Many cities today find themselves embroiled in polarizing transport modality debates.
Other (intelligent) cities meanwhile don’t see a conflict between transit, local roads, pedestrians and highways — they simply think in 3 dimensions.
Case in point: the Kitakyushu Monorail.
Kitakyushu Monorail uses air space underneath the Kitakyushu Expressway Route 1. Image by FlowiRawr.
Thanks to reader Ben H. for sending us this awesome photo to once again demonstrate how great design can solve any challenge.
3 Comments
Hi. Very interesting story. I went searching for more info and found this page …
http://www.monorails.org/tMspages/Kitakyushu4.html
“Probably the most unique feature of the Kitakyushu Monorail is the Jono-Kitagata section. Here an expressway and the monorail were built together and share the same supports.”
Seems to contradict the caption in your pix above …
“Kitakyushu Monorail uses air space under an existing right-of-way (underneath the Kitakyushu Expressway Route 1)”
Thanks for the spot Sabre23t. Made change to caption. If the monorail and the expressway was built together, this perhaps makes the project even more impressive since the designers had the foresight to simultaneously build for both transit and car users!
Yes. Kitakyushu Monorail is still quite impressive for a 30 years old monorail, that began operation in 1985. I found another blog post describing operations mode of the monorail by Robert Schwandl from a recent visit, http://schwandl.blogspot.sg/2016/04/japan-kitakyushu-monorail.html .