This is the cheapest monorail in the western hemisphere! The only other one that I know of in operation is at Orlando’s Disney World. Although I guess it’s technically free once you have paid to get into the amusement park. There is a monorail in Melbourne Australia (so I’ve been told) but the other side of the world is, well, on the wrong side of the world.

If the monorail was one of your favourite things about Disney World, head to Las Vegas immediately (although waiting until it’s colder out maybe a good idea) ! Both use trains by Montreal’s Bombardier (founded by the inventor of the snowmobile). Check out the Bombarider video on the monorail web site: www.lvmonorail.com . The video shows them testing it in the snow.

Before anybody gets any ideas about opening a privately funded mass transit project in your community, the Vegas monorail promoters remind you that if they can break even (which is still to be seen) it’s because the Vegas strip has a constant stream of traffic instead of two unidirectional rush hours.

Unless you live under them, elevated trains are just so cool, whether they have one track or two. Other Bombardier examples include Vancouver’s Sky Train, Toronto’s LRT and London’s Docklands train. All are a great way to see the areas in which they travel. London even hires tour guides for some weekend runs in the summer (which gets very irritating if you happen to be going to work in the 24/7 economy (I worked in a Canary Warf area call centre).

Although Bombardier’s elevated trains are popular elsewhere, the company hasn’t been successful selling the concept on it’s home turf in Montreal. It’s not for the lack of trying however. They might want to borrow the monorail song from The Simpsons. During a public hearing a few years ago, a Bombardier spokesman, with a scaled toy model as a prop, described the concept as only having the minor problem of transition with the city’s (notoriously deep) Metro system. “But that can be worked out” said the spokesperson. London and Vancouver both have the trains go underground downtown. In Toronto, you must travel on the long escalator journey from the sky to the underground subway. They stuck the bus terminus in the middle, at ground level.

Other “light” elevated trains that come to mind include the far less successful Detroit and Miami people movers. Both are great if you like moving one way in a downtown circle.

I don’t know if it’s childhood nostalgia, the aesthetics or that great monorail song, but I’m shopping for cheep plane tickets to Vegas.

Wow. And I thought I liked monorails. The Monorail Society, referred to in the CNN.com article, has a web site, http://www.monorails.org/, listing all the monorails in the world. I was wrong about Melbourne; Sydney has the Australian monorail. The CNN blurb is misleading:

“The Las Vegas system is one of 10 multi-station monorails in the United States, according to the Monorail Society, a non-profit organization that promotes the high-tech trains as an efficient and clean form of transportation”.

To them,  “multi-station”, includes Seattle’s 2 station system. Las Vegas is the first in North America to use a monorail for urban mass transit. Newark airport has one as well and is used to link the airport to the Amtrack train station. Jacksonville has one on a modified elevated track, so I say it doesn’t count.

Sorry for my previous misleading post.

I thought the Seattle Monorail was cheaper...

"Other Bombardier examples include Vancouver’s Sky Train, Toronto’s LRT and London’s Docklands train."

That's Toronto's SRT (not LRT), short for Scarborough Rapid Transit, which was built by the government-owned UTDC before they were bought out by Bombardier. It is the same technology as Detroit, Vancouver, and NY's JFK Airtrain. London's Docklands Light Rail was not built by Bombardier, but by Alstom. The signalling system is from Alcatel. Only some of the newer trains purchased to serve the later extensions have been provided by Bombardier.

Special thanks to Hans for those corrections and clarifications. As for Amanda, I stick by my claim that the Vegas monorail is the cheapest in North America (although I have to play with the numbers to back it up). The Seattle monorail “system ”, if you can call a two station operation that, will, according to http://www.seattlemonorail.com/information.htm, set you back a measly $1.50. The Vegas monorail will cost you a whopping $3 ( http://www.lvmonorail.com/ride_01_gettickets.php ). However, you can only travel 1.5 km on the Seattle monorail while the Vegas one can save you a 6.5 km walk in the desert heat ( http://www.monorails.org/tMspages/Seattle.html ). The Seattle monorail is therefore $1 per km while you can get as low as $0.46 per km on a one way ticket on the new Vegas one. Yes, the 0.5 km Pearlridge Mall monorail in Honolulu is only 25 cents, but again, at $0.50 per km, it is more expensive (albeit just barely).

Really, though, if you have to worry about the cost of public transportation on the Vegas strip, you cant afford to be there.

Also, since it turns out there are a couple of monorails in Brazil, I take back my claim that the Vegas one is the cheapest in the western hemisphere. My Portuguese is insufficient to check myself, but I’m pretty sure Brazilians wouldn’t put up with paying US$3 for mass transit, no matter how efficient.

I’d be curious who in the world has the priciest transit system. I nominate London, UK. Since they charge per zone, I suspect they have the highest priced mast transit system in the world, no matter how you measure it.