Why Monorails Are A Bad Idea

I've taken both the conventional Skyliner train from Narita, and the monorail from Haneda. The monorail was pretty underwhelming tbh.

[ouicertes]

Just build regular rail, but call it the "hyper-rail" and paint the tracks with luminescent paint, or put RGB leds on there, and voilà, a futuristic marketable rail system for the lovers of fake-futurism.

[michaelbianchi]

Monorails have one purpose: eventually Tom Scott will show up and make a video about it.

[stevenspector]

Monorails make sense for one particular circumstance: When you don't have space for a surface light rail, and you don't want the claustrophobic cave-like feeling of a traditional elevated line above you (nor do want to spend for a subway).

This video missed one other big disadvantages for monorails- if there's an emergency, the passengers have no place to go.

[DuckInGameStop]

If this channel has taught me anything, it's that every form of transportation that sounds cool and futuristic is basically just a shittier version of a train

[josephweir]

You missed one thing: monorails can climb/descend much steeper gradients than conventional rail, making them useful in some industries (eg mining) and in cities built on hills, such as Chongqing

[AverytheCubanAmerican]

Another thing to note about the Sydney Monorail: It ran in a small loop around Downtown
it wasn't a commuter monorail like Chongqing's. It was just a tourist trap attraction. So the Sydney monorail only helped the tourism sector, not the locals. It's no wonder the NSW gov got rid of it in favor of light rail

[midnightflare]

As a hungarian, I've never would have imagined I'll be proud of the Budapest metro lines one day.

[tims]

Don’t forget about the positives . Monorails put Brockway, Ogdenville, and North Haverbrook on the map. They can also inspire an entire town to do a musical number.

[Infamous_man]

Chongqing NEEDED a monorail because the city is literally built on top of a mountain and having mono rails running along the cliffs is much easier than conventional rail. Furthermore, there are a lot of elevation changes so having a monorail is also more practical in that regard.

[SkyWKing]

The reason monorail worked well in Chongqing is that the City is extremely mountainous and is known as a '3D city' in China. It has extreme elevation changes within a very small area so a lot of the infrastructure already need to be elevated. There are bridges connecting the top of a building to the ground floor of another. Surface rail and metro could only serve part of the city. It is one of the very few places in the world where monorails make sense.

[racecar_spelled_backwards]

That's the problem with monorail designers: they all have such a one-track mind.

[BirdMoose]

Monorails are okay, but definitely only worthwhile in a few niches. Still they seem pragmatic as hell after looking at those Tesla/Boring Company loops.

[sorh]

1- Create a non existent problem
2- Sell an expensive solution

[kennethmckenna]

I'm pretty sure monorails were meant for places like Disneyland and not cities.

[rerurmaximov]

Fully agreed. Moscow monorail is working in "tourist mode" for years

[jinxerific]

they can be used in specific situations. Those things are scenic and light.
The Issue is that if you can build regular rail it's ok but if you cannot well... you must adapt.


Elevating a light rail is harder than elevating a mono. So it is basically that the utility.
Also the degree that can turn is a bit better than regular trains and also the traction that has and it is a lot less noisy.

That is basically perfect for downtown loops between the skyscrapers, because the elevation doesn't occupy too much space creating huge bridges or shadowing the streets making it look like Gotham.

For the rest they are a bad idea.

[aeris]

I'm fairly certain the main purposes of monorails are for two things:
Elevation issues, such as in Chonqing where it's super mountainous and makes conventional rails impractical.
And Space issues, where you simply need more ground space for parks, smaller buildings, or roads and such, and a monorail line can simply go overhead and not interfere too much.

Hence why most cities don't use them, but some rely on them.

[FredPlanatia]

monorail is a special purpose solution, when there is no room for a conventional surface rail line, i guess its cheaper than building a tunnel in some situations.

[Excremental_Discharge]

Fact: Monorail is one of the best Simpsons episodes of all time

Another Fact: Lego Monorails were the best train sets ever released by Lego

[vish]

In my city Bangaluru, India they just built a monorail few years ago and are continuing to add additional lines. Trust me it really helps to ease on the road traffic since our city is ranked 2nd slowest in the world for road traffic, and it's totally conjusted, an epic fail for urban road planning. It takes just 35mins to cover a distance by monorail that use to take 1.5hr by road, but with a caveat ofcourse. The time taken and inconvenience caused in reaching the station, climbing up the station and then down again, then reaching the final destination by road transport can take an additional 30mins of give away. But still saving about +-30mins and avoiding the hassle of slow driving and pollution.

In a big conjusted city like mine the land acquisition and land availability is so damn slow that building a regular rail line for everyday commute is almost impossible and would need immense investment coupled with yearly inflation on land acquisition and construction of stations, making its unviable. Also causing further congestion in road traffic since they'll be lots of rail crossings throughout the city, making it very inconvenient and time consuming for people who still continue to travel by road or for those who want to reach these rail stations. Thus making the same rail commute unpopular and worthless. Also keeping in mind that large number of people traveling by road will never reduce even after introducing rail transport within the city, which is due to urban population explosion. As the facitilites in the city increases there will be more money and salaries at disposal. People will buy their own vehicles just for the heck of it because they got money to spend which they neveer had before.

So all in all monorail aren't as bad as you present them to be. Here we have monorail trains at frequency of every 8mins from the station, and these are long with many coaches having high carrying capacity. They're fantastic and functional, but with all the caveats that were noted in your video which are still bearable.