Why Wuppertal's Suspended Monorail Wasn't The Future Of Travel

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Why Wuppertal's Suspended Monorail Wasn't The Future Of Travel

1,251,766 views

Tom Scott
2.95M subscribers
Published on Jan 25, 2016

In Wuppertal, Germany, there's the Schwebebahn: a suspended monorail that carries 80,000 people a day above the streets of the city, and above the river Wupper. It's a wonderful thing: but it wasn't the future of travel, and here's why.

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Caption authors (Vietnamese)

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https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wuppertal_Schwebebahn

Wuppertal Schwebebahn

The Wuppertaler Schwebebahn (Wuppertal Suspension Railway) is a suspension railway in Wuppertal, Germany.

Its full name is Anlage einer elektrischen Hochbahn (Schwebebahn), System Eugen Langen "Installation of an Electric Elevated Railway (Suspension Railway), System Eugen Langen".[2] It is the oldest electric elevated railway with hanging cars in the world and is a unique system in Germany .

Designed by Eugen Langen to sell to the city of Berlin,[3] the installation with elevated stations was built in Barmen, Elberfeld and Vohwinkel between 1897 and 1903; the first track opened in 1901. The Schwebebahn is still in use today as a normal means of local public transport, moving 25 million passengers annually (2008).[4]

The Schwebebahn runs along a route of 13.3 kilometres (8.3 mi), at a height of about 12 metres (39 ft) above the River Wupper between Oberbarmen and Sonnborner Straße (10 kilometres or 6.2 miles) and about 8 metres (26 ft) above the valley road between Sonnborner Straße and Vohwinkel (3.3 kilometres or 2.1 miles).[5][6] At one point the railway crosses the A46 motorway. The entire trip takes about 30 minutes.[6] The Schwebebahn operates within the VRR transport association and accepts tickets issued by the VRR companies.

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[Crowman2009]

1. It definitely is not as convenient as a street car. In which you can jump out once you reach your..

...destination. Not to mention that it looks like it would be harder to rescue anyone if one of these breaks down.

[KY_EnviroGuy]

2. Had a bright idea years ago....

that we could build El-trains or monorail trains along the medians of our interstate highways for high-speed travel.

Oh well, it was fun to think about......

[rwsanders]

3. I had the same thought, but I think it still might work because he didn't account for the cost of

purchasing land for the track. I think having an existing median gives a monorail a distinct advantage. Also he was focused on local things within a city, not more long distance commutes.