Railing against the death of the monorail
When Kluse station, on the Wuppertaler Schwebebahn, was blown to bits by Allied bombers during World War II, the world's oldest continually running monorail ground to a halt in 1945. But the Germans got to work at war's end, and had the thing up and rolling again as early as 1946. Not even bomber command was going to deprive the folks of Wuppertal of their one-tracked pal, which had been getting them from A to B since June 27, 1903.
It's still running, carrying thousands of passengers every day as it has (apart from the high-explosive hiatus of 1945) for 110 years this Thursday.
It's hard to imagine that by virtue of the stroke of a pen in some provincial government office, the burghers of Wuppertal would accept the demise of their venerable railway. It would be unthinkable. The men responsible for such an act of vandalism would be, well, run out of town on a rail.
Compare Wuppertal's love for the cocktail of tradition and innovation that is their centenarian monorail with our ovine acceptance of Macquarie Street's tragic violation of our city's heritage. On Sunday night, the citizens of Sydney will stare mindlessly as the last monorail carriage wends its sorry way to the blast furnace. There will be a pathetic sigh, a shrug, the odd ''Oh well, that's the end of that, then.'' And before you can utter the name ''Laurie Brereton'' (the 1980s uber advocate of the monorail and public works minister) next thing you know it'll be Monday morning.
And on Monday morning the bunfight will resume about the planning of the new, super-flash Darling Harbour precinct, which will allegedly put Sydney on the world convention and entertainment map once and for all. Yippee!
But it is rapidly becoming clear that not a single shovel will be wielded in anger south of Pyrmont Bridge for many moons. For everyone who likes any given plan, there are three people who hate it. It will make Barangaroo look utterly straightforward.
The old Anthony Hordern's site in George Street, which for years held the record for the biggest and most enduring hole in the ground in Sydney's planning history, should be a warning to anyone who wants to pull something down to make way for something else, while that something else is still gestating on drawing boards and the subject of ferocious argument.
But by Monday morning, the government will have done exactly that - removed a functioning transport system that didn't get in anybody's way, and replaced it with absolutely nothing, simply in order to give the false impression that things were really going places in Darling Harbour. We all know the only thing going places in Darling Harbour is the monorail.
If it turns out that it has to go, it certainly doesn't have to go now. Why not wait until whatever ghastly pile they finally settle on wedging between Chinatown and the University of Technology, Sydney is finally approved (probably sometime in 2019, if at all) and do it then?
In the meantime, we could come to appreciate the essential grooviness, the high-tech kitsch, future/retro hipness that is the Sydney monorail.
When it was being built, self-appointed arbiters of taste shrieked that it was ugly beyond measure. Were they implying that it would ruin the vista of the pebble-crete driveways of the Hilton Hotel, or clash with the charming old-world squalor of 1980s Liverpool Street?
What these people failed, and in many cases still fail, to appreciate is that the streetscapes of Sydney are essentially invisible from street level. The monorail, soaring above the garbage-strewn awnings of myriad discount shops and convenience stores, allows the traveller to actually see the proud old buildings, which now sadly stand with their toes besmirched by decades of half-baked storefront ''renovations''.
And like valve wireless sets, huge tail fins on 1950s cars and The Jetsons, the monorail is a fabulous reminder of a vision of the future that almost-but-not-quite came to be.
Sure, it doesn't move too many people to very many places they actually want to go to, but who cares? That's hardly the point. It's just so inherently cool, and there will be a lot of young people on Sunday night who will, in 50 years' time, be telling their grandchildren: ''I was there the last night the monorail ran.'' ''The monorail? Wow, really? Why did they ever tear that down, grandad?'' they'll ask.
Yep, at 9.30pm on Sunday the little part of me that is George Jetson will die - we never got the flying cars, the robot maids and the teleporting gadgets, but we got our monorail. And soon it will be like the Bondi tram - gone forever.
What would the good citizens of Wuppertal make of it all?
Pat Sheil is Column 8 editor and a Pyrmont resident.
Read more:
http://www.smh.com.au/comment/raili...he-monorail-20130625-2ov2d.html#ixzz2XoyXIIEC
