is commencing.
The USA has done so little for so long that maybe it is time to consider a monorail across the Sepulveda Pass in LA. It could be built fast and can climb the steep grades.
There are still a few issues for the Tokyo Monorail though:
1. Travellers find it difficult to carry large luggage onto small monorail trains
2. Concrete tracks are deteriorating more severely than expected, but track replacement requires a complete shutdown of the line for some time unlike conventional rail
3. Transfer between monorail and JR in Hamamatsucho is still not too convenicent
So JR is building a new railway line to Haneda Airport to provide far better convenience, meanwhile they can renovate the monorail when the new JR line opens.
I think roller coasters hold the key to simple elevated track that can handle sharp curves and sudden steep grades.
Linear induction motor coils along the whole track (think Dallas Wedway Peoplemover) could provide propulsion and braking to the individual cars/trains.
The track could basically look like roller coaster track except that instead of doing loops, it's ascending quickly out of the station and running flat or along land contours for half a mile or so above a walkway but only blocking the sun when there's a train.
I wish the monorail from Vancouver's Expo 86 still existed in Vancouver (and not in a British theme park). Even after what happened in Brockway, Ogdenville, and North Haverbrook, that would be great for just the downtown core.
I really hope this can be replicated, here in Monterrey they just started construction on 2 of 3 new lines that will double the length of the existing system, but they are all monorail.
And I thought line 3 was vertigo-inducing :p
"space between the trains"
This is quite literally the argument for HS2.
Get high speed rail off the West Coast Mainline, and you massively increase capacity as all the other trains on that line will be going at roughly the same speed.
Sort of yes!
I think what a lot of people are unhappy about is the staggering cost of HS2. Our friends the Japanese are building a god damn 280km MAGLEV line, 90% of which is TUNNELLED(!!), for under half the cost of the UK's conventional rail project!!
Would have love if you have tackled the economics of this line, how much it had cost to build and how much it costs to run, to know if the technology it uses (ie, monoraill! MONORAILL!!! ... and now everyone reading this has the Simpsons song in their heads) has a negative or positive impact.
To be fair about "monorail are not standard", most of urban transits are tailored to their particular needs, some on a per-line basis, and it's rare to have a standardized thing. Even railways are different between countries, and having trains capable of running on different overhead wires power supplies and signaling system is very specific and expensive (and that's why planes and trucks here in Europe wins everything when a border crossing is needed).
Anyway, Japan makes cool stuff and at this point to keep up on the world, they should build transit systems based on giant four-legged cat-shaped MechaBus.
Chongqui: outrageous!
Reese - you know my all time favourite - Wuppertal.
Why monorails are gadgetbahns and filling in only a few nieches: They the most extreme case of an elevated metro, sufferring from crippling overspecification: Excellent for a grade separated, elevated line but it's only excellent as a grade separated, elevated line. Their permanent elevation means they can't be really put on the ground (this does force grade separation, at least) while putting them below grade is a bit of a waste (they require larger tunnels, for example), the rails are bulky (especially saddle monorails) and slow to switch which doesn't allow a high speed and frequency service when branching/interlining comes up. The advantages is what Reece has mentioned: They use their guideway as rails (smaller footprint) and smaller turn radii, the latter because from my knowledge (correct me if I'm wrong) they're equivalent to narrow gauge tracks which also have better turning radii than tracks with a broader spacing.
Most of them (with Wuppertal's is steel-on-steel as a notable exception) also run on rubber tyres which come with the same ad- and disadvantages as with a rubber-tyred metro.
What's really impressive IMO of the Haneda Monorail is the express service and the tail track terminus because of the aforementioned track switching.
Chuo line also operates the same way where there are express trains passing at specific stations but only in the off peak and on peak there are no express trains
Yep! So many rail lines in Japan are like this!
thank you
If I remember right the problem with the elevated stations that came with the monorail system in wuppertal is accessibility for disabled people. The system is more than a 100 years old and people didn't consider accessibility to that time. Making it accessible is very expensive
Love RM Transit ;)
Thanks!
I was at Osaka coupled months ago and went to Expo Park Station just to stare at the interchange at the station, it's so damn cool!
Glad someone mentioned the Osaka Monorail. I rode it a few times when I lived there and was the first ever monorail for me. But can I get some love on the hanging "Wuppertal" style monorails found in Chiba and Ofuna/Fujisawa/Enoshima/Shonan?
There are a lot of amazing stations like this!
My take away, only use a monorail if 1) you need to go up/down gradients normal tracks can't handle. 2) go around corners normal tracks can't handle. And 3) have little space to use for transit. If you have all three problems, a monorail may be warranted.
Thank you so much for this video, its soo informative!! do you mind doing a video about Egypt's mega monorail project? I think think some people would like to hear your point of video after watching this
Most trains in Japan express services, at least on lines heading out of Tokyo to more suburban areas. In fact, they run MULTIPLE express services, a lot of line diagrams/schedules have like 5 parallel lines running, because there's a bunch of variants of express service.
Nobody mention the oldest still running "Monorail" (a suspension monorail) in Wuppertal, Germany?
Opened 1901 and build as short transit railway because the Wuppertal (Valley of the Wupper River) is a deep and narrow valley where there was no place to use a conventional railway or add streets to reply the need of better infrastructure.
Therefore they decided to build a suspension railway mostly on top of the only available space: The River.
I've ridden the Haneda monorail - it works, it's clean and efficient, it gets you to your destination. The older trains were a bit luggage-unfriendly, the newer ones are better. However there is one thing in it which sucks regally, and that is Hamamatsucho station. The fact that it connects only to JR is a bummer, because it adds one more transfer if you need to get on to the Metro. OK, Daimon station is close to Hamamatsucho, but you need to get out of the station to transfer, a bummer again. If only they would extend it to Shimbashi....
Seeing that one specific monorail line can get a video, I hope in the future we get a video for automated guideway transit in Japan like Yurikamome, Kanazawa Seaside Line, Kobe Port Liner, etc.
Straddle beam style Monorails should be everywhere in major American cities.
nice as always reece!
A lot of monorails are set up to fail. For instance, the Las Vegas Monorail stations are quite a distance from the hotels on the strip, hardly helpful in a city with blistering heat much of the year. They also never extended it to the airport or convention center, a boon to car services and taxis, but a bane to commuters.
another banger video mate
Thanks!
Would love to see a video on Olympic transit projects!
Holy crap did I love these graphs
Thats great to hear! I hope you can make use of them eventually!
Do you have any bibliographic reference about the use of string diagrams as you just made?
In my hometown of Cebu, two monorail lines have been proposed to be built. The Central Line, which will run from downtown Cebu City to Talisay City and the Airport Line, which will run from Cebu City to the Mactan Airport.
I think monorails will be easier to construct because imagine closing two lanes (most of our roads have a maximum of 4 lanes) just for an LRT that takes too long to finish, worsening the traffic.
First step to building a successful monorail: Build it with the intent of transporting the "public" to major destinations and NOT just some billion dollar vanity project by "experts"
Where did you learn about the string diagram method? Fascinating!
Imo there is another type of monorail that, unless built somewhere without ridership, is automatically good. High speed maglev, for the simple reason that it provides a service normal trains simply cant. In addition to that the benefits of a maglev get more pronounced as speed increases (energy and noise savings) while the drawbacks are partialy shared by regular high speed rail, the more the faster it goes (expensive dedicated track, high cost, few companies make them)
It's a very convienient monorail. I stayed near Hamamatsucho in 2019 and it took only 18 minutes to Haneda Internationsl terminal. I thought there would be expresses during the morning peak taking only 11 minutes but this video explained why this wasn't the case.
I also think the Portliner system in Kobe warrants a video of its own. That serves Kobe airport as well as a convention centre, IKEA, parks and residential areas.
As someone who lives in a city where a monorail line is an integral part of its transit, I never understood the west seemingly monorail-phonic views where they have proven much more than just mere gadgetbahn
Couldn't passing loops also enable night service on a metro line default. You could isolate one track for maintenance and run the other as a less frequent version service, which at night it already would be.
Monorails do seem to have their uses especially if you don't want to dig the ground for a few months or if the gradient is iffy
I'm not a fan of monorails except for the novelty factor but the more I learn about Brightline West's plans for their Rancho Cucamonga to Las Vegas line I think perhaps a conventional "old school" rubber tired monorail may have been the better choice after all. That is given all the constraints imposed by Brightline West's route selection pretty much guaranteeing a single track mainline for perpetuity, steep grades and a curvy route better suited for cars than HSR. At least with a monorail the median should be able to accommodate dual guide beams (aka "rails") not constraining the service to the current proposed single track operation. The elevated guideway also would not create a barrier to wildlife crossings as the current proposal which basically forms a massive barrier down the middle of I-15 insurmountable except at a few select wildlife crossings. Sure it would not be as fast as conventional HSR but the current routing imposes speed constraints anyways. A monorail is after all a bus on a guideway so it seems fitting for it to run along freeway medians. The operational dynamics are similar to road vehicles after all. For future connection to CA HSR a monorail could still extend to Palmdale and they could share platforms with conventional rail. There could always be through ticketing between CA HSR and Brightline West where the services don't need to utilize a common ROW as long as there are seamless connections between the modes.
Monorails seem so underrated to me. Is that the Seattle line shown in the beginning? You have the pillars on sidewalks and pedestrian islands as well as between lanes . You could easily build this all over cities in mant cities. Youd have to redesign the entire road system if you went for light rail (metro?) or whatever it's called and subways are too dang expensive
airport monorails are also good as they can help travelers travel from termnal to terminal