Wuppertal's suspended monorail proved its doubters wrong [video]
youtube.com
youtube.com
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7TqqdOcX4dc
There are two other suspended monorails in the Ruhr are, both driver-less and shorter, built in the 80s and 90s by Siemens, the H-Bahn at Dortmund University and the Skytrain at Düsseldorf Airport. I drove the H-Bahn daily, because computer science back then was distributed all about the campus. Still have fond memories about it. (Less so about the degree.) The Tim Traveller on Youtube recently did a video about it:
I liked being under it even more than being on it - the combination of the post-WWII buildings with the nature around the river and the early industrial Schwebebahn heavy metal design gives the riverside a very unique, slightly dieselpunk, atmosphere.
I wouldn't say it's worth a trip on its own but it was definitely worth a detour for us!
That is why so many are against gadgetbahns.
It won't, and it's not meant to. It's not a serious effort to fix anything, it's an excuse to dismiss the problem.
The picture I was thinking of is the second one down, after the advert: https://englishrussia.com/2019/01/18/nice-tram-photos-from-t...
If the bus-riding experience is as dreadful as you imagine, then surely the people that still decides to do so despite all this are at their most absolute desperation. And you want to take away their last lifeline?
From supply chains we learned 1 thing. Multi-modal is the way. Have dirt cheap, high capacity main modes and have more expensive but more flexible last mile options.
So in public transportation this means few high capacity train lines, and at the stations mini-vans / cars, e-bikes, evtols to do the last mile, from/to the origin/destination door. You can do this because you can rely on the train schedule.
You cannot rely on the bus schedule.
You basically save having to go through mountains to keep speed, as you can go through a curvy valley.
Self-tilting trains exist, but are expensive, and hard to maintain.
Also, boring is good. Though do not be fooled by the hidden g-forces: the tilting behavior turns the side ways forces into just you being a little heavier. The prototype track back then had a run with a wheel setup that had twice as much tilt angle as the current deployment, and to my understanding the current deployment does not bank the track. That's where (almost) 4x gains in allowed operational bank angle would be hidden.
Many people don’t know that Margao, Goa also planned and tested the same H-Bahn system. I witnessed these Skybuses when I was visiting Margao back then. It was an interesting experiment which failed unfortunately.
Germany is a land full of beautiful little towns and cities and settlements which deserve to be explored with the proper tempo. On a particularly sunny day I drove to Wuppertal from the village I’d moved to in the Rühr, in my beat up Citroën (that’s another quaint European device worthy of a story), deciding to eschew the autobahn and instead take the older country roads where I could, and for an hour or so I was transported back to another Germany, the pre-war late 19th century land of much promise, whose roads and paths were set, seemingly, with a far greater sense of aesthetics than the speedy efficiency-worshipping channels of the highways. So many little roads and lanes which ‘felt’ as if the original architects were bovine in nature, or perhaps based on an ancient feeding route of deer and boar.
When I arrived in Wuppertal, I was immediately impressed with this technological marvel that had been suspended in the space above 700-year old houses and buildings from another time. It felt so futuristic and hopeful, and it was futuristic and hopeful - and more important to the Germans, useful as a device for getting around the serpentine Wuppertal construct. I parked the Citroën in the lower part of the town, watching it deflate itself like some Lucas’ian landracer, walked up to the nearest Schweberbahn station, and took the thing all the way up and down the Wupper. It was delightful, at first, seeming to be so whimsical and expensive, but as we reached the end of the line, I was struck by how suddenly mundane the experience had become.
It was normal to fly over the river, suspended, above the height of a regular commute, curving through the spaces between buildings rather than under them, and I was delighted to recognize the buildings - now a hundred years older - that I had seen in the original film, still in place yet somehow cleaner than I’d remembered. Even still, in a matter of an hour, I’d experienced that whiplash of “this is the future (of the past) ..” straight to “this is normal now (yet weird) ..” so many of us technologists endure — but in this case, it was with a device from an entirely different century. It was archaic futurist whiplash, not at all entirely like the modern kind, but similar somehow.
I took it back down to my Citroën, noting the gravity change along the way, and found I had a new form of respect for even that vehicles’ weird, quaint, suspension. (That particular model raised and lowered itself according to speed, you see..)
That trip to Wuppertal was one of the very first events in my life in Germany which gave me so much more respect for the German people than the post-war indoctrination and cultural distrust I’d experienced as a kid growing up in a state that was once at war with the place.
If you ever get a chance to visit Germany, a day trip outside the realm of the autobahn is highly recommended.
Simply get lost in the place.
Because of Wuppertal I became finely tuned to appreciate the German instinct for preservation of older things, while also somehow managing to integrate technological progress which doesn’t just supplant the surroundings, but eventually enhances them.
(I've been up there in a cold and clear night in spring, during full moon, crystal clear starry night, light mist rolling down from the forests on the hills into the valley, owls and bats flying, all very silent, except for the calls of the owls and that strange sound bats make. Almost got caught! But didn't :))
Otherwise lovely smalltown germany near there is https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hückeswagen with cobblestone streets in 'downtown' and old houses with this: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bergischer_Dreiklang
Also much water near there in the https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bevertalsperre
Maybe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heimatschutz_Architecture is of interest to you ;)
We rode it to the Engels museum and the sculpture park, Wuppertal was worth the day trip from Cologne.
I found the address he used to live at... it's an empty lot on a corner. 8(
As long as that's the case, it doesn't seem like they really have any significant disadvantages compared to normal trains.
But otherwise, by choosing a monorail you're going from being able to run some parts of the tracks on the ground with very little cost/effort to not being able to run any of them directly on the ground for very little benefit aside from looking cool.
I'm not sure if something like this would in any way be physically feasible, but if yes, it might solve the cost problem, because part of the rails could then be run on the ground.
(Maybe a less sci-fi version would be a "hybrid" car that has a second set of wheels on the underside and could switch between ordinary and overhead rails as needed?)
No thanks. I prefer my vehicles not to be able to fall 12 metres to the ground by default.
Some people get very sick while riding it, which is probably due to the train slightly swinging in its stations. That's rather unsual and some bodies can't handle it that well.
It was always funny to "test" who is affected by that with new students during their first week.
If you have the chance: Ride the Schwebebahn from end station to end station and have a look at the city from above. Wuppertal is probably a good example of and old industrial city struggling to find its way into modern times.