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My current commute is entirely practical to do with an electric car now. The only issue is availability of a charging point in my apartment building's garage. Here in B.C. most of our electricity comes from hydro power, so I'm not overly concerned about greenhouse gases.

The Vancouver public transit system has one of the larger fleets of electric trolley buses in North America. Assuming they pay more or less what I pay for electricity (they'll get a better bulk/industrial rate, but have distribution costs that I don't have), the running costs for the trolley buses are about the same as a Kei car.

We have hybrid buses in several cities in B.C. as well. They're the GM/Allison hybrids, which act very much like a giant Prius.

...laura

...will be if you're planning to visit a city, and you don't want to take the time to find out what their transportation authority is called, where their website is, then figure out a new trip planning interface.

Vancouver, BC also has a good trip planner, but most people outside of Vancouver probably don't know that the transportation authority is called Translink (http://translink.bc.ca/).

Pretty soon, you'll be able to find an entire route, from the bus on your corner to the airport, across the continent by plane (which you will be able to book through Google Travel), then across another city by bus to your hotel (which you will be able to book through Google Reservations).

Although, if they keep expanding as they have been, you'll be taking the Google Bus to Google International Airport, flying Google Airlines to Google City, then hailing a Google Cab to the Google Inn.

Get the economy of scale working, get the car companies working towards better batteries and technologies.

I still think it's better to just stay out of vehicles whenever possible.

I take public transit into work, and it's awesome. I get to play an hour of Tiger Woods on my PSP (or catch up on the weeks BattleStar Galactica, playing off a memory stick), or read a book - two things that probably shouldn't be done while operating a motor vehicle.

Another option that's really cool here in Vancouver is the Car Co-op. You pay a monthly fee and a per-kilometer fee (if you drive alot, you pay a higher montly fee and a lower per-km fee, but if you don't use a car much, then you can get a lower monthly fee and a higher per-km fee). All you have to do is leave the vehicle clean, and put gas in it if it's got less than a quarter tank (and the co-op reimburses you for the fuel). This gives you access to a vehicle if you need it, and you avoid the hassle of ownership.

I think there are lots of ways of getting out of cars, and that should be the goal. Cars create pollutants during manufacture (think of all the batteries a hybrid uses, the paint, the plastics, etc), use a lot of electricity (to mine, refine, transport all the steel and other components), use a precious, finite resource, and put alot of crud into the air.

I won't comment on the cost ratios indicated by the above poster, as I assume their sources are thoroughly researched.

However, I can compare -- from a user standpoint -- the Seattle monorail and the Skytrain system in Vancouver, BC.

In terms of noise level, the Skytrain seems far quieter than the Seattle monorail. Noise level (or lack thereof) is a serious consideration with the Skytrain system, due to the fact that it passes through numerous residential suburbs of Greater Vancouver.

Most of the Skytrain is elevated, in some cases directly above vehicle traffic. In terms of space, while the tracks themselves likely take more room than a single rail, I would suspect that the cars themselves are similar in width -- hence, the physical space occupied by the working systems is not likely to be substantially different.

From a safety standpoint, there have certainly been deaths on the Skytrain system -- these have typically been due to people walking on the tracks, or workers being where they shouldn't. The system has been running since 1986 -- I do not personally recall any derailments, although I won't claim it is impossible.

In any case, if anyone is interested in reading more about the Skytrain system (and perhaps thoroughly comparing it to a typical monorail system), here are two interesting links:

http://www.railway-technology.com/projects/vancouv er/
http://www.translink.bc.ca/Transportation_Services /SkyTrain/default.asp

Vancouver, BC up in Canada has an extensive system of overhead lines for the electric trolleys which have been in operation since 1948.

Trolley History

When I was a kid the diesel buses were always the "Stinky Buses".

That instruction actually fixed the page in Opera 5. In short, the special style sheet was an attempt to fix bugs in Opera 5.

I love Opera myself, but that little episode was pure FUD.

Now if you want some pure anti-Opera stuff, visit this link in Vancouver's (admittedly crappy) Translink website. If you look at it in Opera ID=Opera you get a blank page, use ID=MSIE and it works. I've emailed their admins and they refuse to fix it.

Excuse me? I live in Seattle. 130 miles away is the Vancouver BC SkyTrain, which is not quite monorail technology but it's 95% elevated and has been moving people efficiently for a couple decades ... and they're building a second line now. Oh, and you get a wonderful view from it. The Seattle Green Line will not go "from an antique shopping district (not very big) to the beach (not very big)". The northern portion goes through one of Seattle's main residential areas (which was originally a Norwegian fishing town and thus has some kitschy shops as well as the largest number of working-class bars in the city). The southern portion goes to the middle of a very hilly area underserved by transit. It's "near" a beach only on the map: it would take most of an hour and a couple hills to walk from the mono to the beach.

"That" beach is Alki. There's also Golden Gardens, also an hour's hilly walk from the opposite end of the mono. There's also Magnuson Park (Soundgarden), Matthew's Beach, Madison Park, Seward Park, the bluffs at Discovery Park (although there you're on a cliff high above the beach), etc. And across the Sound are plenty of islands with lots of beaches. The thing that sucks is most of the beaches are rocky except where they've trucked in sand. To get to the big sandy beaches like in California you have to go 90 miles west to the coast.

Phase 1 of the Green Line will be accessible to a fifth of the city's residents. Besides work commutes, it will access the football stadium, baseball stadium and Seattle Center, which are the three biggest evening/weekend traffic jams. Proposed future extensions would go to Northgate Mall, the Vashon ferry and the NE residential area, twice as fast as the current bus routes.

The proposed citywide map (5 lines) is here. That would be accessibe to something like 90% of the city's residents.

The monorail was approved by the voters three times, in spite of a city council that tried to bury it twice in favor of light rail.

What's wrong with light rail in Seattle? (1) The Rainier Valley portion (the dotted line on the previous map) will travel on surface streets with traffic crossings at a measly 35 MPH max -- hello, Portland MAX and San Jose LR, (2) the underground (northern) portions proved too costly so they were cut--even though Capitol Hill and the U-district would have provided most of the ridership, (3) it doesn't go to Northgate Mall (a northern transit center), which would have allowed dozens of suburban routes to terminate there rather than continuing downtown, instead it will *increase* traffic downtown because trains will displace buses in the downtown tunnel, (4) most people in the areas affected want it underground, which it won't be, (5) many Rainier Valley residents said they prefer no light rail to the current proposal ("just skip us for now and come back when you can do it right") but instead they will be the *first* to get it, (6) the only reason it goes into the Rainier Valley at all rather than along the freeway is to serve the "poorest, most multi-ethnic" neighborhood in town, even though the public-housing project it goes near is being gentrified as we speak and won't have many "poor, multi-ethnic" residents when the line finally starts running.

Not everybody likes overhead trains, whether light or mono. But at least monorail equalizes the burden because *everybody* has overhead trains. The original Sound Transit proposal (now truncated) puts the northern (rich) portion underground and the southern (poor) portion on the surface. The reason is not discrimination but topographical: the northern portion has to go under hills and a canal. The southern portion transverses a flat valley. But still, the Valley residents don't see why they should be disrupted more than the rest of the city.

Many citizens tried to get Sound Transit to consider monorail for their line but they flatly refused because it's not "proven technology in the US". No matter that it could be done sooner, would cost less (because of less need to acquire private land), and would blunt much of the neighborhood opposition. People in Rainier are not saying "we don't like ugly overhead trains" -- there's not much of a "view" down there anyway. They are saying, "we don't want our kids killed by (almost silent) surface trains". Because when a kid's ball runs away, the kid goes after it, oncoming train or no.

> Well, you're right about falling in love with
> mass transit when travelling abroad, but other
> than Japan, who has gone the monorail route?

Well, it's not a monorail, but it is elevated light transit, and since you appear to be from Portland, I'm surprised you're not aware of Vancouver's Skytrain. (ok, ok, so it's Vancouver BC... still, it's not too far away.)

Works quite well, although it is expensive to build. But it's out of the way, doesn't hold up traffic, and is reasonably fast.

We also have heavy commuter rail, similar to the Sounder (I think ours was used as a proto for Seattle's; I've seen a couple of the Sounder cars up here) on CN line between Mission and the downtown peninsula. Interestingly enough, when Skytrain enters the downtown core it returns underground, using a double-decked former rail tunnel, which essentially (and probably used to) meets the commuter trains at Waterfront.

-mis