Sydney’s Monorail Potentially Getting The Chop

I would rather the government invest some more money into the monorail, get rid of a few of the existing stops and add a few new stops. The actual cars are pretty old though. In fact, one of the monorails is being harvested for parts for all of the other monorails. The price should also be reduced, though I cannot see this happening.

“Recent studies[12] by a Sydney newspaper show that the Monorail is now one of the most expensive public transport systems in the world, with a $5 charge to travel a mere 150 metres between two stops in Pitt Street. When measured per kilometre, a journey on the monorail is more than a luxury cabin on the Orient Express from London to Venice.” – Wikipedia

Can it outrun The Flash?

One vitally important fact about the monorail has been omitted from every story I’ve read about this over the past few days. Originally the monorail was supposed to connect the established tourist areas of Circular Quay and the Rocks with the then brand new Darling Harbour redevelopment. At the time, the only objections to it seemed to revolve around monorail passengers being able to see into 1st floor offices as it zipped by. However, Nick Greiner was swept to power and one of his promises was to do everything in his power to curtail the monorail. The contract was signed so he couldn’t cancel it but he was able to exploit a loophole to cripple it by changing the route so that it didn’t actually go anywhere. So all the commentary that points out that it has struggled to meet even half it’s passenger targets need to understand that those targets were based on the original route, which would have been a goldmine for the operator and a real icon for our city. That they have done as well as they have under the circumstances is a real credit to the operators.

Rather than tear it down, I’d like to see it extended all the way to the Quay, as per the original proposal. If done sensibly, it would be easy to create a train interchange with Circular Quay station. It could also be extended to go to the casino without adding much time to a full loop. Make it useful, update the whole system and it would be a surefire success.

OTOH, light rail sucks. It competes with cars, busses, motorbikes and bicycles for street space and is very dangerous for both kinds of bikes. Sydney streets are just too narrow to accommodate it and both the infrastructure and trams themselves are ugly. Light rail only makes sense to me on a dedicated route, like normal rail. Everywhere else it blows goats.

A third alternative might be another kind of elevated train. Bangkok has an excellent elevated system that is a really good way to get around. Taipei’s is also very good and it’s trains basically run on rubber tyres in an elevated concrete ditch. I imagine it is done like that so that it is cheap and lightweight but it seems very effective. The advantages of any kind of elevated train is that it takes far less ground space away from existing transport systems and can be put in place much more quickly. The original monorail went up in no time.

I’ve often thought a monorail would be a great thing to have running across Spit Bridge, then looping down to Manly and around to Brookvale/Warringah Mall, where a big bus interchange would take passengers further north. It could easily start from somewhere north of the bridge, maybe Milsons Point or Nth Sydney, where an interchange with the Nth Shore line could make it easy to get to from the city. Of course, sections of a system like that would need to be two-way, but I’m sure stronger pylons could be built to carry two rails, whilst still fitting on a normal median strip. Of course, the nimbys would hate it but its about time we started to tell those sheeple to shut up.

People in Pyrmont and Ultimo use it alot when it rains. heh.

I actually quite like it… just wish it went to Circular Quay and was quiter and better maintained.

The monorail put us on the map!