LA needs monorails! I can't help but think of that Simpsons episode. But LA does need monorails, because subways can cause businesses to suffer, as in San Francisco along Market Street the BART construction required hundreds of businesses to put up with the noises and the leveled grounds. It was the only alternative because BART is notoriously loud. Now, we have better technology, so I'm sure that monorails will be the best thing LA ever have.
Plus, I would rather see LA from the sky, looking across the vast expanse of a harbor city, than driving on the grimy streets.
Plus, I would rather see LA from the sky, looking across the vast expanse of a harbor city, than driving on the grimy streets.
posted by Alan at February 11, 2006
1 Comments:
Once you get past costs of construction, monorails suffer from the same drawbacks as subways. Value increases with the number of stations, but, since everyone's sharing the same car, at each station everyone has to stop. This significantly drops the average velocity (and significantly increases the total time) any given passenger takes to get from one point to another.
We need a solution newer than 19th century technology -- a solution that features offline passenger loading and unloading and that can utilize packetization of traffic and load-balancing algorithms.
We need something like SkyTran. Hopefully city planners can wake up to the obvious advantages and SkyTran or one it's competitors can get a pilot project.
http://www.skytran.net
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