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  #21  
Old Posted May 30, 2011, 3:57 PM
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There are a few basic engineering facts that really come into play in monorail, or for that matter, elevated transportation of any kind.

A) The strength of materials is constant per cross sectional area (excluding more complex strength increases from compression or tension).

B) Load carrying structures tend to obey the square cube law: if you double the weight carried, you cube the weight of the structure needed to support that doubling (if you 2x the side of a square you 4x the area. If you 2x the sides of a cube you 8x the volume).

This relationship is a good ball park way to look at elevated transportation.For example, if you halve the weight of a transit vehicle you will need 1/8th the amount of structural support (and track weight, ballast, etc.)

The key, then, to any elevated transportation system, is to reduce the weight of what is to be carried.

Upfront: autos and trucks are the most inefficient transportation system to elevate due to the added mass of the width of the guide way, as a function of passengers, the weight of the vehicles, and freight carried in vehicles. Consequently, the support structures are not only burdened with the weight of vehicles but the huge square cube effects produced by roadway weight.

Ok, monorails truly can function in niche applications as

1) grade crossings are eliminated- so the added increments of mass required to provided protection for collisions can be reduced. The vehicles can be physically smaller, and, lighter and still be safe).

2) monorail construction can have less impact on already built up environments as the support columns can be smaller than the support columns for an elevated road or railroad way (this would depend on construction techniques etc., as specialized vertical lift cranes could be developed if the demand developed.)

Of course monorail vehicles have a difficult time switching routes, so monorails, like gondolas, are strictly from point A to B, not A to possibly B, C,....etc. In addition, station costs will be higher than ground running systems for obvious reasons (and yes, top running monorails could obviously have subway sections or run on the surface, too, but steel rail and rubber wheel beat it, IMO, in these cases).

I do believe that more work developing physical models of monorail and cabling technology will produce very neat niche applications.
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  #22  
Old Posted May 30, 2011, 9:31 PM
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I'm going to disagree that monorails have a smaller footprint than light rail trains. Just a few examples to prove my point......
Elevated monorail station in Las Vegas



Elevated light rail stations in Dallas

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  #23  
Old Posted May 31, 2011, 1:39 AM
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Electric, that's comparing mushrooms and carrots. Those pictures just show different style of stations that have little to do with the mode.
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  #24  
Old Posted May 31, 2011, 1:59 AM
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Exactly. It's like comparing the Vancouver Skytrain to an elevated structure on the NYC Subway. It's like trying to compare apples to oranges.
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  #25  
Old Posted May 31, 2011, 2:10 AM
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Actually, the style of the stations is extremely pertinent to the mode. Monorail stations have to be more significant than elevated light rail stations because you can't allow people to walk across monorail tracks they way you can allow them to cross LRT tracks. Monorail stations must be large expensive multilevel buildings. Light rail stations can just be a platform. If we're going to be talking about the amount of visible infrastructure as a negative trait, then stations are an inherent point against monorails.

And of course, it's not fair to compare monorail only to elevated light rail, since it's impossible for monorail to be run at grade. Your elevated guideway might be slightly smaller than the elevated LRT guideway, but surface LRT is much much much less visible than elevated monorail, which you absolutely must consider unless your line is already going to be 100% elevated (which very few are).

Yes, a few short sections of the Silver Line in Tysons Corner will be elevated Metro and will be bulkier than an elevated monorail, but 90% of the Silver Line will be at grade on the surface where it will be much less bulky than a monorail that would have to be elevated for the entire length.
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  #26  
Old Posted May 31, 2011, 2:28 AM
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Cirrus, Did you miss the entire point about how cities like SP have no room for at grade rail? Unlike america, there arent dozens of highway medians to chose from. There are simply no highways.

And your comment about the stations makes no sense at all. In the above two stations, no one will ever cross the tracks. The vegas monorail could have built the station to be identical to the Dallas one.



electricron, look at the bottom left of your first picture. The track is tiny and produces almost no shadows. The only other rail structure with a similar effect is a roller coaster!
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  #27  
Old Posted May 31, 2011, 3:31 AM
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From:

http://thedisneydrivenlife.com/2011/...y-the-numb3rs/

Granted, this is a privately built ideal: ideal in that the builders did not have to deal with multitudes of property owners/governmental entities and ideal in that 1 design authority was used throughout.

“The Disney Driven Life”
The Disney World Monorail

(Asterisks are my addition)

• 50 million people use the monorail each year, making this the world’s busiest monorail system in the world.
• 337 individual track beams were used on the original monorail loop that consisted of the resort hotels and Magic Kingdom. Each track beam is 85 to 110 feet in length, and weighs 55 tons.*
• 3 monorails were in operation on Opening Day in 1971: Orange, Green, and Gold.
• $1,000,000 per mile is the estimated cost to build the monorail system.**
• 11 Mark VI monorails trains are in service today. Each train is identified by a color with the following colored trains still in service: Black, Blue, Coral, Gold, Green, Lime, Orange, Red, Silver, Yellow, and Teal.
• 2 colors were retired after the 2009 accident: Purple and Pink. Teal was rebuilt using parts from the retired cars.
• 6–number of cars per each Mark VI monorail train.
• 203’ 6” is the overall length of the Mark VI Monorail trains. With a height of 10 feet 10.5 inches tall.
• 124 tires are on each train of Mark VI monorail train, and each train can carry 360 passengers.
• 300-372 guests are the capacity of a Mark VI 6-car monorail.
• 15 miles–the total length of monorail track at WDW
• 4,200 feet of track were originally installed.
• 171 feet–the total length of a 5-car monorail train.
• 50 miles per hour–the maximum speed of the monorail, but they typically don’t exceed 40 miles per hour.***
• 50 tons–the gross weight of an empty 6-car monorail train.****
• 14 monorail trains are currently used; they include (1 5-car train, 9 old 6-car trains, and 4 Mark VI 6-car trains).
• 10 selections are on the Monorail Master Control Unit (MCU), 5 forward, 1 center, and 4 back. The 5 forward positions are propulsion selections labeled P-1 through P-5. They correspond to speed traveled as follows: P-1 = 15 mph, P-2= 20 mph, P-3= 25 mph, P-4= 30 mph, P-5= 40 mph. The 4 back are labeled B-1 to B4; the higher the number the harder the brakes. The 1 center is a neutral.
• 8 electric motors are on each monorail train.*****
• 113 horsepower–what each monorail motor delivers.******
• 600 volts of DC power is generated from each electric motor.
• 99.9% up time for the monorail system. Each train has a strict maintenance schedule to keep these running as well as they do.
• 4 million plus miles–the approximate total miles the monorail has traveled since 1971.
• 200,000–how many people use the monorail each day between Epcot, the Magic Kingdom, and the 3 Resorts
• 26 inches–the width on the Monorail track
• 40 MPH is the average speed of the Monorail
• 77,427 feet–the total track length
• 10,000 guests ride per hour
• 65 feet–the highest point of the track
• 300 guests can ride on the Mark IV monorail
• 400 beams were used to construct the original track
• 110 feet long is each section (beam) of track
• 1 million dollars were needed to extend the monorail in 1982
• 200 pilots operate the monorail system that keeps WDW guests moving each day
• 2009 was the first year in the 48 year history that there was a fatal accident
• 1 death occurred in 2009 as a result of a head-on collision of 2 monorails, a 21 year monorail pilot, Austin Wuennenberg died at the scene of the accident at the TTC at 2 am Sunday July 5, 2009

*Compare this with the support structure for the elevated portion of the Dallas light rail shown in Electricon’s photos. Compare this even to the poorly designed Las Vegas monorail system.
**Perhaps $15,000,000 per mile if privately designed and built in 2011. If metro area authority built perhaps $50,000,000 per mile.
***Slightly slower than light rail speeds
****Amazing.
****,*****Very energy efficient as the units are so light (square cube law again)

This type of system IMO would be ideal to connect transportation terminals which, whether through poor design or physical barriers could not be located close to one another. This would work best as a loop.

Jamesinclair also pointed out that elevated stations do not have to be any more complex than for elevated steel rail.
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  #28  
Old Posted May 31, 2011, 4:49 AM
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Originally Posted by jamesinclair View Post
Cirrus, Did you miss the entire point about how cities like SP have no room for at grade rail? Unlike america, there arent dozens of highway medians to chose from. There are simply no highways.

And your comment about the stations makes no sense at all. In the above two stations, no one will ever cross the tracks. The vegas monorail could have built the station to be identical to the Dallas one.

electricron, look at the bottom left of your first picture. The track is tiny and produces almost no shadows. The only other rail structure with a similar effect is a roller coaster!
You're directing me away from the station, my point was mainly about the stations. And yes, it is true Las Vegas monorail could have chosen a far more open station. But they didn't, why?
Automation is the answer. Las Vegas monorail is fully automated, without drivers (is that the proper term?), requiring gated platforms for safety, and without fare enforcers using ticketed turnstiles. Therefore the need for much larger station structures. But the choices they made could also be adopted by light rail too. But those choices for automation have been and are still considered advantages of monorail. Not using automation with monorail, you might as well build light rail.

Last edited by electricron; May 31, 2011 at 5:33 AM.
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  #29  
Old Posted May 31, 2011, 6:41 AM
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My point about comparing the large Las Vegas station with the small platform is that either a large light rail station photo or small monorail platform station photo should be the comparison.

Neither of the two elevated stations in Seattle's light rail allow for cross-track walking.

Here's a smaller monorail station in Japan not too different in size from the elevated light rail platform station that Electric showed.

Shonan-monorail-Fujimicho-station-platform [CC-BY-SA-3.0 (www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0), CC-BY-SA-2.1-jp (http://www.creativecommons.org/licen...2.1/jp/deed.en), GFDL (www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html), CC-BY-3.0 (www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0) or CC-BY-2.1-jp (http://www.creativecommons.org/licen...1/jp/deed.en)], by 投稿者(LERK) / 지은이 (LERK) / LERK, The uploader (LERK所有のファイル / LERK 사용자가 가지는 파일 / LERK's file), from Wikimedia Commons

A station in Moscow: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timirya...%28Monorail%29
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  #30  
Old Posted May 31, 2011, 3:19 PM
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Originally Posted by jamesinclair View Post
Cirrus, Did you miss the entire point about how cities like SP have no room for at grade rail?
No. Did you miss the one where I said monorail can be appropriate in a very specific niche set of circumstances?

I didn't say monorail is completely useless. Monorail has its place just like anything else. Its place happens to be a small niche. If a certain corridor in Sao Paulo happens to fit that niche that is not inconsistent with anything I said.

The only people who say anything different are dogmatic monorail boosters who wrongly think it can be a wholesale replacement for traditional rail, and laypeople who go to DisneyWorld and don't understand the inherent technical differences between monorail and other types of trains.

Quote:
Originally Posted by jamesinclair
And your comment about the stations makes no sense at all. In the above two stations, no one will ever cross the tracks. The vegas monorail could have built the station to be identical to the Dallas one.
First of all, again, it is not fair to compare monorail to elevated light rail because monorail always has to be elevated but light rail doesn't. Second, no, they couldn't have built an identical station. Monorails require a larger clearance area than light rail, so even if you decided to build a smaller center-platform station like the one in the Dallas picture it would still have to be heavier, larger, and more expensive than the light rail version.

Quote:
Originally Posted by mseattle
Neither of the two elevated stations in Seattle's light rail allow for cross-track walking.
Irrelevant. That's a regulation by the Seattle transit agency, not an inherent detail of elevated light rail. No matter what Sound Transit allows, the ability for pedestrians to cross tracks is inherent to light rail.

Here's a photo of an elevated LRT station in Charlotte, showing people crossing the tracks. Now compare that with your picture from Japan, which illustrates very nicely how allowing pedestrians to cross is not a choice available to monorail planners. You need a bridge or a tunnel to cross monorail guideways. Bridges and tunnels are expensive.

Monorail stations have to be multilevel. Light rail stations do not have to be.
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  #31  
Old Posted May 31, 2011, 4:06 PM
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Monorail stations have to be multilevel. Light rail stations do not have to be.
That's not entirely true, at terminating stations people could walk around the end of the monorail, like they do in Seattle. But that option doesn't exist at intermediate monorail stations.
To be fair, all elevated stations are multilevel in one way or another, whether they're monorail or light rail. Even the elevated DART stations have two levels, ground and platform levels. But the Las Vegas stations have three levels, ground, mezzanine, and platform levels. That extra platform does add bulk to monorail stations.
Of course, having center island platform negates the need for mezzanine levels. But that requires the need to increase the distances between the rails/tracks so the island platform can be placed in-between. And that adds bulk to the rails/tracks leading into the station, although the station itself can be smaller.
I'm not going to suggest monorail or light rail is better. My original response was I didn't agree that elevated light rail was always bulkier than monorail. And I'm sticking to it, nothing added to this discussion since has changed my mind.
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  #32  
Old Posted May 31, 2011, 4:20 PM
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Quote:
Here's a photo of an elevated LRT station in Charlotte, showing people crossing the tracks. Now compare that with your picture from Japan, which illustrates very nicely how allowing pedestrians to cross is not a choice available to monorail planners. You need a bridge or a tunnel to cross monorail guideways. Bridges and tunnels are expensive.
Interesting discussion.

Another cavete:

The most efficient method to enter and exit a transportation vehicle is via a platform that is level with the transit vehicle interior (the least efficient is where one has to climb steps to enter/exit whether inside or outside a transit vehicle). Also, all the world's high volume public transportation systems have elevated platforms and level boarding due to the need for larger radii wheels for faster speeds.

Station design, then, also has something to do with speed of egress factors.

In addition, factors such as transport frequency enter the picture. Low level platforms on high traffic light rails need fences to limit cross track passenger use. As rail traffic frequency increases, light rail stations become identical in design to those using high platforms, whether a two track setup with a platform in the middle or two seperate platforms on either side of the double tracking.

You are correct concerning the requirement for two level stations. This effectively eliminates monorails performing a street car role, whereas light light rail can either run on the 'street' or like monorail, on a dedicated ROW.

So what role do monorail have?

1) As point to point connectors between transit modes that are more efficient with the monorail going through built up areas. A possible example might be connecting two stub railroad terminals, with either no intermediate stops or very few.

2) As loops connecting high use areas, preferable where stations can be built abutting existing buildings, to reduce over all costs. In that case, the station's lower (or upper level) could use part of the building structure already there. Single track one way continuous loops would be ideal for this as no second level or stair case/elevator system would have to be constructed.

I would imagine these to be small in length, tightly wrapped around an urban core. I would imagine a 4x to 8x the Chicago loop length max These systems must not be stand-a-lone, but must interface with bus terminals, and light rail/heavy rail to function. At their core, such a monorail is an above ground shuttle without intersection problems.

In their niche, monorail can be highly effective, and, much cheaper to build than alternatives such as light rail. While more expensive than gondolas, monorail capacity is cheaper per person, past some passenger per hour threshold.
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  #33  
Old Posted May 31, 2011, 8:42 PM
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Originally Posted by Cirrus View Post
Here's a photo of an elevated LRT station in Charlotte, showing people crossing the tracks. Now compare that with your picture from Japan, which illustrates very nicely how allowing pedestrians to cross is not a choice available to monorail planners. You need a bridge or a tunnel to cross monorail guideways. Bridges and tunnels are expensive.
That Charlotte station looks like the ones in Seattle that are "raised" off the ground and not "elevated" as in aerial.
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  #34  
Old Posted May 31, 2011, 8:56 PM
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The picture is taken from the next station over and is way zoomed-in. The station is elevated above a street that runs perpendicular. The tracks between the two stations are at-grade. Here's the station in streetview. Of course, were it a monorail the entire assembly would have to be a few feet off the ground. Oh, and you'd need a much larger clearance between the monorail and that building that's above the tracks.

What do you mean by raised for the Seattle stations? Can we see pictures? Actually, I think the forum would really enjoy a tour of the new Seattle LRT line completely independent from this thread.
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  #35  
Old Posted May 31, 2011, 8:58 PM
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Originally Posted by Cirrus View Post
Irrelevant. That's a regulation by the Seattle transit agency, not an inherent detail of elevated light rail. No matter what Sound Transit allows, the ability for pedestrians to cross tracks is inherent to light rail.
There are places you can cross the track. However, they're not in the station. In the end, it doesn't matter what the transit agency allows. With elevated stations, there is very little difference between monorail and LRT. Outside of stations, Monorail wins when it comes to elevated sections.

Therefore, if you have to elevated it, in general monorail allows a smaller impact. Take a look at Vancouver for examples of a line that is completely elevated.


Quote:
Here's a photo of an elevated LRT station in Charlotte, showing people crossing the tracks. Now compare that with your picture from Japan, which illustrates very nicely how allowing pedestrians to cross is not a choice available to monorail planners. You need a bridge or a tunnel to cross monorail guideways. Bridges and tunnels are expensive.
If I'm not mistaken, that station is most definitely at grade, and not elevated. If that's the case, it's really a moot point to compare the two.
Quote:
Monorail stations have to be multilevel. Light rail stations do not have to be.
They have to be grade separated, if they're automated. Automation is where you get most of your benefits of monorail. SkyTrain in Vancouver is similar. It's completely automated and so runs in its own ROW.

The newest line uses 40m platforms (Light-railish size) and here's the smallest of them:
Video Link


Light rail does have its place. It works well to connect suburbs, as they often aren't too dense and can be run ground level. Light Rail IS less expensive TO BUILD when you can run ground level... however, if you're elevating a large portion of it (like Seattle), I would question whether Light Rail was the right choice. In Seattle's case, they wanted to use existing infrastructure (the bus tunnel) but I suspect that if they didn't (and if there wasn't a grass roots movement to institute monorail on opposition to the transit agency's plans) it may have been a less expensive solution.
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  #36  
Old Posted May 31, 2011, 9:59 PM
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If I'm not mistaken, that station is most definitely at grade, and not elevated. If that's the case, it's really a moot point to compare the two.
Absolutely not. Even if we were to accept your notion that the Charlotte station isn't elevated, which is ridiculous, it would still be true that if you wanted to build monorail along that exact same alignment then both the tracks and stations would be significantly more expensive, that the tracks would have to be elevated the entire way, and that the station would have to be much bulkier. And it would still be true that the benefit of that private development above the station wouldn't have happened because you couldn't put a building so close to a monorail, and it would still be true that you could put a pedestrian crossing on an elevated LRT station because the engineering wouldn't look any different.

Oh and by the way, we haven't talked about capacity, but if you want your monorail to have those light-looking support structures that partisan monorail boosters are so enthralled over then you can't have very heavy (ie long) trains, which means you can't even match the capacity of light rail (never mind heavy rail)! In order to get any capacity advantages out of monorail, you need the sort of the heavy elevated structures that are required for every other mode! retracted

Quote:
Automation is where you get most of your benefits of monorail.
Nonsense. Automation is not unique to monorail. You can automate any train that operates on an exclusive transitway, including light rail if you cared to put it on one. Automation is a wash in the mode discussion. All are equally capable of it. Your example, Vancouver's SkyTrain, isn't a monorail.

It's not like there is some grand conspiracy to keep monorails down. The reason monorails have been around for 50 years but very few have ever been built is simply that they usually just. don't. make. sense. I'm sorry to anyone who has some irrational love of monorails and hate for any other type of train, but they really are a niche product. You can argue with me all you want and it won't change that. The proof is on the ground, where almost nobody ever builds monorail despite the fact that every publicly-funded rail project on the continent has to go through an alternatives analysis looking at the costs and benefits of all the mode options. The fact is that if monorail were generally superior, we'd have to build it because of the way our planning processes work.
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  #37  
Old Posted May 31, 2011, 10:01 PM
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The original premise of this is more to do with elevated rapid transit in already long built up areas where that's the only place left that's viable to build it.
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  #38  
Old Posted May 31, 2011, 10:14 PM
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The original premise of this is more to do with elevated rapid transit in already long built up areas where that's the only place left that's viable to build it.
Quote:
Originally Posted by me
In other words, monorail is a niche product that will never "arrive" as a replacement for traditional modes because it is inherently more limited. It can be appropriate if a very specific set of circumstances apply, but that's only going to happen about 1% of the time.
If you want to limit our discussion of the viability of monorail to the approximately 1% of situations where it is most ideally suited, then yes, I agree, monorail is a viable option.

That's tautological though, since the gist would simply be monorail is viable whenever monorail is viable.
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  #39  
Old Posted May 31, 2011, 10:26 PM
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Originally Posted by M II A II R II K View Post
The original premise of this is more to do with elevated rapid transit in already long built up areas where that's the only place left that's viable to build it.
Yes, and elevated light rail basically equals monorail in those circumstances. Look at what Honolulu is going to do with elevated and automated light rail.
http://www.honolulutransit.org/



There aren't that many images (drawings) of stations available on the web today. Their stations are going to be larger in appearance mainly because they will be using automation. Even so, their stations are still going to be smaller than Las Vegas monorail stations.

As for the size of the guideway between stations, it's the weight of the trains (length, width, and height considerations) that is mainly in play. Many monorails are smaller than light rail trains, and most light rail trains are smaller than heavy (metro) rail trains. The lighter the weight of the trains, the smaller the pedestals needed. It's not the type of train that causes the size differences, it's the size of the trains!
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  #40  
Old Posted May 31, 2011, 11:56 PM
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and it would still be true that you could put a pedestrian crossing on an elevated LRT station because the engineering wouldn't look any different.
And why, oh why, would you ever want to do that? Or are you just scrambling to find anything to bolster your argument? It’s elevated… Passengers will make their way to the platforms underneath the aerial structure. That example you posted from Charlotte looks like a case where they cheaped out and didn’t want to install a second elevator on the other platform, so to meet ADA requirements, they built a crossing inside the station. In other words, a somewhat special case that can’t really compare to a monorail. If we’re taking “real” elevated rail with aerial structures (not tracks on an embankment like the one you posted), they wouldn’t be building a crossing inside the station… All the circulation would be handled underneath (or in some cases, above) the platforms.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Cirrus View Post
Oh and by the way, we haven't talked about capacity, but if you want your monorail to have those light-looking support structures that partisan monorail boosters are so enthralled over then you can't have very heavy (ie long) trains, which means you can't even match the capacity of light rail (never mind heavy rail)!
How conveniently you forget Chongqing (380,000 pax/day) or Tōkyō Monorail (138,000 pax/day), both single lines, and both beating most of the elevated light rail lines you seem to adore without fail.
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