If there is one argument against building transit class monorail systems in the US that makes me want to throw things it’s the old saw that “Not even Disney is building monorails anymore”.
Of course Disney isn’t building monorails anymore. And there are a couple of reasons for that, the least of which is the expense of building the system itself.
Why should Disney build their own infrastructure when they can convince the people of Orange County to tax themselves to build infrastructure for them? This follows the tradition of privatizing profits while socializing costs, which has been SOP for corporations for decades. It is simply less expensive for Disney to run a fleet of buses on public roads than to build their own infrastructure. This is the same reason why professional sports teams never build their own stadiums. Why should the sports teams’ owners build their own stadiums when they can convince the citizens of their municipalities to tax themselves and build stadiums for them?
But the real reason why Disney is no longer building monorails is simply that Walt Disney is dead. Walt Disney was a visionary, and Disney Corporation hasn’t been headed by a true visionary since Walt left. Walt wanted to prove the effectiveness of monorail as a transit system, and the Disney Monorail System has done that in spades.
The Las Vegas Monorail is an example in the United States of monorail being used for mass transit. The stumbling blocks in Las Vegas aren’t with the expense of the system itself, but with the blend of toxic politics, a public bus system that instead of feeding the monorail system actively competes with it, the lack of a common fare collection system, and monied interests that would like to kill it.
Further, the problem is the parochial view of a lot of the politicians on the planning boards that look into mass transit systems, and the consultants who give them their information. Sure, nobody in the United States is building transit class monorails since Disney, but if you look around the world then the picture changes. If you really want to see where transit class monorails are being built then you need to look not at the United States, but at Asia. Japan, China, India, Malaysia, Korea all have monorail systems. Sao Paolo, Brazil. Saudi Arabia. The UAE. Turkey. All have monorail systems either operational, under construction, or in planning. These are not theme park attractions, but real-world transportation systems serving real-world transportation needs in real-world cities.
And none of them are built by Disney.
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