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_TheHalfTruth_ t1_j5fvjhk wrote

Imagine if we had high speed monorail connecting each of our neighborhoods. Not like subways but like the ultra light rail at airports that transports people between distant terminals. Never more than a 5 minute wait cause each line only has two stops and multiple train cars, each equipped with bike racks that let you bring a regular or electric bike with you.

Nobody would ever have to look at a bus/train schedule and you could be in any neighborhood in less than 5-10 minutes. With a bike you could get from any rail station to your destination in another 5 minutes. You’d never have to even look at a map or gps cause it would become so easy to navigate.

And monorails are almost silent so it wouldn’t matter where you put them. They are so smooth that you hardly even notice that you’re moving. You could read a book during your commute. They are also futuristic as fuck and would make this city just feel like it is decades ahead of the rest of the world.

They are also billions of dollars cheaper to maintain and run than roads shared by cars and busses. We could easily afford to do this right now and have several monorail lines up and running within the decade

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stambouline t1_j5fwxc3 wrote

I'm sure you know about this, but for anyone else interested, check out the Skybus.

This kind of system currently exists in downtown Miami as The Metro Mover.

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_TheHalfTruth_ t1_j5fz6cc wrote

I haven’t heard of Pittsburgh’s skybus actually! Thanks for sharing. This type of system with modern technology could be so powerful. I also think people don’t fully appreciate how expensive roads are to maintain, vs how cheap rail is.

It costs $1 million to repave a single lane mile of road, and they must be repaved every 15 years on average. There are 866 miles of paved road in Pittsburgh. That is 57 million dollars per year to maintain Pittsburgh’s roads, ignoring our 450+ bridges and assuming they are all single lane. Monorail has very little maintenance cost cause there is nothing to repave. Installation cost varies a ton but can be done for about $50 million per mile for elevated lines, including building the supporting power and control stations. After that upfront hurdle you see massive savings, cause roads last way longer when they see less traffic.

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raven_snow t1_j5gfnkh wrote

Wow, I've been on several of these people movers. They're fantastic. I'm so sad that this could also have been Pittsburgh's reality.

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Sankara_Connolly2020 t1_j5hb81n wrote

Skybus was gadgetban and a total boondoggle. If Port Authority had instead put its energy right off the bat towards the busways and streamlining the streetcar system into a comprehensive LRT system, then today we’d have one of the best transit systems pound for pound in North America.

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super_heavy_milk t1_j5hxaxd wrote

How do we… make this happen?

Is there anything an average person can do?

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thisabadusername t1_j5fxg9f wrote

This literally already happened: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transit_Expressway_Revenue_Line

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_TheHalfTruth_ t1_j5gsqz4 wrote

And it was killed by politicians who mistakenly thought it would be better to deface our city with billions of dollars worth of decaying roads and complicated and unpredictable bus lines.

Also remaking that with modern electric rail tech instead of rubber tire busses could easily triple its top speed while reducing energy and maintenance costs and increasing capacity.

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mechanical_parody t1_j5h8xni wrote

Well damn, I pass this every day and never realized what it was. It's located just outside of the Allegheny Airport, what used to be the Bombarider parking lot.

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