The Tampa Airport Monorail
July 20th, 2008
Monorails are often seen as a novelty and a tourist attraction, probably due to the fact that Disney likes them a lot and that they have a few limitations in when it comes to changing tracks. Monorails work the best on short loop tracks and the monorail at the Tampa Airport in the video above is just that, a short loop around the parking garage into the terminal and back again. Built in the early 90’s most of this monorail is inside providing almost no touristy scenery for the user like most of the other monorails in the world do. This monorail is all about moving people from their cars to the airport terminal, so it is one of the few monorails about that fill a practical need perfectly.
Entry Filed under: Trains / Monorail | Tags: Monorail
2 Comments Add your own
1. H N Pelta | September 10th, 2008 at 2:50 am
Monorails do not have “limitations when
changing tracks”. There are eight
different ways to switch routes, depending
on the type of monorail involved.
People who maintain the switching myth are apparently not familiar with the fact that
monorails are currently running successfully around the world:
10 systems in North America
11 systems in Japan
16 systems in other Asian countries
3 systems in Australia
10 systems in Europe; the one in Germany has
been in operation for over 100 years
and. if you include magnetic levitation (Yes,
that science-fiction transportation method is currently operating in China), an additional one whose switches operate without any moving parts.
That list of countries world-wide with successful operations seems to contradict the statement above that the one in the Tampa Airport is “one of the few … that fill a practical need.”
Monorails seem fated to be misrepresented.
2. Wattsy | September 10th, 2008 at 6:44 am
Dont get us wrong, we love Monorails but when you compare them to a train you have to admit that switching tracks is going to be more costly and slower. Perhaps we wrote this a bit wrong but we were trying to highlight the fact that this monorail we featured here was all about moving people and does a good job of it and is not a touristy type of transport system.
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