Originally posted by dreamer
1. I'm not ignoring your reasons, I'm just telling you that if DW wants to build a monorail they can make it work. Just like you and I are talking to each other through what is to me an inconceivable "transportation system for ideas" called the WWW. Just because I could never conceive it to be possible, didn't make it impossible. Ten years ago I wouldn't have ever imagined anything to be faster and easier than fax. Wrong.
Do you think the world is limited by what you and I think we have the solution to? If you think that a more efficient system than buses will never be developed by someone, somewhere then I think you are dead wrong. Disney could lead the way like it has before.
I'm talking about a new paradigm. A new box.
If we're shifting to a new paradigm, then why stick with the monorail concept? I LOVE the monorail. The monorail IS Disney to me. When I went this year, I forced my friends to ride it with me even though they really couldn't understand why. That doesn't mean I blindly want it expanded at the loss of other great things.
The easiest and quickest reason the Monorail isn't the answer is the cost, but there are more reasons. The monorail (or any other fixed track system) isn't flexible. Disney moves a TON of people from 20ish places to 7 or so in the morning, then a few people relatively randomly from point to point during the day, and in the afternoon, a whole bunch of people from MGM/AK to the other parks and then a TON of people from just 2 or three places back to 20ish. Doesn't that sound like a system that needs to be able to quickly add and remove capacity along routes? The monoral can add/remove trains, but the limit is a small number (leading to not much in the way of increased capacity), and the process is slow. What happens when one monorail breaks down? The ENTIRE LINE has to stop! That's not very efficient. Plus it increases wait times, and really frustrates everyone on a working monorail that is stuck somewhere along the beam.
On the subject of lines, people complain about lines for the busses. Now, the vasy majority of the time (I know there are exceptions, and we don't need to here the stories here, the point it that the great majority of the time this is the case, Tyler has numbers to back this up) the wait for a bus is under 20 minutes. Now, with only 3-4 trains running on any monorail beam, particularly in the morning/evening, there is NO WAY waits can be less than 20 minutes. There are too many people at too little of a capacity to move the thousands of people that quickly.
This isn't me being a pessimist, or bet set "inside my box." Monorails hold a set amount of people (though the number could flutuate by maybe 10 or so with changes, but the possible change is negligible). Monorails must keep a certain distance apart for safety reasons. The track is a set length. Knowing these numbers, you can easily calculate the maximum number of people the monorails could transport per hour. This number is SIGNIFICANTLY less than a flexible system (like buses, or something cooler down the road) can move per hour.
Fixed guideway systems work in some cases. But for Disney's traffic flow, it just doesn't work.
4. I think it could be done with one transfer to get from each resort to each park -- or to another resort. Again, I think that it is possible to get from one place to another faster than by bus. Someone just needs to invent it.
Fantasia Boi, you would be a great person to work on it. You just need to start thinking about what IS possible rather than what is not. You need to figure out how to overcome the difficulties rather than succumb to them.
Assuming for the moment that monorails could be efficient at moving people, what sort of layout would require just one transfer to move from any location to another?
Keep in mind: most travel on the current, flexible bus system requires NO transfers. Just about every remaining route requires only one transfer. Many layouts have been discussed on this forum, and thus far, no one has a simple system (like, stand under the sign of where you want to go for the current bus system) with a maximum of one transfer.
One other problem with monorails that Tyler has mentioned and no one has really responed to it. No one likes standing at a monorail station (particularly after waiting in a long line), seeing a monorail come in, open the doors, and then close them with no one getting on because it's already full. In a point-to-point system, that does not happen. On the monorails, that happens all the time (I believe people at the Contemporary and the GF are the victims of this daily with the current setup, one on the morning and one in the evening).
Now, getting back to your paradigm, you're completely right. We need to think outside the current transportation box. That box includes buses AND monorails.
Monorails- have the WOW factor, the coolness, and the "magic" that makes WDW what it is. We've already discussed their problems.
Buses- efficient, flexible, low wait times. Buses are definately NOT cool. They are not particularly green friendly (though not NEARLY as bad as they are perceived to be) and they are not innovative nor particularly magical (though some drivers can make it so).
We need to get out of the bus/monorail box. There are some exciting new technologies on the way, and Disney Transport is looking into them. Some were discussed in great depth on a thread called "The future of disney transportation." Read about them, if some of THOSE ideas are on the way, I'm very happy with what is coming.
In the meantime...
1) Take a bus when you have to get somewhere.
2) Take the monorail when you wanna get somewhere in a more cool way, when you want to feel the magic. Think of the monorail like the Friendship boats, or the ferry from the TTC to MK. They are magical, they are fun.
I believe there is a transportation answer that is magical, that is cool, that is fun to look at, that is efficient an that is flexible. I also believe that Disney WANTS to have that system very much. Buses aren't the long-term answer, but neither are monorails.
I LOVE monorails, and I will make it a point to ride one every time I go to WDW, but expanding the monorail is not the answer for getting around the world.
