People movers, revisited
It turns out we’re not the only ones that insane.
I know what I said the last time. But there must be a good reason why the MRTC study team thought people movers, and not trams, were the way to go. A trip to France or South Korea that doesn’t just mean Paris or central Seoul could easily bring you into contact with one of these. Or even Vancouver’s Canada Line or the new Taichung MRT, all the trappings of a heavy rail system but with only two cars.
But then again, just because they call this place “Disneyland with the death penalty” doesn’t mean we blindly apply Walt Disney’s ideas of what modern transport meant. Sure, as always, some of them work, such as developing within walking distance of transportation, or even the tiny pods connecting to low-density housing; some may not.
The lay of the land
The bigger South Korean systems, such as the U Line, even have all the trappings of traditional steel-on-steel railways, even if what they run on it are mere 2-car LRVs. And in Lille and Toulouse, they go to the extent of kitting out full underground stations for the tiny VAL 206/208 vehicles — unsurprisingly, named after their narrower width. A bendy bus might offer more capacity than a 2-car VAL train, even, so it makes you wonder why they bother. In Bangkok, even, there’s a people mover where either shuttle buses or design for walkability might have sufficed.
A key theme amongst these weird systems, I note, is the heavy reliance on enclosure and automation. This is even despite the fact that one could actually argue that Thailand enjoys low manpower costs that put into question why they even automate. The others are understandable: France has a perennial problem with strikes, and we all know what South Korean demographic trends are like. Which of the two reasons applies more here, I leave it as an exercise to the reader.
From that point of view, Translohr or even the CRRC salesmen attempting the hard-sell with their line-following bendy buses up in Johor might be an option that can be considered, so long as you keep to dedicated infrastructure much like the BRT Sunway Line in KL. In an enclosed system, one might even be able to waive off the legal requirements for a safety driver with a completely sealed guideway.
Then again, it might probably say something when the RTS remains a steel wheel on steel rail system, instead of something more fantastical; even if it delivers on promises of being cheaper and thus help the Mad Hatter meet his austerity goal. With stations and maintenance facilities being a key cost driver, smaller vehicles and smaller stations might have helped the RTS further cut its costs for civil works; but increased operation and maintenance costs may make the overall equation worse.
Pity the Monorail Society
I go to their website and what I see is either the ravings of an overenthusiastic monorail salesman much like the one who conned Springfield, or someone just that deep in their fanboy delusions that they can’t really see reason. Well, I’m sure that while the Monorail Society is not peddling Muskian vested-interest propaganda, there’s no running away from the fact that monorails have a bad reputation as “gadgetbahn” that they might deserve. Despite this, does the Monorail Society has a point?
Now, the Monorail Society claim they are gravely misunderstood — that well-designed monorail lines do in fact have their advantages. They’re not wrong, otherwise Sao Paulo and Chongqing would not have seen the success they see, and Bangkok is even building two monorail lines. There better be a good reason for it — the Bangkok monorail lines will even have platforms capable of holding up to seven monorail cars, giving them higher ultimate capacity than even several subway systems.
But the chief problem with monorails or any other weird and wonderful thing, I’d think, is not with switching or turnarounds, it’s with the fact that everyone builds to their own standards, unlike heavy rail where there’s the UIC to keep everyone somewhat in line. General styles include ALWEG/Hitachi, Von Roll, SAFEGE, and there’s probably more, and then when you go down into the individual nuts and bolts of the system, the supplier lock-in starts to get worse.
The KL Monorail, while a decent line in terms of built infrastructure, has well known problems with fleet management which may or may not stem from this too — why chain themselves to Scomi’s inability to build four-car trains that won’t basically fall to pieces? Part of it may be due to domestic protectionism, yes, but it makes me wonder why Hitachi, the original contractor, couldn’t return to the picture.
People movers suffer from the same problem — the Westinghouse/Adtranz APM100 is largely incompatible with the Bombardier Innovia 200/300 system, never mind the Japanese type, or even the Doppelmayr system. All this means supplier dependency, and if like the Toronto Scarborough RT they refuse to continue to support you, you might as well tear the thing down. At least the South Koreans can go ask for high-floor LRVs in the San Francisco MUNI spec or something.
The same thing might even be said about ground-level power supplies for trams, with Alstom doing their own thing with APS, along with CAF.
Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this LRT
It helps that with the many Westinghouse/Adtranz based systems out there chiefly in airports, there is a considerable market that Bombardier — now Alstom — would be silly to abandon. We were one of the first, but it also helps that PEK airport had similar needs and so were also in the market. Similarly, Bombardier managed to turn their people mover solution into something compatible with VAL tracks, giving Taipei and Chicago an option that wasn’t Matra; that is if Matra was even offering anything at the time. Though, with Siemens (having bought out Matra) dusting off its NeoVAL, there might be some competition.
While Bombardier’s intervention may have bought us another 20 more years or so, I’m also not convinced that as those 20 years end, we won’t be having the same conversation again. Will Alstom’s largesse save us once again, given that only they manufacture for the platform? Changi Airport already had to convert the Skytrain from the Bombardier system to the Japanese standard one as part of the Terminal 3 project. They could have left it as is, but that’s three systems instead of two and the accompanying headaches. And even so using Japanese AGT standards doesn’t really guarantee anything given how much Mitsubishi’s Crystal Movers dominate installs outside of Japan.
It also doesn’t really fix the key problems of the BPLRT’s concrete, such as a lack of space to hold more vehicles, but we have another 20 years, after all, for us to perhaps hope that something space-age like flying taxis could solve our transport problems once and for all. Gutting it now would leave us with few good replacements anyway, and a refusal to think multimodal may hurt the chances even more. To the point that it’s probably better to let Alstom see what they can do to minimize the difficulty of continuing to operate the existing system without resorting to concrete as much as possible.
Take the keys and go
The Concept Plan 2001, if you recall, was full of LRT lines, whatever your definition of the term may be. Even the Ang Mo Kio to Hougang/Defu stretch of the CRL also started as an LRT line. Some of these may have been abandoned, shelved, and/or converted to heavy rail systems with the increase in population projections, but there’s one “LRT” system they managed to build.
The Circle Line took the approach of the LRT when it came to construction. One difference, though, was that the LTA managed the construction works itself instead of giving it to a turnkey contractor as was the case with the previous two LRT systems. Well, once and never again, since newer lines have returned to the Initial System style of nominally-separate trains, signalling and power system suppliers; even the CCL Stage 6 is implemented, officially, with LTA in charge of systems too.
Of course, none of this can solve any of our problems with the construction industry, and in fact some quarters might argue that the insistence on dedicated infrastructure might just tie our hands with what’s available. But they appear to not like overhead powered trams, self-driving buses probably won’t gain critical mass in the next few years, and border closures highlight the issue of reliance on cheap manpower, which is also a thing to consider in operations.
Ultimately, I don’t think there is anything wrong with the construction of enclosed, automated systems. The concept is sound, despite the fact that grade separated lines may have a higher access penalty to overcome than something at street level. The problem is, how it is done, and that will remain a challenge for any future medium capacity system. Perhaps that’s why we have railway standards now? Or, given our constraints, whether medium capacity systems are what we should even be building, but that might be a topic for another day.
