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Vegas: Monorails v. Gridlock
TimeTrip writes "Vegas seems to be taking a little cue from Disney. 'Las Vegas, which never stops thinking big, has just embarked on its most ambitious, costly attempt to solve a problem that once seemed impossible to have in this sprawling desert valley: gridlock. It is building the nation's largest monorail system.'"
Or maybe they'll be taking their cue from Lyle Lanly. Frankly this sounds more
like a Shelbyville idea.
The Monorail Song:
Monorail Lyle Lanley: Well, sir, there's nothing on earth Like a genuine, Bona fide, Electrified, Six-car Monorail! What'd I say? Ned Flanders: Monorail! Lyle Lanley: What's it called? Patty+Selma: Monorail! Lyle Lanley: That's right! Monorail! [crowd chants `Monorail' softly and rhythmically] Miss Hoover: I hear those things are awfully loud... Lyle Lanley: It glides as softly as a cloud. Apu: Is there a chance the track could bend? Lyle Lanley: Not on your life, my Hindu friend. Barney: What about us brain-dead slobs? Lyle Lanley: You'll be given cushy jobs. Abe: Were you sent here by the devil? Lyle Lanley: No, good sir, I'm on the level. Wiggum: The ring came off my pudding can. Lyle Lanley: Take my pen knife, my good man. I swear it's Springfield's only choice... Throw up your hands and raise your voice! All: Monorail! Lyle Lanley: What's it called? All: Monorail! Lyle Lanley: Once again... All: Monorail! Marge: But Main Street's still all cracked and broken... Bart: Sorry, Mom, the mob has spoken! All: Monorail! Monorail! Monorail! [big finish] Monorail! Homer: Mono... D'oh!
Anyone who comes to work by bus, bike or commuter van at least four times a month is eligible to enter a weekly drawing that rewards 100 people with $100 each.
I love the vegas twist on mass transit. Instead of throwing your dollar into a meter, you get to toss it into a one armed bandit. I can see the lines of blue haired ladies lining up for their chance to play a role of the bus.
Glass protected stations that protect people from walking on the track are not new. In London I remember going to an underground stop which had glass doors so you couldn't go on the track. It is a good idea to implement it in Las Vegas though.
Personally though all I can think about is the Monorail Simpsons Episode...Doh!
I see no forseeable danger in this at all. Just keep a big letter 'M' on the side of the train for emergency braking, along with an oversized steel donut.
Let's get this out of the way early:
SELECT *
FROM smartass_remarks
WHERE simpsons='t' AND
topic='monorail'
There.
Am I right? Eh?!?! Ever been there, you know of what I say.
Every fscking time I've been there I have to fork over ~$10 for a Bell taxi or something, which all smell like they last scrubbed inside with a dead cat! Seriously, every other major city I've been in the big hotels have shuttles, but not LV, I swear it's a labor thing of somesort or a major bribe has been paid.
In either case, I would certainly like to see how well the monorail plan gets around to the airport.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Look at your sig... this is the 3rd day of said blackout.. and you're POSTING constructive comments to the story? I don't think this tactic is working out very well, sorry to say. I pity you.
If you really wanted to make an impact, you'd really need to get together way more users to boycott slashdot than what is going on now.
If Vegas gets a monorail, will we have HBO's "Monorail Confessions" to look forward to?
~Philly
A few cool mockups, and some more detailed maps.
http://www.monorails.org/tMspages/LasVegas.html
http://www.lvnvmonorail.com/
"It's not a war on drugs, it's a war on personal freedom. Keep that in mind at all times." Bill Hicks
Here's a page (framed, mozilla unfriendly, slow jsp)
from the principal contractor, Bombardier.
This is the largest of three monorails they are building (although they say 4 miles, not 8). What's cool is that two of the three are for systems to get around downtown, not just for a system to get you to the airport parking lot.
Unfortunately, the careers page doesn't reveal any openings. Sigh, this is the sort of socially responsible project that so many aerospace companies were to turn to after the cold war ended.
The Seattle Monorail Project aims to put a monorail in downtown Seattle. It's set to be put to a vote in November, I think.
Seattle suffers from the same problem: too many damn cars. With the 2nd worst rush hour traffic in the US (behind LA) I hope they can pull it off. There have been fights with light rail folks, but I think monorail is a much better option. Keep it above grade so there is little disruption of traffic. Many claim that monorail is Mickey Mouse transit. (no thanks to certain Simpson's parodies). Keep in mind that millions use monorail daily for transportation in Japan. When the people from Seattle went over to look at Japan's system they were blown away by its efficiency and capacity. After spending time abroad, I've become very disappointed with the mass transit systems in the US (or lack there of).
We love our cars way too much.
A speech...
The problem with expanding the Seattle monorail is that it was designed more as a novelty than anything: it took people from downtown to Seattle Center (the site of the World's Fair). As such, it was never designed to be expanded; the planners never really thought beyond the end of the fair (although it was pitched as a marvelous solution to all sorts of transit problems, it was built almost entirely for the "Wow, neat!" factor). If Vegas builds a monorail network as part of a serious public transit program, it will probably be built with expandability in mind.
That's it. I'm no longer part of Team Sanity.
A bunch of posters here have wondered "why build such a thing?" Having just had the misfortune of visiting Vegas, let me say why the city is uniquely suited to benefit from a monorail.
Like no other city, Las Vegas is made up a tremendously high percentage of people who visit just for a the weekend. Tens of thousands of people fly into Vegas every week, all of whom go directly to the casinos, where they sleep in the upstairs hotel rooms. Right now, they essentially have two viable choices: cab or rental car.
Nobody wants to go through the hassle of figuring out a bus system just after flying into town. And walking that mile or so to the casinos, with luggage, in the dessert heat won't work either. A monorail dedicated to connect the airport with the strip is an incredible idea, as much as I may personally detest gambling.
I'm generally "Interesting," "Insightful," and even "Funny" here. What the hell happens to me at parties?
Too bad they are thinking "big 1960's style public transportation". A monorail system like Personal Rapid Transit would have been so much nicer. See also here.
I miss Phil Hartman. Hit my karma if you need to, but I needed to say it.
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Perhaps the people building this could get something out of trying two trains in Japan.
- The monorail from Shimbashi (in Tokyo near the Ginza) to Ariake (manmade peninsula with convention and amusement facilities).
This is an unmanned, beautiful monorail which loops out over the sea. Has some good handholds and soft parts you can lean on because it seems on a narrow train with lots of windows you get pushed strongly to the side when you don't expect it. Beautiful glass car in front is a great panorama.
- The newest subway built in Tokyo, opened last year: Namboku Line which runs from northern Tokyo down to fashionable Azabu. (Like the above monorail I believe) the platform is enclosed on either side by glass walls interrupted by sliding glass doors which only open when the train stops right in front of it. There are metal posts with electric eyes on them just inside where the doors retract, so that they won't try to close while someone is entering. No room also because of those posts for someone to slide outside the glass wall.
I don't have any linkage for you, but I guess I could walk outside and take some pictures. A local hospital is footing the bill for an approximately 3 mile monorail line in downtown Indianapolis to connect Methodist Hospital with the IUPUI Campus and all the hospitals around it.
Clarian Health, who owns most of these hospitals is foot the 34 million dollar bill for this, and the city will get monthly payments from them for taking land away I guess. I just have to find out if I can catch a ride to class on the thing, or if it will be limited to medical personel only.
What?
Meanwhile, Portland Oregon, to the south, with our "repressive" intensive city planning, urban boundary, land-use planning measures and all that, manages to build light-rail segment after segment more or less on budget, more or less on time, and with ridership above estimates.
Clearly we're a bunch of gawddamned Godless commies compared to the good, honest, business-uber-alles people of Seattle, aren't we?
However, the next expansion (which will be completed in a few years, IIRC) is a link between Denver and a large suburb to the south. A benefit to commuters, but also greatly welcomed by shoppers.
Also the proposed monorail is meant to connect Denver with the ski resorts-- it isn't meant to be a "downtown monorail" as the article implies.
What is it with geeks and monorails anyway?
And the Simpsons song just isn't funny anymore.
-- I have a private email server in my basement.
My first response was Yes! As somebody who goes to Las Vegas several times a year, and cringes while sitting in cabs as the meter keeps running at stoplights, I was happy to see finally a nice transit system that stays out of the way of traffic.
Then I saw the route map.
1/2 the strip is not accessed by it. It starts at the MGM grand. And, most problematic, it does'nt go to the airport.
If I was designing this, it would run up the strip to the Sahara, turn right to the convention center, then head north to downtown.
I can't help to think that those cab drivers I hate so much had something to do with this assinine design.
The Internet is generally stupid
A lot of Americans go abroad on vacation and get blown away by how well mass transit works. Let me tell you why that is not a good way to evaluate it.
A typical European major city is built around a more or less ancient center, where all roads and transit system originate, with important extensions to the airport and rail stations. As I hope you can see, the mass transit system is working at it's very best for the typical travel patterns of a tourist, going between the main transit centers and all the tourist attractions in the center.
Now, if you were to live in a regular home and commute to a regular job in that same city, things would be very different. You'd be going from one suburb to another, probably having to change train or bus at the center. It would take at least twice as long as going by car, quite likely more. You could and would probably make arrangements so you lived where mass transit was favorable for your commute, but whenever you were going to some friend or some other random place, you'd have quite a logistical task on your hands.
And that's in a city that's always had it's transportation system built for mass transit. In an american city, built from the ground up for cars, it would work quite a bit worse.
I think I know since I moved to San Francisco from Stockholm 7 years ago. And while Stockholm has a quite decent mass transit system, and SF traffic is painfully congested, going by car here just can't compare to going by mass transit there. It's one of my bigger reasons for not moving back.
The main reasons that putting in mass transit in US cities is harder is (1) that the population density is much smaller and (2) traffic patterns aren't nearly as uniform.
(1) is because everyone has a car, and their "active range" is much bigger. I was pretty happy going by bike and mass transit in Stockholm. But if my average trip there was 5 km it's perhaps 15km here. I get there equally fast. It seems everyone likes to live 30-60 minutes from their work, that means that Americans in general live much more spread out.
Anyway, regardless of why, the population density difference is a fact. And this is a problem for mass transit since with 1/3 the population density, you'd need 9 times as much mass transit, at 9 times the cost to serve the same population. That's a lot of empty busses and trains.
(2) US cities don't have much of a center, especially the younger ones. LA, Dallas & Phoenix are mostly huge spread out built areas with little distinction. Trips people make tend to be from fairly random points A to equally random points B.
In short, mass transit is hard in these cities because there is little mass movement. All travel is individual. There are no huge streams of movements that a mass transit system could serve really well.
European cities have grown and developed over centuries together with their transportation systems. Those systems serve their needs, and the habits of their population have been formed by the available services.
Older US cities like New York, Boston and Chicago have evolved in a more European way, and do have pretty respectable and well used mass transit systems.
I'm sure you're right about transportation in London. But consider why that is so. And it sure doesn't make me want to move to London!