[999900000999]

If I was rich I’d go to a small town in a developing country and create a monorail. I’d buy up a 4km by 4km plot of land and create a car free city ( aside from emergency vehicles).

Free public transport, bikes and shoes for everyone

[stevekemp]

I've sold monorails to Brockway, Ogdenville, and North Haverbrook, and, by gum, it put them on the map!

[kylehotchkiss]

Mumbai has a Monorail.

How has that worked out?

[999900000999]

They don’t scale.

The Disneyland one is nice.

[panick21_]

Monorails suck and are properity garabage. Is a recepy for bad transit at increase cost.

[rsynnott]

This one seems to work... surprisingly well, considering how bonkers it is: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wuppertal_Schwebebahn

I've always wondered why they've been so generally unsuccessful; conventional elevated rail works fairly well, and at least in theory they should be much cheaper and less obtrusive.

[panick21_]

I didnt say they dont work. You just end up with highly costume properitery stuff.

[rsynnott]

Sure, but there's no reason that _has_ to be the case. Like, there've been attempts at standards; the volume is just never really there to make any of them _the_ standard.

Underground metro systems mostly started off as deeply weird and proprietary, as well (look at this one, weird gauge, tiny little trains, originally _cable_ operated: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glasgow_Subway), but nowadays they're _fairly_ standard, say.

[panick21_]

Sure but they aren't and even if there was, for anything but single lines they are worse. Most cities already have a rail system and extending that is better.

Monorail operations aren't cheaper, at best their construction is cheaper. But if you need interchanges it gets more expensive again.

Its simple really they over very few actual advantages while having many disadvantages, so when they are built its usually because some monorail builder managed to convince some local politicians despite most experts saying they should just build normal rail.

[Zopieux]

This. The general concept of "terrible public transport tech disguising as a good & novel idea" has a name: gadgetbahn.

[toephu2]

Japan has plenty of monorails and they work great. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monorails_in_Japan

[panick21_]

Yes they work but not better then normal trains and worse in some ways. Qnd in terms of sharing infrastructure maintaince, signaling and so on its worse.