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Good news, after a few stops and starts the new Chennai system is a definate go with the bidding process underway with 8 different bidders for the contract including Hitachi, Scomi, but curiously not Bombardier.
Construction is set to begin with 6 months on the first phase of massive project. According to the Times of India, the first phase will be a massive 4 line system of 123km. I do not know of the capacity but it is being built as the city's primary rapid transit system not as different feeder routes. I'm not sure what the construction timeline is but if memory serves, it is the beginning of a monsterous 300km system to be completed by the late 2020s.
 
ssiguy2 said:
Thing is is that it was suppose to be used for the entire LINK system. Seattilites twice held a plebicite on the LRT or Monorail battle for rapid transit and both times the citizens voted for monorail and then the city and transit "professionals" politely told their citizens to f...off and used LRT instead.
The result?.....a US$2.6 billion 25km line with very bad ridership numbers. In the US, transit authorities continually underestimate ridership levels so any number looks good. Now 2 yeaars on LINK is still below it's dismal forecasts and running at just 28,000 passengers per day. This lack of patronage has led to poor frequency levels and a system that runs at part along roadways so the line cannot be automated. In fact numbers are even worse than one might think as many routes were redirected to meetup with the LRT stations so very few riders are new.
$85 million per mile is dirt cheap especially compared to what Toronto spends.
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How can you compare the monorail extension scheme to serve Ballard with the LINK system? They serve completely different areas? And really, do you think the Ballard monorail would carry anywhere near the number of people that LINK carries, simply based on population densities and demographics of the areas served?

I don't believe the $85 million per mile number for a minute. Nor do I believe that there is any momentum behind this plan. Just got back from a week in Seattle, and there didn't seem to be any discussion of this there.

And how do you deal with how slow the existing Monorail is compared to LINK? It's acceleration seems dreadful. How do you find it when you ride it?
 
I've never been on it but I understand that it is quite slow but I would think due to being nothing more than tourist train it is not going as fast as it is capable of.
Also the Seattle Monorail is 50 years old and due to the huge improvements in the technology it's not really a far comparison to the new systems.
 
ssiguy2 said:
Thing is is that it was suppose to be used for the entire LINK system. Seattilites twice held a plebicite on the LRT or Monorail battle for rapid transit and both times the citizens voted for monorail and then the city and transit "professionals" politely told their citizens to f...off and used LRT instead.
The result?.....a US$2.6 billion 25km line with very bad ridership numbers. In the US, transit authorities continually underestimate ridership levels so any number looks good. Now 2 yeaars on LINK is still below it's dismal forecasts and running at just 28,000 passengers per day. This lack of patronage has led to poor frequency levels and a system that runs at part along roadways so the line cannot be automated. In fact numbers are even worse than one might think as many routes were redirected to meetup with the LRT stations so very few riders are new.
$85 million per mile is dirt cheap especially compared to what Toronto spends.
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Why not have a read:

http://seattletransitblog.com/2008/03/19/a-rehash-what-was-wrong-with-the-monorail/

A Rehash: What Was Wrong With The Monorail
March 19, 2008 at 11:20 am
by Ben Schiendelman

A week ago, while talking about the viaduct, a friend said to me “If only we had just built the monorail…”

A few days later, when he regained consciousness and they took him out of the ICU (joking! joking!), I had calmed down. I gave him a list of why the monorail would never have worked, was a bad idea in the first place, and would probably have ended up half-built and bankrupt:

First, putting your technology choice in your law is the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard of. Your law should always say something like “high capacity transit” or “fixed guideway transit” – something flexible – that way you don’t get backed into a corner. There were very few initial bids for the monorail – and only one that held up for long. This is not a standardized transportation system – there are many competing technologies for both trains and guideways. They’re generally proprietary – only one vendor will sell you the trains to go on your tracks. That means single bids, which kind of defeats the purpose of competitive bidding, don’t you think?

Second, don’t claim your fantastical technology will “pay for itself”. Seriously, that was how this all started – “it will be profitable”, we were told, “companies will be falling all over themselves to get the contract”. Yeah, and my buddies in Baghdad don’t know where to put all the floral arrangements. The original monorail group started out with that claim, then moved to $18-36 million a mile with operating costs recovered through fares (still no chance in hell), then more like $50-100 million a mile… eventually it became clear that it was, actually, a transit system, and that transit systems do, indeed, cost money. Too late: making all those crazy claims killed their credibility.
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I personally like this paragraph because it describes you so well!

Third, and maybe even most importantly: This was supposed to be grassroots, bringing people together. Instead, it became an anti-light-rail festival of lies, alienating the support of transit users and people with brains everywhere. “Light rail can’t climb a grade”, they said, when the stretch we’ve built along SR-518 is as steep as their Hitachi monorail could do. “Light rail isn’t elevated”, they said… I hope everyone on this blog realizes the humor in that statement. “Light rail is so expensive”, they said (and I’m leaving out their capital letters and exclamation points) – but it turns out that the differences in cost between light rail and monorail are negligible. They poked fun at their base supporters, and it cost them.
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There are several problems with the Central LINK including it's poor route choice as much of the southern part of the line goes down an isolated rail ROW. It is also quite infrequent.............every 6 minutes in RH and 12 minutes off peak. The poor ridership reflects the poor service but it costs too much to run it more frequently as it has grade interaction..........it can't be automated unlike Vancouver's SkyTrain.
Has they built it as a grade separated system the operational costs would be much lower. Eglinton is an example of that, worl'd most expensive LRT line {literally} and yet operational costs will be high due to a relatively small segment at grade.
The Seattle LRT also took a long time to build while monorail construction is much faster and far less disruptive.
 
ssiguy2 said:
There are several problems with the Central LINK including it's poor route choice as much of the southern part of the line goes down an isolated rail ROW. It is also quite infrequent.............every 6 minutes in RH and 12 minutes off peak. The poor ridership reflects the poor service but it costs too much to run it more frequently as it has grade interaction..........it can't be automated unlike Vancouver's SkyTrain.
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Surely the buses in the grade-separated tunnel are a bigger issue than the crossings.

Ridership for the LINK has been growing steadily. Remember there are still only 13 stations. Should 25 stations by 2020.
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ssiguy2 said:
The Seattle LRT also took a long time to build while monorail construction is much faster and far less disruptive.
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Seattle monorail has been much less disruptive during the last 50 years ... BECAUSE THEY HAVEN'T BUILT A SINGLE STATION SINCE THEN! I don't see any disruption from the current LRT construction project.
 
More good and very interesting news......
Hong Kong is proposing a new 9km 12 station monorail line for the city to be built by 2023. Why I bring that up I'm not exactly sure, since when did Hong Kong know anything about rapid/mass transit?
The more interesting news is from Nigeria. Nigeria already has one mass/rapid monorail project well under construction. It now is proposing a second one of 18km for $500 million for the city of Quinsha. What makes this interesting is that it will be built by a monorail consortium I have never heard of, Trans Globin.
Looked up their website and low and behold it is a Canadian company headquartered in Missisauga no less.
Funny how a transit system, that is considered a tonkya toy by Toronto, has in the province a large monorail consortium in Miss, a world leader in monorails manufacturing plant with the world's single largest monorail system being built in Sao Paulo, and a new monorail testing track centre under construction in nearby Kingston partially paid for by Queen's Park.
 
Re: Hong Kong Monorail:

The rationale for using that system has little to do with economics, and more to do with tourism and "image making":

Financial & Economic Returns
12. The EFLS proposal will incur substantial cost and the financial and economic returns are not satisfactory if it is treated as a transport infrastructure. The capital cost is broadly estimated to be $12 billion (in 2010 prices). The anticipated revenue is unable to meet its capital cost as well as operating and maintenance expenses. We have broadly estimated that if both the capital cost and subsequent assets replacement expenses1 are to be borne by the Government with public consensus, the annual revenue could barely cover the running cost of the EFLS. Based on the quantifiable economic benefits, the economic internal rate of return (EIRR2) of the EFLS proposal is estimated to be around +1%, which is lower than that of a typical transport infrastructure project, usually with a return of +4% or more. (p. 4)

14. Taking the form of a monorail system, the EFLS will create a unique landmark in Hong Kong with high tourism appeal. It will facelift the image of Kowloon East CBD and enhance the appeal of KTD to tourists and local visitors. At an elevated level, passengers could enjoy the panoramic views of Victoria Harbour, the beautiful landscape and those iconic developments in KTD. In other words, it provides tourists/visitors with a great experience of travelling and sightseeing. (p. 5)

http://www.hfc.org.hk/filemanager/files/TFKT_04_2012.pdf

AoD
 
Whether it's imagine or not the end result is that Hong Kong is building a rapid/mass transit system while Toronto is building LRT which is neither of those two things. Improved transit certainly but it won't get Torontonians to their destinations any faster than they do now unlike the soon to be riders of the new Hong Kong monorail.
 
You quoted Monorail in Hong Kong, i provided you with their justification. What does this have anything to do with LRT in Toronto? Are you saying that the context are the same or even comparable?

AoD
 
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The thread is "Monorail for Toronto" and I think monorail would be a far superior choice.
The thing I found most interestin was not, however, Hong Kong as monorails are becoming increasingly popular in Asia outside of just Japan but rather how Ontario seems to be becoming a major player on the monorail front from manufacturing, financing, and R&D.
 
You think it is superior, yet you are unable to demonstrate and articulate the rationale behind such an argument, while lopping to us how "Hong Kong knew transit planning". Even ignoring the contextual differences, the report I have cited clearly indicates the choice of monorail is not for any reasons that are traditionally considered as practical - but for the tourism/novelty aspects more in common with other extant monorail systems.

AoD
 
Sao Paul is currently building a 100km monorail system using Bomadier's ART system {not SkyTrain} which is being built foe capacity of a whopping 50,000 pphpd and will handle one million passengers per day by 2030 according to estimates. The first 2 lines are already over half completed. No less than 7 Indian cities have plans for large mass/rapid transit monorails and the first line in Mumbai opens later this year. Chennai is planning a massive 300km system and tenders have already gone out. Chonquin has opened 2 new lines in the past 4 years and ridership is already at 450,000 per day. Vietnam just this month has stated that it's preferred choice for 2 large system in Saigon and Ho Chi Min City instead of standard Metro as it is cheaper to build, has the same capacity but can also be built much faster as one of the benefits of monorail is that much of the construction is built off site.
 
Does the great monorail news ever stop, clearly not.
Just 2 days ago yet another new monorail line announce this time in Bangkok. The new Pink Line is a new elevated mass/rapid transit line. It was originally going to either be elevated heavy rail or LRT but the Thai government just announced it will be an elevated monorail. It is going out to tender this year with construction to start immediately afterwards. The new 35 km line will have 20 stations and be completed in 4 years.
The Thai government is going with monorail due to, as it stated, to the challenging geography, quietness near residential areas, lower cost than either elevated LRT or heavy rail and can be built faster and with less disruption than LRT or heavy rail as much is built off site.
When the line is opened it is expected to carry 300,000 passengers a day.
 
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