Swot - City Monorail

Idea

ACT Monorail Project

Our proposal is to develop a monorail to connect Civic with the Airport, parliamentary triangle and the other ACT satellite cities of Belconnen and Woden, Queanbeyan and Tuggeranong. Monorail has a raft of benefits that propel it to the forefront of viable solutions for the ACT public transport problem.

This poster demonstrates why Monorail is the most viable solution and the many benefits that Monorail has over the other possible mass transit options. Monorail is a popular mass transit solution and has been widely implemented in Asia with high degrees of success. The KL monorail in Malaysia and the various Japanese monorails are testament to the capability of Monorail to deliver a cost effective, safe and rapid mass transit system.

• Monorail is faster, with Maglev systems reaching speed similar to that of air travel at over 500 km/h. Many of the current Hitachi systems are operating at speeds in excess of 80 km/h providing a much faster system of transport in crowded cities. (Ide, 2008)

• Monorail is cheaper (On average 12% cheaper than rail) (Ide, 2008) and easier to install. Monorail is also faster to build, circumventing the myriad of undergrounds services such as sewers and water mains.

• Monorail can move high volume passenger numbers as seen with the Hitachi system in Tama, Japan which carries up to 34,740 passengers per hour per direction. (hitachi, 2007)

• Monorail is disabled friendly with flat walkthrough carriages that provide no impediments. (Ide, 2008)

• Monorail is environmentally friendly having similar efficiency to many of the other mass transit solutions, however, they are far less energy intensive to build and have a far lower footprint than surface rail. (Ide, 2008)

Monorail is often misquoted as having problems with switching (Monorail, 2008). In reality all serious monorails have switches and that are in continuous use. Hitachi's monorail track switch design has an unsurpassed record of 38 years free of...