Post by Nick Chu
A quick look at some of the things that makes suspended urban transit work (or not):
The Aerobus
Aerobus operating directly above street traffic in Mannheim's 1976 BUGA (Garden Festival)
Aerobus: Self-propelled suspended urban transit
First installation: 1970, Schmerikon, Switzerland
Distance between Aerobus tower spans: 0.6km
Distance between Peak2Peak gondola tower span: 3.0km
Only major installation: 1975, BUGA Mannheim, Germany
Bus capacity (crush): 70-80 persons
Number of incidents: 1 (Mannheim mayor evacuated via ladder during 1974 test run)
Year system completely dismantled: 1987
1980 Kuala Lumpur Aerobus proposal: Failed
2000 Chongqing Aerobus proposal: Failed
System under development: Weihai, China
Estimated cost per kilometer: $23 million
Cost per kilometer for LRT: $20-225 million
Year slated for construction completion: 2011
Number of Aerobus systems in operation today: 0
Number of suspended urban transit monorail systems in operation today: 3 (Wuppertal, Chiba, Shonan)
First Installation was Schmerikon, Switzerland. Its spelled wrong on the Aerobus website and i wrote them an email years ago.
The test track in Schmerikon crossed the lake and as a remarkable feature it had a floating pylon.
Dortmund and Düsseldorf so have suspended type monorail (H-Bahn or Siemens SIPEM)
Another Aerobus installation operated in Mt. St. Anne, Canda for 30 years
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@ Matthias
Do you mean Mont-Sainte-Anne, Beaupré, Quebec, Canada? I used to ski there in the ’80s. Do you have any info on the installation? When was it there? That would have been something to see!
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Looks kinda cool. Combines fixed guide and cable transit by using rails in tight curves, switches and stations, and cheaper cable on everything else. Looks a bit more complex and expensive than traditional gondolas, though. And seems to allow only one vehicle between two pylons in general.
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It was Ste. Anne, Quebec, Canada / 1975 ~ 1992
I don’t know wheter there are other towns with the same name. According to what i could find out it was used as the feeder for a ski resort.
The first two pictures are from St.Anne
http://faculty.washington.edu/jbs/itrans/aerob2.htm
As you can see are the stations smaller than the ones for gondolas or aerial tramways. And single track is possible for routes with not that much traffic.
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Hmm, I’m wondering if the forum is really needed? But what I sort of always missed is the opportunity to integrate small pictures here in the comment-section. Steven, is it possible to integrate that feature?
Seems like Caracas always has been a bit more progressive than other cities, huh?
http://img35.imageshack.us/img35/2464/nuevoidealnacional.jpg
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Steven Dale Reply:
April 12th, 2011 at 8:14 am
@ LX,
I’d really like to get the forums open. We often have a lot of discussion that should probably find it’s way there. Particularly when things become very technical and engineering-heavy, I find it alienates some of the less tech-savvy readers.
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@matthias
Thanks for the correction. I searched for the city on google and couldn’t find it and was getting a little more skeptical whether the system was really built.
Floating pylon eh, interesting feature? Do you know anything more about that?
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Lots of great photos of the Aerobus installation in Mannheim: http://picasaweb.google.com/jhm0284/AerobusMannheimBundesgartenschau1975#
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@ Matthias
From the link, it is one and the same. Weird that I don’t remember it. I would have been fascinated by it.
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@ LX
Steven mentioned to me in January that he was working on a redesign which he hoped to be complete by the end of last month. From recent posts, it looks like he has been quite busy. I suggested that he try Livefyre (http://bit.ly/etncfo) for the comments and he said that he had been unsuccessfully looking for a replacement.
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Steven Dale Reply:
April 12th, 2011 at 8:17 am
@ Sean,
Yup. Delays, delays, delays. I think when I say something like that I should just add an additional 3 months to it
.
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Steven Dale Reply:
April 12th, 2011 at 8:17 am
@ Sean,
See, this is exactly the sort of discussion we should be having in the forums.
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