Monorails: Light Rail in the Air—An Essay
January 2001-- Stung by huge cost overruns and public relations blunders, the bloated ($4.2 billion+) Seattle "LINK" light rail plan has begun to die a slow death--only the transit bureaucracy has failed to notice. The counterproposal to expand the city's monorail system is now in the political ascendancy. Nov. 2001-- incumbents best pro-monorail candidates, Greg Nickels wins Seattle mayoral election and LINK is back from the dead.
The Monorail plan hinges on Seattle's love affair with its Alweg Monorail, installed for the 1962 World Fair. Since that time the Monorails have chugged almost without fail from Seattle Center to Westlake Park and back again, a distance of about 1,600 yards. Today the Monorail is known chiefly for two things: First, about 2.5 million people ride it every year. Second, the 5th Avenue corridor along the Monorail route was notorious for lagging economically, noted for its failed or short-turnover businesses and vacant lots. The shadows cast by the Monorail's huge concrete guideway and support pylons were usually blamed for creating a setting uninviting to business customers. The Monorail's trains are also noisy as they zoom overhead at 50 mph. While the area today is surging, this positive trend did not arise until 7-10 years ago-- a lapse of 30 years.
But the love affair continues, and for several years an often whimsical grassroots movement have been pushing a city-wide monorail system using the latest monorail technology. A public agency, the Elevated Transportation Company, was created by citizen's initiative to study and develop a plan. A Seattle monorail will look cool. It could be fun. Presumably today's monorails are quieter-- maybe. Supposedly guideway and pylons are less hulking and more attractive. But ARE they? Let's compare.
On the left is the state of the art of monorail guideway, now under construction in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. For scale, note traffic. On the right, the Seattle Monorail.
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| Guideway on route between Bukit Nanas and Raja Chulan stations | A Seattle Monorail passing 5th & Stewart |
Like any elevated train station, a monorail station would be like dropping a section of freeway into a neighborhood:
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| Bukit Bintang Station, under construction in Kuala Lumpur | A Seattle monorail arrives at Westlake Station, located on the 3rd Floor of an office/commercial building |
The Kuala Lumpur guideway is certainly more attractive than Seattle's, at least where the design is slightly arched. But it is not substantially smaller, and the pylons are still hardly svelte. This is because monorails are just a different kind of train, with the same service characteristics and engineering realities:
It uses high capacity vehicles, so many riders must gather at scheduled times, requiring large stations in which to wait
The trains must stop at every station, so to keep average speeds up the stations must be widely spaced. Therefore most people are beyond a convenient distance from the stations, and so must drive or take the bus to get there.
Large stations are a major visual and traffic impact on the surrounding neighborhood, ideally cars and buses will take riders to and from the stations. Parking facilities will be needed.
High capacity vehicles weigh many tons, so guideway must be large to bear the weight; pylons and their footings must be large to support the guideway.
The multi-ton trains must run even if carrying only a few people--or empty. Hardly an efficient use of energy.
And so on. Learn more about the KL monorail
Don't get me wrong-- I like monorails. They don't get stuck in traffic. If one is built in Seattle I would ride it whenever I could. The route might even pass near my home, although the nearest station might be too far away to be convenient. The point is that monorails are just trains; they won't relieve traffic congestion any better than light rail.
The decision whether to proceed with an expanded Seattle Monorail, as well as the process for siting routes and stations, must abide by Seattle's famous public consensus-building process. So let's conclude this page by reducing the question to terms that the average citizen is going to use to judge the plan: Based on the above photos, would you want a monorail going down your street? In front of your business? Would you want a monorail station in your neighborhood?
Before you answer, take a look at one last picture of the new Kuala Lumpur monorail stretching off into the distance-- that's it on the left. On the right is PRT-scale guideway with only a 2x4 cross section.
|  Click for more photos of slim guideway |
So now are you ready to...