Monorail Trains Superior

TheLedger.com ^ | Thursday, February 11, 2010 | R.J. ANDERSON

[The Duke]

It was on-time, efficient, all-electric, virtually nonpolluting...

I'm amazed to hear that the electrical power plant that supplied the electricity to power this vehicle didn't produce any pollution(!)

I wonder if they also produce perpetual motion?

[toast]

The element of light rail and monorails that makes them attractive is right-of-way. They don’t have to wait for traffic lights, stop signs, or traffic jams. The inside of these forms of transport aren’t that different than an ordinary bus. The efficient way to run a transit system would be to build roads dedicated only to buses and emergency vehicles. They would have over/under passes at cross streets and possibly be built next to old railroad right-of-ways.

There is one in Minnesota that runs between the St. Paul and Minneapolis campuses of the University of Minnnesota. I have ridden it. It is really fast and convenient. The buses are not limited to stopping at stations. They can go out around neighborhoods and pick-up passengers then get on the dedicated bus route.

Buses are cheaper than rail cars, more flexible, and easier to maintain. All that is needed is right-of-way.

[Willie Green]

(not elevated is much cheaper)

Only in undeveloped, gentle-terrain areas where right-of-way acquisition is not a problem.

Once you encounter more difficult terrain and/or densely developed areas, tunneling and/or going elevated (bridging) becomes an economic necessity.

An elevated monorail does have many advantages in more densely developed regions.

[cizinec]

“Monorails are more expensive to build than freeways. Freeways are more expensive to build than railroads.

If you want to save money build railroads. Freeways are not free either.”

I totally agree. If we could see the cost of the various modes of transportation and actually choose which ones to spend our money on, people could make logical decisions about how to get to work and where to live.

As it is now, we are involuntarily taxed and the money is “given back” to us (at a huge discount) in the forms of means of transportation, which we may or may not have chosen had we had the choice of where to put our money.

I don’t like paying thousands of dollars in taxes every year that goes to building roads that I have to spend thousands of dollars (on a vehicle, insurance and gas) to use. Don’t get me wrong, I like my car. But if I could take all that money and spend it on either living closer to my job or some other form of transportation, I may do it.

I will end my fantasy now.

[Willie Green]

I'm amazed to hear that the electrical power plant that supplied the electricity to power this vehicle didn't produce any pollution(!)

It's all a matter of degree.... some methods are more polluting than others...

IMHO, hydroelectric is one of the least polluting methods that we have....
Granted, there will always be some enviro-whacknuts who will whine and cry about the poor little fishies who don't survive the trip through the turbine blades...
But on the bright side... that stuff is totally biodegradable and actually contributes to the sustainable cyle of life for other organisms,,,, so there's not much sense crying about it....

[Right Wing Assault]

virtually nonpolluting

No, you're just moving the pollution to the people near the power plant that generates the electricity to run the thing.

[cizinec]

“The Las Vegas monorail cost $142 million per mile.
The Orange County, CA light rail (85% elevated) cost $101 million per mile.

I would guess that there is a lot of variability in the cost of a freeway, depending on the number of bridges”

Holy crap. We got jipped. We just spent $135 million per mile to expand i-10 and our buses are packed. If I’m on the rail I don’t have to pay $35 per week for parking plus my insurance goes down. $142 million per mile sounds high, but, dang, I didn’t know it was so close to how much we pay for the dang road. Oh yeah, and most of the expansion is a *toll* road now, so you have to pay to use it anyway.

What a rip off. I feel cheated.

[bmwcyle]

The government is broke.

[Ro_Thunder]

We’ve got an electric ‘trolley’ in Houston. It’s ground level, with overhead wires. The problem is, it runs right through the middle of the medical district, into downtown. The route is fine - except traffic is impeded, and we’ve had hundreds of accidents.

IF the people who work for Houston MTA would have done the right thing they would have made it an elevated system. Why? Over 100 people would be alive, and many more would not have had accidents with these trains (causing repair bills for us taxpayers).

Additionally, in case no one knew this, we get monsoon type rains in Houston occasionally. When this happens (oh, a dozen times a year or so), the streets flood. And the trains cannot run then. Great use of taxpayer money there, too.

[GonzoGOP]

Forty years ago, I rode the "South Shore" daily, about 50 miles into downtown Chicago. It was great. It was on-time, efficient, all-electric, virtually nonpolluting and was safe, and I didn't have to drive the Dan Ryan Expressway.

It is interesting that the Author lists the South Shore as an example of things done right. Because the reason that of the hundreds of electric interurban railroads that once connected almost every American city, only the South Shore survives to this day is that it was built to standards that allowed for the transportation of standard railroad freight cars. It was the movement of freight that paid for the track and maintenance. This in turn allowed for the passenger service to be operated by NICTD at relatively low cost.

A monorail by definition is completely incompatible with standard freight movement either by truck or by rail. All facets of the construction, operation, and maintenance would need to be 100% government funded.

New transport solutions need to be ones that compliment, rather than duplicate, existing non-government transportation assets.

[Leisler]

"Those private market firms who are "too big to fail" have proven themselves to be negligent and irresponsible investors."

Not with my money. Plenty of hedge funds made billions by investing against these firms. There were reason Warren Buffent wouldn't loan to, say, Lehman. Their annual report, available to anyone, was junk.

The fact that big government, big tax, big finance Bush/Paulson/Democrats in Congress/Obama wanted working class and small business to bail them out is no reason yet introducing more activities into their hands. Goldman Sac, Citi, BoA, are corporatist arms of the Treasury Department, and exist at their leasure. So, the socalled bailout was amongst friends. Not my friends, but friends never the less.

You want big gov, big gov will take from you.

"or taxpayers to invest in public infrastructure."

Taxpayers don't invest. They just get harvested from. 'Investments' are done by politicians. For votes and money from unions, contractors and rent seeking( look up ) business.

[Leisler]

There are plenty of more harvesting opportunities for the governmentalist to expand their lifestyle.

To paraphrase JFK, a rising tide on a sinking boat doesn’t drown everyone at once.

[WOBBLY BOB]

Obama’s Expensive Train Set
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2448523/posts

“Lyndon Johnson once said ‘I can never get Congress to drink a whole bottle of whiskey at once, but just a sip at a time and then we’ll fill it up,’” he said. “Obama is trying to do this a little at a time, so pretty soon you will see more lines added to the list,” he said.

-—”The American people will never knowingly adopt socialism. But, under the name of “liberalism,” they will adopt every fragment of the socialist program, until one day America will be a socialist nation, without knowing how it happened.”

“I no longer need to run as a Presidential Candidate for the Socialist Party… The Democrat Party has adopted our platform.”—Norman Mattoon Thomas (November 20, 1884 to December 19, 1968) was a leading American socialist, pacifist, and six-time presidential candidate for the Socialist Party of America.

-—good little socialists, one and all.

[Leisler]

Rural people usually.

At one time, coal/oil generation plants used to be common in the cities, but now are felt as too gauche to be amongst the papersuffling, insurance selling, lawyer types and the art house coffee shop leftists that serve them.

[Willie Green]

Not with my money. Plenty of hedge funds made billions by investing against these firms....
Taxpayers don't invest. They just get harvested from. 'Investments' are done by politicians. For votes and money from unions, contractors and rent seeking( look up ) business.

Well in that case, thank God that over the years we've been blessed with politicians who had the foresight to harvest the taxpayers and invest in infrastructure like roads, highways, canals, locks & dams, airports, bridges, tunnels, subways, water supply and sewage treatment systems and myriad other infrastructure that we take for granted.

Heaven KNOWS that America wouldn't have any of that stuff if it was left up to some bumwiper hedge fund operator on Wall Street. Those stinking parasites "invest" in solid gold toilets in their Wall Street penthouse rest rooms and expect the rest of us to trudge barefoot through frozen muck and mud to get to work...

The heck with that B/S, if I want my elected representative to build a monorail, he better well do it or else hit the road.

[Leisler]

The next little lesson in introduction to economics will be, ‘the things unseen’.

The money drained off for wasteful expenses, makes it not possible to fund other activities. People who are simplistic are unable to see this. For instance, who would of thought vast fortunes could come out of one car garages. ( Wright Brothers, Henry Ford, Hewlett Packard ).

[The Duke]

Chicago derives it's electrical power from hydro-electric sources? I would not have imagined that.

Regarding hydro-electric power, however, I guess the biggest environmental impact is to the geography itself.

[Leisler]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U5dNdBt4204

[TC Rider]

Yet the Vegas Monorail, where tourists are desparate for any alternative to walking the strip, is going broke.

Then there was that ‘break in’ period where pieces and chunks of it kept falling to the ground below.

[posterchild]

It’s been about 15 years since I’ve been there so perhaps things have changed.
Why are tourists now ‘desparate for any alternative to walking the strip?’