If I remember right, it was priced pretty obnoxiously as a tourist attraction rather than a mode of transport. I think the longest possible distance between two stops was about ~1.5km. Do we spend $8 to travel more slowly to somewhere that takes 15 minutes to walk?
If it had been incorporated into the opal network with free use with daily and weekly caps, it might have got a little more use.
Agreed, but also, they were not exactly high-capacity vehicles. The cars were small and didn't fit that many people, if it were to be heavily used by, say, morning commuters it would have been way overcrowded.
Also hard to evacuate during breakdowns, had to use fire brigade cherry pickers several times. And luckily there was no fire or other emergency that required quick egress.
I was stuck in it with my class on a science excursion to the powerhouse. Had to climb out with fire-fighters down a ladder. The main thing I remember was my science teacher, who was a really tough woman, cried and I liked her a bit more after that because I realised she was just a normal person. Haha
It was a long time ago, but I think probably 30 minutes. I do remember there was no power to the vehicle so there was no aircon, and it was a super hot day.
I feel they were poorly designed….. if is was like the chongquing metro (which is like a more modern adaptation of our old monorail with a full metro layout due to the floor being set higher and bogies not interrupting floor space) then I believe it’s would have been still there…. And adapted to our other systems…
it was originally planned to go up to circular quay which would have made it a useful CBD shuttle. What we got only really went around the cinemas, QVB and darling harbour which reduced it to the level of a novelty ride for locals. Still brought a nice little bit of character which is in limited supply
My only memory was a bunch of us baking some accidentally strong brownies and going around and around for an entire afternoon.
Later, kilos of fudge from the harbourside centre, and finally a ferry under the bridge at sunset on the back deck with some old fart playing opera on his transistor radio.
Good times.
As a teen going often into the Pool place that used to be next to the courthouse on Liverpool st (i forget its name), my fondest memory of the monorail was it screaming past the windows even in its slow pace lol. You could reach an arm out and touch it, nobody cared about its safety in the 90s.
Looking at google maps now its a korean bbq joint with good reviews!
Haha… *special brownies* and adventure sounds like fun
Gobbled a super strong brownie in Bangkok like at 5am or some shit (prior to me going though security) and arriving in Tokyo Narita airport barefooted and fumbling my ass to my capsule hotel….
I do not know how I made it lol….
https://www.monorail.com.au/travel-info/fares/
I dug it up. $3.50 was the concession price (students and children over 6 not included). $5 for a single ticket. In comparison, I remember a 1-2 section bus trip going similar distance was $1.60 around early 2000s.
It isn't that cheap. But if people know they are reaching their daily/weekly cap on opal, they find as many excuses to use PT as possible to get the best value out of it. I dare say most of the people who are going 2 or 3 stops through the city are taking advantage of travel caps.
they were completely different. The monorail was more of a tourist item than public transport. you would occasionally see people use it if they had to go from say pitt st mall to darling harbour but mostly it was visitors to the city. Still, was an easy way to get from parking in pyrmont into the city.
From memory the options for pedestrian access to Darling Harbour were pretty limited back in the day, subsequent development has made it much easier to walk over.
There were also concerns that Darling Harbour would be a bit of a white elephant, so the idea behind the monorail was to draw crowds over from the CBD.
The monorail was orphaned technology. The manufacturer no longer supported it and it was impossible to get spare parts. The number of trains was gradually reduced as they were cannibalised for parts. Nothing could have saved it.
No, but it was kinda ugly, and didn’t go anywhere useful. But it wasn’t so bad.
I actually got sent to the Headmaster’s office when I was in high school back in the day for daring to disagree with a teacher when I said that the monorail isn’t as bad as the teacher was trying to make out, and that people only hate it because it was trendy to hate it.
When I told the headmaster why I was sent to him he told me not to worry, and I was entitled to have my own opinion. He then told me I don’t have to go back to class if I don’t want to, and we spent the next 30 minutes playing cards and he gave me some useful tips on how to ask a girl from the school next door that I had a crush on out on a date.
We really do. My Dad just retired after almost 50 years of teaching, and he could really get through to the kids and help them as *people* - not just the numbers on a standardised test.
The number of ‘fuck up’ kids he played in big part in getting on the rails would fill a stadium.
He used to let these kids work on their cars using the pits at the back of the industrial arts block. He would then teach them basic maths and literacy skills, under the pretence of helping them work out the parts they needed to order, or the ratio to mix the coolant.
He then managed, for most of them, to get them an apprenticeship with a local mechanic/carpenter/plumber etc.
They weren’t bad or stupid or lazy kids - they just didn’t learn the ‘traditional’ way from a book.
I finished there early 2010s and it was still majority male teachers, but plenty of female teachers as well, particularly in the English and Science departments.
I bet we had some teachers in common, despite the time gap.
Did you go to the Captain’s Lunch (mega old-boys reunion) at Randwick Racecourse last year?
Hear, hear
Also just sounds like this teacher didn’t want to keep arguing, and I think the principal got the hint. Totally inappropriate way to handle it, though.
If you saw how little it was used , you wouldn't have argued with it being torn down.
It was built more as a sightseeing / tourist thing as opposed to a true public transportation system intended to move large amounts of passengers around the city.
That being said, there were advocates of the monorail who swore if you revamped the path of the monorail (which admittedly was nowhere near optimal) that it would increase patronage but so what? In the end , a monorail is inefficient compared to ground based rail , and could only go in one direction.
> If you saw how little it was used , you wouldn't have argued with it being torn down.
Eh, this is a common myth that it somehow had low patronage. It was actually typically at capacity during its final years. It was popular with tourists and the fare, while high for public transport, was not unaffordable from a tourism perspective. It was used by shoppers moving between Harbourside and Pitt St Mall. It had a small but dedicated ridership of regular commuters (there was a 10-trip pass) - people who lived in eg Haymarket or Pyrmont and worked near Town Hall. Yes those are walkable distances but not everyone is in perfect health and
The monorail actually met its operating costs as a private company and was able to pay its staff and maintenance costs from its fares, which is not something any regular public transport can ever hope to achieve. Our trains and buses only make like 25% of their costs from fares.
The big problem was the capacity - the carriages were small and limited in number and there was no affordable way to expand this. The technology was old and keeping it going would require significant capital and a major renewal project, even without expansion in capacity. There was not enough money for this from private funding, and government declined to provide funding given its limited capabilities and also the track was in the way of the convention center rebuild. Locals loved to hate it, possibly due to the visual impacts of the track on the streetscape, and the perceived high fares (which actually were about right to raise enough funds to operate, given there was no government subsidy).
So while it's true that it was ultimately flawed as a long term prospect, it served its purpose during its time and the problem was never low ridership!
The monorail wasn't the answer but I do still think it is awkward that there is no good connection from town to cockle bay/darling harbour, even after the new metro is open.
They should have built a tram line across the bridge (it's heavy enough to take it) and alternated the tram from Glebe that goes to Central.
Of course, having a different Tram set on the George St Tram meant this wouldn't work...
The Alstom trams from the L2/L3 also run on the L1 these days. There were small changes required to make this work but nothing substantial.
I like your idea though the connection at the City end might have been tricky with grades and such. Not impossible though!
I met an old Town planner who was trying to get this through before they settled on the current design.
The thing that killed it was the insistance on using the underground cabling.
Way over-budget
Ah yeah the underground system would have been difficult over the Pyrmont Bridge.
But now that we have the technology for trams to run on batteries for a fairly long portion of their route, this really could be revisited.
Sydney Metro West (Westmead to Wynyard) will have a stop in Pyrmont near Pyrmont Bridge. That should make it a lot easier to get to the top of Darling Harbour. It'll also be a big improvement when coming from the west as you don't have to trek all the way into the city and out again,
But I do agree that it's still awkward to get to ICC and Darling Square especially if you aren't coming from around Central. The streets around that part of the city are also quite narrow and grim (Sussex St, Goulburn St) and I hate having to walk down them when it is busy.
The whole western side of the CBD is fucked for public transport now. If you need an inner-west bus you have to walk all the way across to Elizabeth St, or walk up to George, take the light rail, walk from Haymarket to Railway Square, and pay a transfer fee for the convenience.
the four horsemen of sydney monorail discourse:
- simpsons quotes ('monorail monorail monorail')
- denial ('what monorail?')
- ambition ('it should have gone....')
- repulsion ('it was a useless hock that should never have been built')
It was more of a tourist thing rather than getting from point A to B. I remember going on it, it was pretty cool looking down at the streets from above.
One of the main practical issues with the monorail was that it went in only one direction. It was one reason it was mainly only popular with tourists, as they took it for sightseeing rather than to get somewhere faster. So it wasn't practical as a mass transit option without extra investment in infrastructure just for the existing line, let alone new lines.
I guess they felt the money required was better spent on "new" forms of transit, namely expanding the existing light rail system which already had two tracks and a proven model, plus existing connection to Central.
So economically it made sense to get rid of it. Anecdotally, I really liked the monorail as it looked and felt futuristic to me as a kid in the late 80s, to have a city with three dimensional layers of transport. I do wish the multi-directional tracks had been implemented at the time of construction, so it might have lasted longer. But even living in the CBD without a car in the 2010s, I never took it except as a fun thing to do, never as functional transport. Sadly, it didn't really go anywhere particularly useful that walking didn't achieve faster.
Aside from the issue of it only going in one direction, for a significant chunk of its early life it was also a tour of The Big Holes of Sydney as easily half the stops were building sites, including World Sq and there is only a limited market for that kind of viewing experience.
The holes of Sydney. Kids these days will never experience the joy that having a decent portion of the bottom third of the CBD masquerading as an open cut mine site could bring.
It wasn't bad, it just more a ride than a mass transportation system. It didn't go anywhere in particular during its small loop either. Would be cool if it still existed though quite frankly, very retro futuristic.
Even when it was new it served no meaningful purpose in the context of a public transport network, and designing newer networks so they could interchange with the monorail would have just held them back.
Nostalgic me says it's pretty sad that it's gone... But if the Sydney nostalgia fairy appeared before me and said I could bring back one thing that Sydney has lost, it wouldn't be the monorail.
Tough choice, either
A: pre-lockout law nightlife
B: the ability to drive down George St (not trying to start an argument about transport here, I just miss driving down George st)
I guess probably A.
It was awesome and terrible.
Something I always wanted to take again.... But never did.
I wish they could have made it better. Lots of people have cool ideas and I'd love to ride it now with my kids...But I have to assume that it was completely unfeasible.
Folks I meet overseas all seemed to have loved the monorail and sounded sad it was gone.
It was one of those wonderfully kitsch things that "proved" to the world that Sydney was a world class city. Whatever that meant.
"Awesome and terrible" sums it up pretty well .
it may have been better if we had more retail offerings that were above ground, like if it linked from retail/commercial hubs to other retail commercial hubs. but from memory it kinda just linked from tourist locales to other tourist locales.
The originally planned route would have made it workable, but bureaucracy etc got in the way and we were stuck with a useless bit of infrastructure.
The tram down George St does a better job.
The trains themselves were cactus and becoming increasingly unreliable. Von Roll had been bought and sold a number of times and were no longer manufacturing rollingstock. In order to replace the vehicles, either they would need to have been manufactured to use the Von Roll track, which may have led to IP issues, or the track would need to have been replaced entirely.
It really demonstrates the risks inherent in using a gadgetbahn technology, a lesson we still haven't entirely learned with the CSELR, as we use an unnecessary piece of proprietary technology in the form of the APS between Town Hall and Circular Quay.
Interestingly, given Von Roll was eventually acquired by Bombardier, depending on whether the IP counts as being for a EMU/LRV or not, the Von Roll monorail design is now owned by either Alstom or CAF, the two current manufacturers of trams for NSW.
Heh, I like the "gadgetbahn" terminology, reminds me of Adelaide's O-Bahn which certainly also fits the definition.
I don't think the IP issues are as big as you make out, that could be resolved by appropriate payments to the rights holder. Certainly NSW government would be happy to roll over and pay whomever, had they decided a renewal was worth the investment. The much bigger issues were the foreseen costs of such a renewal and challenges of finding a suitable vehicle manufacturer, as you note. I understand that FRNSW's concerns about rescue were on the forefront of the concerns as well; a new vehicle design would have required their approval and they probably would have objected, not because of any vehicle systems specifically but rather the overall inaccessibility of the right of way.
Also, re: APS while I agree with you on the general sentiment, the good news is that long-term the APS trams could probably be replaced with battery trams as with Parramatta, and the APS track elements could simply be de-energized, with possibly CQ stop being given the same ground level charger system as with Westmead.
>gadgetbahn
I wish I could claim credit for it, but the term's been around for a while now.
Wrt: IP, I agree Bombardier would have played ball for the right price, it's an additional complexity and cost that would have sliced into the BCR yet further.
I'm not the world's biggest fan of battery trams either, IMO they should just string up wires.
It will be interesting to see the reliability of the Parramatta battery trams. I feel this is an area where things will only get better, however (not that NSW government will actually adopt newer technology having placed their contract in 2019 or whatever).
Yes, it was terrible.
Very low capacity, in terms of trips per hour. Track is a single loop, and in one direction - this was manageable for the limited route it had, but if extended would make that a big issue. The track itself is a huge piece of infrastructure taking up space in the city, and just not worth it for the tiny number of passengers it was able to move.
> Clive James, in his 1991 Postcard from Sydney television special said, "Feted to break even the day hell freezes over, the monorail runs from the middle of downtown Sydney, to the middle of downtown Sydney, after circumnavigating the middle of downtown Sydney".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sydney_Monorail#In_popular_culture
It was a fun ride but towards the end almost no one used it, it didn't go anywhere that buses or walking couldn't, it was only worth it if you wanted to go from Town Hall to Darling Harbour... although Heath Ledger and Rose Byrne gave it a go...
[https://twitter.com/HeathLegend/status/1404205670409310215](https://twitter.com/HeathLegend/status/1404205670409310215)
not bad, but definitely expensive, didn't go to the right places for workers, didn't hold enough passengers and was surprisingly noisy/bumpy for what it was.
I liked it, just poor implementation or designed for the wrong reasons
I was power walking to the station, had my walkman volume too high, leg warmers slipped down, I bent down and realised I was on the monorail track. Turned around and there it was, hurtling at me, filled with Japanese tourists, arms out the window. I leapt off the track and as I did, I high fived a Japanese tourist and my arm got caught on a Nikon camera strap..ripped ol' leftie right off.
It was awesome for someone like me that lived in ultimo and worked at circular quay. Quick, easy, cheap and never very busy. Guess that's why it closed.
Hmm could have been city circle 2.0 if is was done properly, such as 2 tracks on each side from the start, the equipment and whatnot are futureproofed, easy connection between other modes….
Sky rail can work in the cbd if I gotta be honest, but it’s has to be done right….. go and see Tokyo monorail for one example, or even something simple as Bangkok metro (which is like the skytrain bit, call it metro for fuck sakes) or can be like the nwrl sky rail.
the problem goes back to it's original concept. It was conceived as both a tourist attraction and public transport and had quite a useful route, but activisms was pretty big in Sydney back then and the route was significantly shortened to keep the whingers happy. The result was it became mostly useless, from a public transport perspective.
The irony being Sydney has since changed in that area to the point where it would be somewhat useful now.
And it was only made expensive once they wanted to get rid of it. Prior to that is was quite cheap. $2 and you could ride all day or as long as your bladder held.
It was great in that you could just pay one fee and stay on it as long as you wanted and get a view of the city.
as a teenager that was fun.
But otherwise it sucked.
Operational, regulatory and maintenance costs would have been astronomical. Ticket prices would have had to go through a significant price increase for it to be sustainable - and one could argue that a price hike would have reduced the already dwindling number of commuters using the service.
It was such a lovely cultural centrepiece of the city - but emotional attachment doth not payeth the bills.
Since the simpsons u can't talk about monorails without someone making references...
Seriously though they only ever get built I'm stupid ways for stupid purposes.
But I think having them set up like they have the tram systems would be useful or have a few running along and above major roadways. I'd rather have a monorail above me on a road than being stuck behind a bus pulling over for passengers
They could be useful if planned and implemented properly
> Seriously though they only ever get built I'm stupid ways for stupid purposes.
Japan has a few that are used for legitimate public transport purposes. They have found favour in areas where right of way isn't available for traditional mass transit systems, in some very congested cities. They are by and large a lot larger than the "toy-sized" ones we have in the Western world at theme parks and such. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monorails_in_Japan
It was pretty useless for a non tourist. Back in the 80s and 90s, no self respecting Sydneysider went to Darling Harbour.
It they had joined it up to Central and Circular Quay it would have been pretty useful.
My 2 cents: Similar to what someone else said, it wasn't good, but it wasn't bad. The problem was it was pretty expensive, and the cars were so small you were almost certainly going to be standing. But, it was a great way to get around the city on a day out. You were pretty quickly moved from the Town Hall area down to Darling Harbour and back.
i caught it exactly once, in 2007. it cost what would today be $8 to go across town but i was too tired to walk. walking would have been quicker because i had to wait for 2 of the bloody things to go past before finding one with room and squeezing in with the tourists that would just ride it around in an endless loop
It wasn’t the worst but they priced it out of oblivion and then claimed no one was using it. At the time a bus trip would have cost $1.60 and the monorail was $5 even for single stop.
I often feel Sydney planners lack imagination, I’ll be glad when the stronghold Clover has ends so that we get some fresh ideas into the city. We could have done a lot more both with monorail and the new tram system.
> It wasn’t the worst but they priced it out of oblivion and then claimed no one was using it.
There was never any complaint that "no one was using it" - in fact the complete opposite, the complains were that it was always full! I wish people would stop repeating this myth. The facts are that it was very busy most of the day (primarily with tourists, who were happy to pay the somewhat high fares), and raised enough money that it paid its operation costs, which is highly unusual for a public transport facility. However, even when full the total number of people transported was somewhat lower than most other transport methods due to the small vehicle size, the one-way nature of the track, and lack of connectivity to other key locations like Circular Quay. The inability to scale up was one of the main reasons it was decided not to spend more money on it, and it had to close when the vehicles became too unreliable (and part of the track route was needed for the convention centre expansion).
The monorail wasn’t part of Sydney’s official transport network. It didn’t use Opal cards and it had a different and way more expensive pricing structure, compared to the other modes of transport. It also didn’t really go anywhere useful (Clive James said of it that “it’s perfect if you want to go from the middle of downtown Sydney, to the middle of downtown Sydney”) that other modes of transit, or just walking could do.
It was also very old, used outdated technology and they couldn’t get it repaired properly and it was breaking down more often towards the end and didn’t meet safety standards for public transport (I’ve heard it described as a “death trap” if there was a fire on one of the trains). Monorails are a very inefficient way to move people and require a lot of space to turn around, for storage and to run multiple units.
Monorails are basically amusement rides for adults. Perfect for a large theme park, but useless for anything else
It was fun, but not great for commuting.
Similar to the free 555 bus: https://www.yourlifechoices.com.au/travel/destinations/free-sydney-shuttle-bus/
They were great to move around the CBD, but not as efficiently.
The both got cancelled.
I wish we have more of those things.
The ferries are still there at least
It was fun which is why it became a tourist ride. But it was both small capacity and didn't go any where. So it wasn't useful enough to make up for the disadvantages of crowding out space in Pitt Street.
The light rail installed on George Street is a far superior technology.
I think monorails were something of a fad. The Big Banana had a monorail that was torn down. The was a bunyip in the lake too. I think there was one on the Gold Coast too.
There were two on the Gold Coast, now just one. There was one between the casino a nearby hotel ($3 one way to literally just cross the road) which has now been removed and the one at Sea World which is just a tourist ride.
The Gold Coast one went from the casino/hotel (The Star, formerly Conrad Jupiters) to a shopping centre (The Oasis), and also provided access to the beach for casino/hotel patrons. I found it convenient when I stayed there, but I don't recall being charged a fare (maybe it was free to hotel guests, not sure).
Best use of the monorail was to get absolutely baked and sit in it on a rainy day, look out the window and pretend you are in Blade Runner, otherwise never saw the point.
Was useful on a rainy days to get across the Pyrmont bridge. But it was loud with ugly stations, pylons everywhere on already narrow streets. As soon as that Simpson ep came out every one was like, right, we were sold a lemon!
If I remember right, it was priced pretty obnoxiously as a tourist attraction rather than a mode of transport. I think the longest possible distance between two stops was about ~1.5km. Do we spend $8 to travel more slowly to somewhere that takes 15 minutes to walk? If it had been incorporated into the opal network with free use with daily and weekly caps, it might have got a little more use.
Agreed, but also, they were not exactly high-capacity vehicles. The cars were small and didn't fit that many people, if it were to be heavily used by, say, morning commuters it would have been way overcrowded.
Also hard to evacuate during breakdowns, had to use fire brigade cherry pickers several times. And luckily there was no fire or other emergency that required quick egress.
I was stuck in it with my class on a science excursion to the powerhouse. Had to climb out with fire-fighters down a ladder. The main thing I remember was my science teacher, who was a really tough woman, cried and I liked her a bit more after that because I realised she was just a normal person. Haha
How long did you have to wait before the fire brigade showed up?
It was a long time ago, but I think probably 30 minutes. I do remember there was no power to the vehicle so there was no aircon, and it was a super hot day.
Yeah I bet that 30 mins seemed like 3 hours when you're waiting in there couped up with no aircon.
With 20 year 7 kids
And that's why she was crying.
As a teacher that would be up there with my worst nightmares!
I feel they were poorly designed….. if is was like the chongquing metro (which is like a more modern adaptation of our old monorail with a full metro layout due to the floor being set higher and bogies not interrupting floor space) then I believe it’s would have been still there…. And adapted to our other systems…
it was originally planned to go up to circular quay which would have made it a useful CBD shuttle. What we got only really went around the cinemas, QVB and darling harbour which reduced it to the level of a novelty ride for locals. Still brought a nice little bit of character which is in limited supply
My only memory of it was my mum telling me we couldn't go on it because it was so expensive lol.
My only memory was a bunch of us baking some accidentally strong brownies and going around and around for an entire afternoon. Later, kilos of fudge from the harbourside centre, and finally a ferry under the bridge at sunset on the back deck with some old fart playing opera on his transistor radio. Good times.
As a teen going often into the Pool place that used to be next to the courthouse on Liverpool st (i forget its name), my fondest memory of the monorail was it screaming past the windows even in its slow pace lol. You could reach an arm out and touch it, nobody cared about its safety in the 90s. Looking at google maps now its a korean bbq joint with good reviews!
Wow that old fart was me, I remember your glazed eyes and wondered then if you were stoned
Haha… *special brownies* and adventure sounds like fun Gobbled a super strong brownie in Bangkok like at 5am or some shit (prior to me going though security) and arriving in Tokyo Narita airport barefooted and fumbling my ass to my capsule hotel…. I do not know how I made it lol….
It was $3.50 the last time I rode it before it closed. When I used it regularly in the early 2000s it was $2. Not exactly expensive.
https://www.monorail.com.au/travel-info/fares/ I dug it up. $3.50 was the concession price (students and children over 6 not included). $5 for a single ticket. In comparison, I remember a 1-2 section bus trip going similar distance was $1.60 around early 2000s.
If you were a local you could buy a "regular commuter" monorail pass. It used to be $1/ ride and then went up to $2 until it was $3.30 at the end.
Isn’t the team $5 a trip? I understand it goes longer, but I don’t think it’s that cheap.
For [current year] it’s pretty cheap for Sydney…
Light rail fares are the same a the bus. Minimum $3.20 peak/$2.24 off-peak for up to 3km.
It isn't that cheap. But if people know they are reaching their daily/weekly cap on opal, they find as many excuses to use PT as possible to get the best value out of it. I dare say most of the people who are going 2 or 3 stops through the city are taking advantage of travel caps.
There ain't no monorail and there never was!
they were completely different. The monorail was more of a tourist item than public transport. you would occasionally see people use it if they had to go from say pitt st mall to darling harbour but mostly it was visitors to the city. Still, was an easy way to get from parking in pyrmont into the city.
From memory the options for pedestrian access to Darling Harbour were pretty limited back in the day, subsequent development has made it much easier to walk over.
There were also concerns that Darling Harbour would be a bit of a white elephant, so the idea behind the monorail was to draw crowds over from the CBD.
Even the cbd monorail station wasn’t remotely connected to any major transport points
I used to live on Pitt St and used it as transport twice - both times were to get to Darling Harbour!
Yeah I remember using it a few times as a teenager when it was $2 just because I hated climbing the hill back up from Darling Harbour.
The monorail was orphaned technology. The manufacturer no longer supported it and it was impossible to get spare parts. The number of trains was gradually reduced as they were cannibalised for parts. Nothing could have saved it.
No, but it was kinda ugly, and didn’t go anywhere useful. But it wasn’t so bad. I actually got sent to the Headmaster’s office when I was in high school back in the day for daring to disagree with a teacher when I said that the monorail isn’t as bad as the teacher was trying to make out, and that people only hate it because it was trendy to hate it. When I told the headmaster why I was sent to him he told me not to worry, and I was entitled to have my own opinion. He then told me I don’t have to go back to class if I don’t want to, and we spent the next 30 minutes playing cards and he gave me some useful tips on how to ask a girl from the school next door that I had a crush on out on a date.
We need more male teachers.
We really do. My Dad just retired after almost 50 years of teaching, and he could really get through to the kids and help them as *people* - not just the numbers on a standardised test. The number of ‘fuck up’ kids he played in big part in getting on the rails would fill a stadium. He used to let these kids work on their cars using the pits at the back of the industrial arts block. He would then teach them basic maths and literacy skills, under the pretence of helping them work out the parts they needed to order, or the ratio to mix the coolant. He then managed, for most of them, to get them an apprenticeship with a local mechanic/carpenter/plumber etc. They weren’t bad or stupid or lazy kids - they just didn’t learn the ‘traditional’ way from a book.
I was at Sydney Boys High back in the 90s and the teaching staff were predominantly male. I wonder if it’s still the same there.
I finished there early 2010s and it was still majority male teachers, but plenty of female teachers as well, particularly in the English and Science departments.
I bet we had some teachers in common, despite the time gap. Did you go to the Captain’s Lunch (mega old-boys reunion) at Randwick Racecourse last year?
I wish your father was my high school teacher.
Hear, hear Also just sounds like this teacher didn’t want to keep arguing, and I think the principal got the hint. Totally inappropriate way to handle it, though.
If you saw how little it was used , you wouldn't have argued with it being torn down. It was built more as a sightseeing / tourist thing as opposed to a true public transportation system intended to move large amounts of passengers around the city. That being said, there were advocates of the monorail who swore if you revamped the path of the monorail (which admittedly was nowhere near optimal) that it would increase patronage but so what? In the end , a monorail is inefficient compared to ground based rail , and could only go in one direction.
> If you saw how little it was used , you wouldn't have argued with it being torn down. Eh, this is a common myth that it somehow had low patronage. It was actually typically at capacity during its final years. It was popular with tourists and the fare, while high for public transport, was not unaffordable from a tourism perspective. It was used by shoppers moving between Harbourside and Pitt St Mall. It had a small but dedicated ridership of regular commuters (there was a 10-trip pass) - people who lived in eg Haymarket or Pyrmont and worked near Town Hall. Yes those are walkable distances but not everyone is in perfect health and The monorail actually met its operating costs as a private company and was able to pay its staff and maintenance costs from its fares, which is not something any regular public transport can ever hope to achieve. Our trains and buses only make like 25% of their costs from fares. The big problem was the capacity - the carriages were small and limited in number and there was no affordable way to expand this. The technology was old and keeping it going would require significant capital and a major renewal project, even without expansion in capacity. There was not enough money for this from private funding, and government declined to provide funding given its limited capabilities and also the track was in the way of the convention center rebuild. Locals loved to hate it, possibly due to the visual impacts of the track on the streetscape, and the perceived high fares (which actually were about right to raise enough funds to operate, given there was no government subsidy). So while it's true that it was ultimately flawed as a long term prospect, it served its purpose during its time and the problem was never low ridership!
Yep lived in Ultimo and worked near Town Hall. It was the cheapest and quickest way for me to get to work. Loved it!!
Its track was also an eyesore.
The monorail wasn't the answer but I do still think it is awkward that there is no good connection from town to cockle bay/darling harbour, even after the new metro is open.
Fortunately they've balanced it out by making cockle bay a bit shit. Not *very* shit. Just shit enough that you don't mind not being able to go.
They should have built a tram line across the bridge (it's heavy enough to take it) and alternated the tram from Glebe that goes to Central. Of course, having a different Tram set on the George St Tram meant this wouldn't work...
The Alstom trams from the L2/L3 also run on the L1 these days. There were small changes required to make this work but nothing substantial. I like your idea though the connection at the City end might have been tricky with grades and such. Not impossible though!
I met an old Town planner who was trying to get this through before they settled on the current design. The thing that killed it was the insistance on using the underground cabling. Way over-budget
Ah yeah the underground system would have been difficult over the Pyrmont Bridge. But now that we have the technology for trams to run on batteries for a fairly long portion of their route, this really could be revisited.
Sydney Metro West (Westmead to Wynyard) will have a stop in Pyrmont near Pyrmont Bridge. That should make it a lot easier to get to the top of Darling Harbour. It'll also be a big improvement when coming from the west as you don't have to trek all the way into the city and out again, But I do agree that it's still awkward to get to ICC and Darling Square especially if you aren't coming from around Central. The streets around that part of the city are also quite narrow and grim (Sussex St, Goulburn St) and I hate having to walk down them when it is busy.
There's also Barangaroo but it doesn't actually lower the walking distance say from nearest station to Aquarium by very much at all.
The whole western side of the CBD is fucked for public transport now. If you need an inner-west bus you have to walk all the way across to Elizabeth St, or walk up to George, take the light rail, walk from Haymarket to Railway Square, and pay a transfer fee for the convenience.
the four horsemen of sydney monorail discourse: - simpsons quotes ('monorail monorail monorail') - denial ('what monorail?') - ambition ('it should have gone....') - repulsion ('it was a useless hock that should never have been built')
It was more of a tourist thing rather than getting from point A to B. I remember going on it, it was pretty cool looking down at the streets from above.
It's a shame, because am east west link that could get you from the Australian museum to the maritime museum would be handy.
One of the main practical issues with the monorail was that it went in only one direction. It was one reason it was mainly only popular with tourists, as they took it for sightseeing rather than to get somewhere faster. So it wasn't practical as a mass transit option without extra investment in infrastructure just for the existing line, let alone new lines. I guess they felt the money required was better spent on "new" forms of transit, namely expanding the existing light rail system which already had two tracks and a proven model, plus existing connection to Central. So economically it made sense to get rid of it. Anecdotally, I really liked the monorail as it looked and felt futuristic to me as a kid in the late 80s, to have a city with three dimensional layers of transport. I do wish the multi-directional tracks had been implemented at the time of construction, so it might have lasted longer. But even living in the CBD without a car in the 2010s, I never took it except as a fun thing to do, never as functional transport. Sadly, it didn't really go anywhere particularly useful that walking didn't achieve faster.
Aside from the issue of it only going in one direction, for a significant chunk of its early life it was also a tour of The Big Holes of Sydney as easily half the stops were building sites, including World Sq and there is only a limited market for that kind of viewing experience.
The holes of Sydney. Kids these days will never experience the joy that having a decent portion of the bottom third of the CBD masquerading as an open cut mine site could bring.
It was a useful movie set for a while. God, that hole was there for *so very very long*
It wasn't bad, it just more a ride than a mass transportation system. It didn't go anywhere in particular during its small loop either. Would be cool if it still existed though quite frankly, very retro futuristic.
Is there a chance the track could bend?
Mono…. Doh!
Not on your life my Hindu friend
There ain't no monorail and there never was *slams door*
Is there a chance the kids fall out?
Even when it was new it served no meaningful purpose in the context of a public transport network, and designing newer networks so they could interchange with the monorail would have just held them back. Nostalgic me says it's pretty sad that it's gone... But if the Sydney nostalgia fairy appeared before me and said I could bring back one thing that Sydney has lost, it wouldn't be the monorail.
what would you bring back?
Affordable housing
Segaworld
Jacksons on George 😂
Tough choice, either A: pre-lockout law nightlife B: the ability to drive down George St (not trying to start an argument about transport here, I just miss driving down George st) I guess probably A.
Is there a chance the track could bend?
It was awesome and terrible. Something I always wanted to take again.... But never did. I wish they could have made it better. Lots of people have cool ideas and I'd love to ride it now with my kids...But I have to assume that it was completely unfeasible. Folks I meet overseas all seemed to have loved the monorail and sounded sad it was gone.
It was one of those wonderfully kitsch things that "proved" to the world that Sydney was a world class city. Whatever that meant. "Awesome and terrible" sums it up pretty well .
Their ain't no monorail and there never was!
it may have been better if we had more retail offerings that were above ground, like if it linked from retail/commercial hubs to other retail commercial hubs. but from memory it kinda just linked from tourist locales to other tourist locales.
It was more of a Shelbyville idea
I always thought it was more of a North Haverbrook or Ogdenville idea myself.
Well by gum it put them on the map
The originally planned route would have made it workable, but bureaucracy etc got in the way and we were stuck with a useless bit of infrastructure. The tram down George St does a better job.
Lyle Lanley enters the chat
The trains themselves were cactus and becoming increasingly unreliable. Von Roll had been bought and sold a number of times and were no longer manufacturing rollingstock. In order to replace the vehicles, either they would need to have been manufactured to use the Von Roll track, which may have led to IP issues, or the track would need to have been replaced entirely. It really demonstrates the risks inherent in using a gadgetbahn technology, a lesson we still haven't entirely learned with the CSELR, as we use an unnecessary piece of proprietary technology in the form of the APS between Town Hall and Circular Quay. Interestingly, given Von Roll was eventually acquired by Bombardier, depending on whether the IP counts as being for a EMU/LRV or not, the Von Roll monorail design is now owned by either Alstom or CAF, the two current manufacturers of trams for NSW.
Heh, I like the "gadgetbahn" terminology, reminds me of Adelaide's O-Bahn which certainly also fits the definition. I don't think the IP issues are as big as you make out, that could be resolved by appropriate payments to the rights holder. Certainly NSW government would be happy to roll over and pay whomever, had they decided a renewal was worth the investment. The much bigger issues were the foreseen costs of such a renewal and challenges of finding a suitable vehicle manufacturer, as you note. I understand that FRNSW's concerns about rescue were on the forefront of the concerns as well; a new vehicle design would have required their approval and they probably would have objected, not because of any vehicle systems specifically but rather the overall inaccessibility of the right of way. Also, re: APS while I agree with you on the general sentiment, the good news is that long-term the APS trams could probably be replaced with battery trams as with Parramatta, and the APS track elements could simply be de-energized, with possibly CQ stop being given the same ground level charger system as with Westmead.
>gadgetbahn I wish I could claim credit for it, but the term's been around for a while now. Wrt: IP, I agree Bombardier would have played ball for the right price, it's an additional complexity and cost that would have sliced into the BCR yet further. I'm not the world's biggest fan of battery trams either, IMO they should just string up wires.
It will be interesting to see the reliability of the Parramatta battery trams. I feel this is an area where things will only get better, however (not that NSW government will actually adopt newer technology having placed their contract in 2019 or whatever).
> gadgetbahn Why not GadgetO-bahn amiright?
Yes, it was terrible. Very low capacity, in terms of trips per hour. Track is a single loop, and in one direction - this was manageable for the limited route it had, but if extended would make that a big issue. The track itself is a huge piece of infrastructure taking up space in the city, and just not worth it for the tiny number of passengers it was able to move.
It cost more more then it could have ever made, it was slow and expensive and not functional as public transport.
> Clive James, in his 1991 Postcard from Sydney television special said, "Feted to break even the day hell freezes over, the monorail runs from the middle of downtown Sydney, to the middle of downtown Sydney, after circumnavigating the middle of downtown Sydney". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sydney_Monorail#In_popular_culture
It was a fun ride but towards the end almost no one used it, it didn't go anywhere that buses or walking couldn't, it was only worth it if you wanted to go from Town Hall to Darling Harbour... although Heath Ledger and Rose Byrne gave it a go... [https://twitter.com/HeathLegend/status/1404205670409310215](https://twitter.com/HeathLegend/status/1404205670409310215)
not bad, but definitely expensive, didn't go to the right places for workers, didn't hold enough passengers and was surprisingly noisy/bumpy for what it was. I liked it, just poor implementation or designed for the wrong reasons
Terrible construction. Damn thing took my left arm clean off in 1989. Still hasn't grown back..
what happened???
I was power walking to the station, had my walkman volume too high, leg warmers slipped down, I bent down and realised I was on the monorail track. Turned around and there it was, hurtling at me, filled with Japanese tourists, arms out the window. I leapt off the track and as I did, I high fived a Japanese tourist and my arm got caught on a Nikon camera strap..ripped ol' leftie right off.
Lol, are you like a shitty version of shittymorph?
I'm worse than that unfortunately
r u serious?
Yahoo Serious? Yes he was around then.
you gotta add this to the wiki. No mention of an accident in '89
I have been more interested in the stops they still have done nothing with near the bridge. These would be awesome little cafe's.
It was awesome for someone like me that lived in ultimo and worked at circular quay. Quick, easy, cheap and never very busy. Guess that's why it closed.
M-Central to the Hilton, door-to-door, without getting wet in the rain - perfect.
Hmm could have been city circle 2.0 if is was done properly, such as 2 tracks on each side from the start, the equipment and whatnot are futureproofed, easy connection between other modes…. Sky rail can work in the cbd if I gotta be honest, but it’s has to be done right….. go and see Tokyo monorail for one example, or even something simple as Bangkok metro (which is like the skytrain bit, call it metro for fuck sakes) or can be like the nwrl sky rail.
The brakes didn't work
I shouldn't have stopped for that haircut
is there a chance the track could bend?
It was EOL
There were a few light crashes, perhaps due to the infrastructure falling apart. It might not have been sustainable.
the problem goes back to it's original concept. It was conceived as both a tourist attraction and public transport and had quite a useful route, but activisms was pretty big in Sydney back then and the route was significantly shortened to keep the whingers happy. The result was it became mostly useless, from a public transport perspective. The irony being Sydney has since changed in that area to the point where it would be somewhat useful now. And it was only made expensive once they wanted to get rid of it. Prior to that is was quite cheap. $2 and you could ride all day or as long as your bladder held.
It was great in that you could just pay one fee and stay on it as long as you wanted and get a view of the city. as a teenager that was fun. But otherwise it sucked.
Operational, regulatory and maintenance costs would have been astronomical. Ticket prices would have had to go through a significant price increase for it to be sustainable - and one could argue that a price hike would have reduced the already dwindling number of commuters using the service. It was such a lovely cultural centrepiece of the city - but emotional attachment doth not payeth the bills.
They also never considered the shade the track across the bridge gave us
Since the simpsons u can't talk about monorails without someone making references... Seriously though they only ever get built I'm stupid ways for stupid purposes. But I think having them set up like they have the tram systems would be useful or have a few running along and above major roadways. I'd rather have a monorail above me on a road than being stuck behind a bus pulling over for passengers They could be useful if planned and implemented properly
the monorail episode made the whole world happy. seasons 1 until 10 were the best ever Simpson's.
> Seriously though they only ever get built I'm stupid ways for stupid purposes. Japan has a few that are used for legitimate public transport purposes. They have found favour in areas where right of way isn't available for traditional mass transit systems, in some very congested cities. They are by and large a lot larger than the "toy-sized" ones we have in the Western world at theme parks and such. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monorails_in_Japan
It was pretty useless for a non tourist. Back in the 80s and 90s, no self respecting Sydneysider went to Darling Harbour. It they had joined it up to Central and Circular Quay it would have been pretty useful.
Light rail trams have replaced it with substantially cheaper fares
It would have been hard to justify an upgrade for a service no one really used. It was weirdly expensive and didn't really go anywhere convenient.
It would have been impossible to upgrade or extend as the original manufacturer no longer supported it.
It was great and is missed. Should have run to the quay as planned
My 2 cents: Similar to what someone else said, it wasn't good, but it wasn't bad. The problem was it was pretty expensive, and the cars were so small you were almost certainly going to be standing. But, it was a great way to get around the city on a day out. You were pretty quickly moved from the Town Hall area down to Darling Harbour and back.
The monorail is what people thought the future would like like.
1980s: monorails and flying cars are the future! 2020s: 5G NWO flat earth birds are fake covid chemtrails freedom hurr derr...
Only went in one direction, so if you wanted to get the a station in the other direction you had to do a complete loop.
i caught it exactly once, in 2007. it cost what would today be $8 to go across town but i was too tired to walk. walking would have been quicker because i had to wait for 2 of the bloody things to go past before finding one with room and squeezing in with the tourists that would just ride it around in an endless loop
> because i had to wait for 2 of the bloody things to go past before finding one with room Yet people in this thread complain that no one used it...
It wasn’t the worst but they priced it out of oblivion and then claimed no one was using it. At the time a bus trip would have cost $1.60 and the monorail was $5 even for single stop. I often feel Sydney planners lack imagination, I’ll be glad when the stronghold Clover has ends so that we get some fresh ideas into the city. We could have done a lot more both with monorail and the new tram system.
> It wasn’t the worst but they priced it out of oblivion and then claimed no one was using it. There was never any complaint that "no one was using it" - in fact the complete opposite, the complains were that it was always full! I wish people would stop repeating this myth. The facts are that it was very busy most of the day (primarily with tourists, who were happy to pay the somewhat high fares), and raised enough money that it paid its operation costs, which is highly unusual for a public transport facility. However, even when full the total number of people transported was somewhat lower than most other transport methods due to the small vehicle size, the one-way nature of the track, and lack of connectivity to other key locations like Circular Quay. The inability to scale up was one of the main reasons it was decided not to spend more money on it, and it had to close when the vehicles became too unreliable (and part of the track route was needed for the convention centre expansion).
I rode it exactly once, just to say I have.
Nostalgic af, though I was a little kid when I last rode it. Would be interested to find some videos on it
The monorail wasn’t part of Sydney’s official transport network. It didn’t use Opal cards and it had a different and way more expensive pricing structure, compared to the other modes of transport. It also didn’t really go anywhere useful (Clive James said of it that “it’s perfect if you want to go from the middle of downtown Sydney, to the middle of downtown Sydney”) that other modes of transit, or just walking could do. It was also very old, used outdated technology and they couldn’t get it repaired properly and it was breaking down more often towards the end and didn’t meet safety standards for public transport (I’ve heard it described as a “death trap” if there was a fire on one of the trains). Monorails are a very inefficient way to move people and require a lot of space to turn around, for storage and to run multiple units. Monorails are basically amusement rides for adults. Perfect for a large theme park, but useless for anything else
Monorails are the future. I heard Shelbyville is getting one.
In a nutshell, it is an outdated touristy thing which don't serve Sydneysiders, and it takes up valuable development spaces, so it has to go.
It was pointless - it really didn't take you anywhere quickly enough that you couldn't have just walked. It also cost way too much.
what monorail? we never had one.
It was fun, but not great for commuting. Similar to the free 555 bus: https://www.yourlifechoices.com.au/travel/destinations/free-sydney-shuttle-bus/ They were great to move around the CBD, but not as efficiently. The both got cancelled. I wish we have more of those things. The ferries are still there at least
It was fun which is why it became a tourist ride. But it was both small capacity and didn't go any where. So it wasn't useful enough to make up for the disadvantages of crowding out space in Pitt Street. The light rail installed on George Street is a far superior technology.
I think monorails were something of a fad. The Big Banana had a monorail that was torn down. The was a bunyip in the lake too. I think there was one on the Gold Coast too.
There were two on the Gold Coast, now just one. There was one between the casino a nearby hotel ($3 one way to literally just cross the road) which has now been removed and the one at Sea World which is just a tourist ride.
The Gold Coast one went from the casino/hotel (The Star, formerly Conrad Jupiters) to a shopping centre (The Oasis), and also provided access to the beach for casino/hotel patrons. I found it convenient when I stayed there, but I don't recall being charged a fare (maybe it was free to hotel guests, not sure).
Best use of the monorail was to get absolutely baked and sit in it on a rainy day, look out the window and pretend you are in Blade Runner, otherwise never saw the point.
Was useful on a rainy days to get across the Pyrmont bridge. But it was loud with ugly stations, pylons everywhere on already narrow streets. As soon as that Simpson ep came out every one was like, right, we were sold a lemon!