BIKE: Las Vegas monorail shut down

[Patrick Goetz]

OK, it's very refreshing to be able to respond to some intelligent new 
points/questions for a change, as made below.


Michael Bluejay wrote:
> That said, having just returned from Vegas, I think light rail going 
> down the Strip would have been the better choice.  Right now you have to 
> walk a fairly long block from the strip to get to a monorail station, 
> and then when you get off you have to walk a long block back.  This 
> assumes that you're going to and from the strip, but most people are.  
> This is wildly inconvenient to say the least, especially when you can 
> get a bus or a taxi right on the strip without having to turn around and 
> trek the other way.  What Vegas needs is fast transit up and down the 
> strip itself.  Monorail would have been out of the question on the strip 
> because it would be a visual intrusion that blocks the view of all the 
> eye candy up and down the strip.  The hotels wouldn't like it, and the 
> tourists certainly wouldn't.

Yes, but then you run into the canonical issue that people in a car 
culture are loathe to the point of militancy to give up road real estate 
to a form of transportation that they're not familiar with and 
consequently don't trust yet.  The failure of LRT in Austin in 2000 is 
how the Austin Monorail Project got started.

Also, I'm not entirely sure that monorail would not have been 
appropriate right on the strip.  This is perhaps the biggest argument we 
have with new urbanist planners who oppose monorail.  Their claim is 
that, being up in the air, monorail blocks views and makes the 
streetscape less pleasant for pedestrians, consequently negatively 
affecting pedestrian-oriented uses of the urban environment.

This is a very subtle point.  In reality, monorail can actually make a 
wide street MORE pedestrian friendly by splitting the pedestrian "no 
man's land" of the street into smaller pieces.  The only way to explain 
this is by using a picture.  Take a look at the 5th image down on this 
page (second from bottom):

   http://www.monorails.org/tMspages/KLspecial10.html

Now imagine this same street with the monorail removed.  It should be 
clear that the same street sans monorail is actually less pedestrian 
friendly because of the width!  The monorail creates a more human scale 
for the streetscape, and actually encourages pedestrian uses.

But even on narrow streets, the impact on pedestrians is exaggerated, as 
illustrated by these photos from Moscow (and this despite the extra-wide 
colums):

   http://www.monorails.org/tMspages/CnstMosc3.html

I'm guessing that planners who have these fears are like me, and mostly 
have experience with elevated light and heavy rail, which IS both 
visually intrusive and a bit oppressive, not to mention loud. The slim 
and elegant monorail beams and columns are actually minimally intrusive, 
and monorail trains are quiet in operation.  Take a look at the last 
image on this page and picture the strip in the background instead of a 
few darkened buildings:

   http://www.monorails.org/tMspages/KLspecial13.html

In fact, in Vegas they could easily use the columns for overwrought and 
gaudy displays which could actually visually add to the "appeal" of the 
strip.  (For a vaguely evocative example, see the third image down on 
this page:  http://www.monorails.org/tMspages/KLspecial11.html .)


Bob at Amp Electric wrote:
 > paraphrasing Michael Bluejay "Monorail would have been out of the
 > question on the strip because it would be a visual intrusion that
 > blocks the view of all the eye candy up and down the strip."
 >
 > This begs a question: Which system, light rail or monorail, would be
 > more flexible in changing grades? That is, can both systems be ground
 > level for a stretch, then elevated, and back down for these
 > aesthetically sensitive areas? Is there a precedent for monorail
 > structures at ground level?

This question was a bit hard to research because of the usual nonsense 
information posted by zealots on either side of the issue; however 
monorail, with lighter vehicles and rubber wheels on concrete tracks 
can, in general, climb steeper grades than light rail, although for most 
practical purposes, they're comparable.  The Portland MAX trains 
manufactured by Siemans can climb grades of 7% according to the 
manufacturer and the MTrans monorail is only designed for grades of up 
to 6%.  The Imuyama-Nagoya monorail in Japan can manage grades of an 
astonishing 9.7%, but has a maximum speed of 25mph.

Here is a picture of the the LVM climbing over the pedestrian walkway of 
  the Las Vegas Convention Center and reaching a height of 60ft:

   http://www.monorails.org/tMspages/CnstLV20a.html  (last image).

To answer Bobby's question, technically, both kinds of systems can 
easily transition from at-grade to elevated operation, but elevating 
light rail is kind of expensive and does create the noise and visual 
oppression feared by new urbanist planners, and I don't see how one can 
run monorail at-grade *in the street*.  The sides of monorail trains 
extend around the beam, so an at-grade system would have to have some 
unacceptably wide and deep gaps separating the operating beam from the 
surrounding roadway. This is not to say that monorail is not run 
at-grade, however.   Check out the 10th and 11th images from the top on 
this page (the new Chongqing system):

   http://skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?t=131473

The 9th image shows the system cruising through a building, which is 
kind of neat.