Your claim about cost is rediculous. Just look at Seattle, where we have both a 14 mile light rail system and 14 mile monorail system starting to get off the ground. The mostly-at-grade (slow) light rail project costs $2.4 billion. The much faster monorail system (with 12 more stations) costs only $1.6 billion.
Fiber is very difficult to certify for installation in aircraft due to the requirements of the physical environment. Its a challenge to get a mix of materials and connectors that survive the vibration, temperature range, and humidity requirements specified by the FAA. Its even harder to get the right mix to operate in the worst-case environment with acceptable loss.
I worked on a project to put an entertainment system that used fiber optics on planes. Although we qualified some fiber that could survive the environment, the materials that allowed it to do that failed the smoke & toxicity tests when burned. And since it was an entertainment system, we could ignore the fact that it might stop operating under some conditions - something you wouldn't want to do with critical flight control systems.
Monorail is perfect for Seattle primarily because we have a severe shortage of right-of-way. The hills and water forces all travel into a few narrow corridors, and the cost of acquiring new space in those corridors is incredibly expensive and politically contentious.
However, monorail just needs a 3 foot square space for a column every 120 feet. It fits in the parking strips of our narrow Seattle arterials. Thus, it adds huge new capacity without buying land, tearing down homes, or taking away lanes from cars.
By they way, we also have a light rail project in the Seattle area. However, it's years behind schedule and at $200 million per mile is twice as expensive as the monorail.
The new monorail authority will soon be talking to the feds about funding for the next line. Since we're paying for the first line all by ourselves, it will be counted as the local matching portion of the next part. Thus, we'll be able to get enough federal funding to cover the majority of the cost of the next one.
Plus, all the follow-on lines are much cheaper. I bet the next one will be the purple line from UW to Ballard. It's much shorter with no water crossings - probably in the $500 million range.
Your numbers are way off. According to the plan, the Seattle monorail will carry 72,000 people per day. That works out to 21,100,000 people per year. If you carry that ridership out over 30 years, you end up with $2.69 per rider.
The main concern with transmitters is their interference with the airplanes radios. Most consumer RF devices have nasty emissions profiles that have spikes at a bunch of places outside their intended frequency range. It will be a pretty big problem if your crappy cell phone interrupts/blocks a crucial conversation between the pilot and air-traffic-control when the plane is on approach to landing.
Every piece of electronics that is put on an airplane by the manufacturer/airline must go through a rigorous set of EMI lab testing to make sure it won't be a problem. Then once it's installed, the radio frequencies and other systems are tested to make sure there isn't any interference.
That pretty much leaves you with two choices: pay the big $$$ to have your personal transmitters tested, or don't use it on the plane. Otherwise your selfishness is jeoprodizing everyone else onboard.
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Your claim about cost is rediculous. Just look at Seattle, where we have both a 14 mile light rail system and 14 mile monorail system starting to get off the ground. The mostly-at-grade (slow) light rail project costs $2.4 billion. The much faster monorail system (with 12 more stations) costs only $1.6 billion.
That's a real-world savings of $800 million.
For more info, see:
kingcountymonorail.org
Fiber is very difficult to certify for installation in aircraft due to the requirements of the physical environment. Its a challenge to get a mix of materials and connectors that survive the vibration, temperature range, and humidity requirements specified by the FAA. Its even harder to get the right mix to operate in the worst-case environment with acceptable loss.
I worked on a project to put an entertainment system that used fiber optics on planes. Although we qualified some fiber that could survive the environment, the materials that allowed it to do that failed the smoke & toxicity tests when burned. And since it was an entertainment system, we could ignore the fact that it might stop operating under some conditions - something you wouldn't want to do with critical flight control systems.
Monorail is perfect for Seattle primarily because we have a severe shortage of right-of-way. The hills and water forces all travel into a few narrow corridors, and the cost of acquiring new space in those corridors is incredibly expensive and politically contentious.
However, monorail just needs a 3 foot square space for a column every 120 feet. It fits in the parking strips of our narrow Seattle arterials. Thus, it adds huge new capacity without buying land, tearing down homes, or taking away lanes from cars.
By they way, we also have a light rail project in the Seattle area. However, it's years behind schedule and at $200 million per mile is twice as expensive as the monorail.
The new monorail authority will soon be talking to the feds about funding for the next line. Since we're paying for the first line all by ourselves, it will be counted as the local matching portion of the next part. Thus, we'll be able to get enough federal funding to cover the majority of the cost of the next one.
Plus, all the follow-on lines are much cheaper. I bet the next one will be the purple line from UW to Ballard. It's much shorter with no water crossings - probably in the $500 million range.
Your numbers are way off. According to the plan, the Seattle monorail will carry 72,000 people per day. That works out to 21,100,000 people per year. If you carry that ridership out over 30 years, you end up with $2.69 per rider.
The main concern with transmitters is their interference with the airplanes radios. Most consumer RF devices have nasty emissions profiles that have spikes at a bunch of places outside their intended frequency range. It will be a pretty big problem if your crappy cell phone interrupts/blocks a crucial conversation between the pilot and air-traffic-control when the plane is on approach to landing.
Every piece of electronics that is put on an airplane by the manufacturer/airline must go through a rigorous set of EMI lab testing to make sure it won't be a problem. Then once it's installed, the radio frequencies and other systems are tested to make sure there isn't any interference.
That pretty much leaves you with two choices: pay the big $$$ to have your personal transmitters tested, or don't use it on the plane. Otherwise your selfishness is jeoprodizing everyone else onboard.