Swan-Dolphin "monorail" ready?

[wild01ride]

Originally posted by 10 min. to wdw
well I think I've heard monorails have 100 tires each, the tires wear out i'm thats a expensive bill. WDW has 12 monorails imagine getting a bill for 1200 tires! comparitively speaking a 6 busses (6 busses has a carrying capacity greater then 1 monorail) has 36 tires on all 6 busses and I'm guessing a monorail tire is more expensive then the buss tires becuase they have to support the same weight and be much smaller. plus they proably take longer to change considering there are a few between the track and the floor of the monorail.


there are the A/C units to maintain. both of those are expensive plus you still get a huge electric bill every month for them.

OK, first of all- you gotta lay off the sauce a little when writing- I think I started to twitch trying to figure out the sense of some of this word order :hammer: :lol:

Second, I'm not familiar with the exact capacity figures, but if you are saying the monorails have 100 tires each, I KNOW that the tires/person figure is much higher for the monorail than the busses -in other words, the busses generally have six load-bearing tires per bus- two in the front and a "duallie"/two-wheel setup for the drive axle (for some reason, the number 50 something comes to mind for capacity per bus??). If you compare just the tire figures to that of the monorail, you would have more than sixteen busses worth of people on the monorail to equal the same number of tires. If you are claiming that the tires bear the same weight, that would mean that the 100 tires on the monorail were carrying the capacity of more than 16 busses (100 tires/6 tires per bus>16 busses) You claim however that the monorail holds less capacity than six busses, so obviously, it is not indeed supporting the weight of a full 16 busses.

Additionally, I know that in most commercial transit industries, the cost for bus/truck size tires is astronomical. Most tractor trailers use re-treads whenever possible because new truck tires are not feasible to buy at the rate that they need to be repalced. A truck tire can cost upwards of $500 easily. Beyond this, a truck tire experiences a substantial amount of lateral load (it has to grip in the sideways direction, which is prependicular to the way the tire turns.) The monorail, on the other hand, operates without turning corners and implements tires that run horizontally to bear load while taking a curve, so no matter what, the tires are experiencing the majority of their load normal to the track surface.

After the financial and mechanical integrity analysis of the tires is said and done, I think that the primary cost difference would be in the fact that the monorail, powered by high-current electric motors, employs a much less traditional and hence, much more costly to maintain and overhaul, drive system than the dime-a-dozen busses which exist in every corner of the world.

Bottom line- the monorails are a much more novel but less practical means of mass, schedulable, on-demand transportation and the busses are much easier to maintain and exchange on short notice.

 

[10 min. to wdw]

ok you've got me impressed you know more about tires then some commercial tire salesmen I've dealt with as a former tire specialist for one of the largest tr__________g companies in North America.
Disney Busses have a carrying capacity of 72 passengers. the current mark 6 monorails can carry 364 passengers plus the 1 driver. 6 busses have a carrying capacity of 432 passengers plus they can carry 12 handicap passengers where the one monorail can do 2. now I was wrong on the number of tires per monorail I found out from cloudboy's link that there are 60 total tires per a mark 6 monorail. still more then 6 busses. also there are laws about where recaps can be used and can't be used. I don't think they could be used on the monorails with the location of the tires. for one if the recap ever failed it could get bound up under the monorail, or fall and hit someone or something. for 2 the I'd have to think the ride in a car would be unbearable, becuase recaps are very hard to balance. this is the reason they are not allowed to be used as steer tires on any Commercial vechicle on public roads (with some exceptions).


(there are some city busses that may have a capacity of 50 passengers or less)

 

[10 min. to wdw]

I've heard that they do and that they don't, so I really don't know, however it still cost money to make the power.

 

[BwanaBob]

I would NEVER want to be in a BUS carrying a "full" 72 people!

The thought of this, after a long day, just makes me want to :hurl:

...however...

The ride from the Kingdom to the TTC in these cramped situations is sometimes bearable. (5 min tops?)

I would like to see the busses handle the load the monorails do after Wishes is over and the park lets out for the night!

Cost effective vs. efficiency?

 

[10 min. to wdw]

well they do handle bigger crowds then the monorails, event if there were only 50 passengers on the bus, A few might have to stand, they can load 8 busses at the same time taking on more handicap passengers then a monorail and more regular passengers at the same time with the same number of employee's. also a monorail is listed as having a standing capacity of 40 people per car and 20 seated. however these numbers are deceiving becuase one stroller could take up the room of 2 or 3 standies. if the monorails were expanded it would be a longer ride then 5 mins in a monorail to your destination. remember the wdw monorails travel slower then the busses. bottom line is the busses are more efficent and cost effective.

 

[cloudboy]

It's not a simple comparison. There are other factors such as distance, frequency, power costs, maintenance, track, etc.

If things were truely equal, the dimensions of a Bombardier monorail are pretty much simmilar to that of a bus. A lot has to do with how the seats and such are arraanged. There is a weight issue, but I don't believe that the Bombardier units have too much of a problem with that in respect to the passenger capacity.

Going for the Monorails, there is a benefit in that for every 6 cars you only need one driver. There is also the frequency issue. Since the spacing between cars in nill, you can have a higher load over time than busses provide. I don't know what the spacing times actually are, but anotherwords it is easier to get 4 monorails in 15 minutes time than 24 busses. The flip side of this is that it is more efficient sometimes to have many smaller busses more frequently than a few large monorails at a further spread.

Electricity in the US is not as much a benefit as in other countries where electricity costs are much lower, but there is a (debateable) benefit in having power generation in one place.

There is also the benefit that the monorail has it's own route which nicely goes above eveything. No traffic to get in the way, can easilly go over water or anything like that. Busses suffer from getting stuck in traffic - that is why many citys are starting to use dedicated busways, called Bus Rapit Transit (BRT).

Monorails make sense where there is a lot of traffic at one time, such as from the TTC to the Magic Kingom, or between the TTC and Epcot. It doesn't make sense for for the individual resorts. Of course, Monorails have enough draw power to actually increase usage over a bus.

I find all thsi transportation stuff interesteing, but I think we are straying from the origianl topic. I am going to start a new post on this.