Why Does Germany Build Suspended Monorails (When Almost Nobody Else Does)?
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- Опубліковано 21 вер 2024
- *** FILMED IN 2019 ***. Suspended monorails are very rare: there are only 8 working systems on the planet. So how have Germany got four of them? Is Germany the future? I went to Düsseldorf to investigate...
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FURTHER RESEARCH
www.railway-te...
www.monorails....
Great little vid on the Skytrain by Calling All Stations: • S2E3: The Dusseldorf A...
Archive footage of the Bennie Railplane from Pathé: • The "George Bennie" Ra...
IMAGE CREDITS
SAFEGE Test Track by Jean-Henri Manara - commons.wikime...
Dresden Bergbahn by Norbert Aepli - commons.wikime...
Bennie Railplane blue plaque by Richard Sutcliffe - commons.wikime...
Closeup of Wuppertal wheels by Matthias Böhm - commons.wikime...
Higashiyama Park Monorail in Nagoya by 円周率３パーセント (Enshuritsu 3 percent) - commons.wikime...
Tim, you forgot the most important reason for the monorail: something for tourists to do when their airplane is delayed for 2 hours!
Come visit & see squished & bloody pigeons & other birds rain down on the windshield of the monorail you are riding in...
@@davidhollenshead4892 What the hell...? Why would there be squished pigeons?
@@Lar411 it sounds like the voice of experience rather than someone who could explain why the pidgeons found their end on the window of a monorail
@@davidhollenshead4892 Oh god, they don't roost inside the rail box do they?! Seems plausible that they'd use it to get out of the weather but surely the noise and vibration of frequent approaching trains makes the box less inviting to our feathered friends?
Ah, is that how they make schnitzel?
I just want to mention that the first one (the one in Wuppertal) was really important because of the style of city Wuppertal is. While others of these hanging trains may be "because it looks cool", it was kind of the only solution for Wuppertal as there was only one space for this kind of public transport available, and that was right above the river.
I imagine Wuppertal could've built a more conventional elevated rail line. But the trackbed structure probably would've covered up streets and the river a lot more. Compare a Chicago or New York el to the amount of space -- and shade -- under the Schwebebahn. 🙂
@@AaronOfMpls There have been railway tracks on both sides of the valley of the Wupper, but due to the topgraphy in this area, you almost always had to climb a steep hill to get to the next railway station. The valley is quite narrow in the area of Wuppertal with a high density of buildings, thus not much room for traffic. Putting the rails on stilts spanning across the river and streets alike didn't just create a unique means of transportation, but also one of, if not the safest overall. As far as I know, it took about 100 years until the first fatal injury occurred.
@@Timberwolf69 Yup, a derailment and fall in 1999, caused by a temporary fastener on the running rails. Overnight work on the track had fallen behind schedule, and in their haste to clean up before the first train of the day, the workers apparently forgot the fastener.
Tim actually mentions this in his Wuppertal video!
There are many places like that, just too poor to build a monorail.
Monorails are really funny, they make the best one-liners!
I dunno, suspended monorails are terrible for finishing jokes, they always leave me hanging.
Ba-Dum - Tsss
@@thespectator1243 ua-cam.com/video/_LLQ39XhRwY/v-deo.html
Better than yours that's for sure. 😉
@@TheGoukaruma ouch that’s gonna bruise
As Tim explains, the cars swing out going around turns, so the passengers feel no side-force. In the summer of 1964 I lived in Wuppertal and rode the Wuppertaler Schwebebahn often. There are plenty of curves and the lack of side forces is obvious and helpful. It is indeed a physics lesson for people growing up there.
Yeah but the system of the Schwebebahn has one big flaw: Its not multiline-capable because a switch is hard to build. For More than one line or more tracks other systems are better.
But for a single-line system like in Wuppertal (were i was born) its perfect.
As I remember the Wuppertal system, it has a limitation relating to the way it is guided by the rail. On regular train tracks, the average person may think that the train is guided by constant rubbing of the flanges, but that's not true. It is guided because the wheel surfaces are tapered and each pair of wheels are solidly connected to the axle. That system guides the train, even at high speeds, with little crashing and rubbing of the flanges. As I understand the Wuppertal system, the flanges do constantly rub. Probably the wheels or track are greased. The rubbing flanges limit the speed to some number like 50 km/h. That's OK for urban transit. Anyway it's fun!
@@JackMacLupus no, theres simply no economic value in stretching it out sideways in Wuppertal. There are Switches in it, allowing the trains to be stored / introduced to and from from the depot.
As a Düsseldorf resident with insomnia who lives not too far away from the airport, I sometimes go to the airport just to shop at the supermarket there which is open until midnight, a rarity here in Germany. When I'm not able to drive myself, for whatever reason, the sky train seems like a gift from the gods, an incredibly smooth ride. Also, if you plan to visit, you will basically never be asked for a ticket ever.
Confirming the statement about the ticket. It only exists in theory, or for being prepared for the day when thousands of tourist flood in and crowd the trains. For all practical purposes its a free airport shuttle train.
I didn't even remember that you need a ticket, so yeah, that's how often you get asked lol
Confirming the statement about the supermarket. Miss it so much to live in Unterrath.
I can't remember that I need a ticket to take that. I thought it is free like almost every airport rail.
sometimes I just take it for fun or to watch the cute little rabbits on the ground.
@@kwl1497 The rabbits are so cute. They are the highlight of every stroll through the nearby Kartäuser Park.
I really wish more countries would consider this for construction along crowded urban roads. The footprint it takes on the ground is so small compared to even a conventional monorail (which is already much better than elevated heavy rail), but the fact that it's suspended means that you get a more unobstructed view of the surroundings from the ground, and the rubber wheels means it's so quiet it wouldn't even bother people living next to it!
Nah, it's surprisingly as big as normal narrow gauge train or normal monorail. It's just inverted because it looks cool, not because anything. You can build light normal train with standar support size as suspended monorail
It's not more better than you use B&M Invert Rollercoaster as a transportation device. Heck, it's waaay better than standar suspended monorail because it's faster (up to 120 kmh), much more tight footprint (high-G banked turn), fully automatic self contolled, and you can go upside down if you wanted more "cooler transportation"
Maintenance sounds like a pain and in times of emergencies i probably won't want to be in one.
@@bocahdongo7769 I don't get it, the ground supports for two lines of dangletrain occupy less space than a single ground line of a conventional train plus the infrastructure around it (electric posts, fences, etc.) while also not requiring a bridge to cross over it.
It's better than suspended light rail because you need far less materiel to weather-proof the tracks. Suspended light rail only achieves this by building a tunnel that encloses the entire structure.
@@p_serdiuk standard monorail can take far less space by wide by utilizing shared support on bottom, if you really that concern with space
Or if you really-really-really concern with space, you can use B&M Invert Rollercoaster as transportation device, it literally can go in-and-out building and meandering around tight corner and alley, while maintaining 100 km/h speed
@@bocahdongo7769 Yes but the problem with covering the tracks still remains.
Rollercoasters are a joke.
The train at Dortmund was a R&D project of the Technical University (my alma mater) put to good use to connect the north and the south campus. There‘s a ravine separating those two locations, making it quite difficult to get to the next lecture on time by bicycle. The network started as a simple point-to-point connection and has been expanded step by step.
And because there was this R&D project that had consumed a little bit of government funding, the guys at Düsseldorf Airport were asked to check out the Dortmund train system when they started looking for something to solve their public transportation needs. End of story.
If I remember correctly, in the beginning the H-Bahn got stuck quite often, but that's long ago. And in the mid-90ies there was a web page with a java applet that displayed the location of the trains, that definitely hanged quite often or even crashed. Fortunately that applet didn't control the H-Bahn.
@@danielamaus Yes, I remember that the H-Bahn (Hochbahn, meaning "elevated train") car got stuck in heavy side winds over the ravine once in a while. Apparently this was triggered by an overzealous safety system that took a while to finetune.
Since the Dortmund Firefighters didn't have a ladder tall enough to reach the car in this position, they constructed a special "rescue car" to reach the stranded passengers.
"Getting stuck on the H-Bahn" was a popular excuse for showing up late in those days. 😀
@@jogirichter9271 I've also studied in Dortmund ~15y ago and yes, it was always a good excuse :)
When a freind of mine an I arrived at the station in the morning and got the "due to...the H-Bahn will be delayed for X time..." we always said to us: "god has spoken, we sadly can't attend this mornigs lecture.
Good times...
But I never got stuck in the the H-Bahn. I just "stranded" at the stations on campus or in Eichlinghofen.
Wasn't the Dortmund monorail also a project to test driverless systems? The Dortmund and Düsseldorf systems operate without driver.
@@carstenbruck6832 Jepp, that's true.
The Düsseldorf Skytrains also do not have a driver (no sure about the ones in other cities), which makes the feeling of it even more futuristic.
For the biggest part of my life I lived very closely to the Düsseldorf Airport. As kids we used to go there just to ride the Skytrain from start to end and back or to wander around the Airport shopping mall.
Thanks for the nice video and the little trip to my childhood :)
The trains in Vancouver are also called SkyTrain (driverless as well)! It was surprising to see the signs for it in the beginning of the video, confused me for a second lol
The more or less twin one in Dortmund to my knowledge does not have a driver as well. Which if we stay honest here, really only works with a train going above the traffic and no one violating a red light may be crossing.
But if they had a driver, would they be called a driver or a pilot?
I am pretty sure the reason is that with screen doors and it being a skytrain... if you get hit by it you are very lost or are possibly a drunk bird. :D The possible driver-preventable accidents are almost 0 with these things :D
Driverless trains on public transit is overrated. Here in Vancouver, our Sky Train system is driverless which is a problem as, whenever it snows or there are system issues, they have to get a technician in every train to drive them which makes the whole system much slower. It is a huge pain in the ass.
I would like to submit "Suspend your disbelief!" as a possible slogan.
I think that deserves a suspended sentence for cheesy lines
Has to be better than "Insta Twit Face"
Now that was a low dangling fruit :D
*bruh*
Very good sir. I live here in Düsseldorf when we first arrived we did take our kids on sundays for a ride and to see the aircraft. Its novelty has worn off somewhat now but not the one in Wuppertal. I love the schwebebahn.
You forgot one major benefit of those H-Bahns: They are driverless and can be run via relatively simple programms.
This is a huge advantage in long term financial planning.
New Paris metro line 14 is driverless; metro line 4 is being converted to secured track which will enable driverless function.
(By relatively simple, I guess you mean "no IA", "1000 simpler than Tesla", not "trivial".)
wow
my city should get one of these
not only does Tim speak perfect French but he always makes sure his accent is on point for any foreign place names or words. Probably the only British person I've ever heard who can say Düsseldorf even nearly correctly.
Edit: I just reached the Michelin and Renault part and totally proved my own point
Time to send him East and test him properly...
I suggest Wrocław and Łódź in Poland, and Székesfehérvár or Gyöngyös in Hungary.
(Tempted to suggest Pécs in Hungary too, as I know a mispronunciation of that is a rude word!)
Alas I can't think of any interesting rail based transport in any of those locations, bar the regular Central/Eastern European trams which sneak up on you from the wrong side and try to kill you! (*shakes English RHD fist*)
(Budapest does decorate up some trams for Christmas).
You mean its not "duffselldorv"?
He carefully didn’t attempt Milngavie, where the railplane was…
I would suggest Bielefeld. But we're only talking about places that actually exist.
@@juststeve5542 well, Łódź is currently building a train mini-metro by digging a 2km long tunnel underneath city centre which will join 2 separate train lines and also allow future Berlin-Warsaw HSR to go through. Don't know if that passes for interesting enough though. There's also a 90-year-old tram-only bridge nearby.
Took me a moment to realize I've actually been on that when I flew from Düsseldorf a year and a half ago. Unrelated fun side fact: I read an East German sci-fi novel where the name of the inventor of the first time machine was Tim E. Traveller.
I keep forgetting that the beginning of the pandemic was 15 months ago, not just 2 weeks ago, and that 2019 was two years ago, not just one.
2020, the year everyone forgot existed, except as a dim nightmare.
@@57thorns yes, I still have some new year's wishes for 2021, contemplating of sending them out now, as 2020 is now almost over.
Wait,what, there’s a pandemic? And this isn’t still 2019? I thought it was all a bad dream and someone called JR got shot!
202, the year that- yeah, let’s just never mention it again.
There was a time before the pandemic?!
I lived in Chiba city, Japan for 2 years and it had one of the longest monorail in the world. It was actually fantastic getting around to different districts
"But hang on ... " The best puns are the cheap shots that come in from the side almost not noticed ...
Or in my case, completely unnoticed. Which begs the question, if a put goes unnoticed, is it still a pun? 🤨
There must be at least 1 groan.
Yeah, I scrolled down just to catch that one lol. This one was punfest for sure.
I just now remembered that Germany once had another suspended type of train - the aerobus of Mannheim.
Built in 1975 and operated until 1976, the aerobus was constructed for the horticultural show of 1975 in Mannheim. It operated on a 2.8 km long double-track line hanging above the streets of Mannheim (maybe a bit comparable to the street-sections of Wuppertal Schwebebahn). In this original layout the "rails" were actually steel cables, however in a later refit as a test track, the cables were replaced with aluminium rails, thus making it a proper railway.
The concept never catched on and the only other aerobus open to the public was one in a skiing area near Toronto.
I think it's a fairly interesting bit of transit history, and yes - we Germans like our suspended railways 😉 (even though the aerobus is originally a Swiss invention)
BUT MAIN STREET IS STILL ALL CRACKED AND BROKEN!
Sorry Geoff, the Germans have spoken
Sorry Geoff the möb has spoken
Monorail Monorail Monorail
Oh no Geoff, what have you started 😅
@@CruiseTT Mono! D'oh!
It looks really futuristic, but when I first used this train in Düsseldorf, I was shocked by how loud it rumbled along. I sort of imagined it to glide like a maglev train, but nope: Wheels in a steel casing, plain and simple...
probably quieter than a bus at least
"The Dusseldorf Dangletrain" really sound like something that would cost extra. And possibly get you arrested and/or deported.
Come visit & see squished & bloody pigeons & other birds rain down on the windshield of the monorail you are riding in.....
@@davidhollenshead4892 no noob
@@davidhollenshead4892 yeah that doesn't happen but ok.
You're basically the 21st century variant of the dairy farmers who blamed the steam trains for making their milk sour
i know a place in mexico where its all that.
honestly, just looking at it seems like a logical solution. Especially in Sweden where our tracks always get covered in snow, and the railway switches freezes due to the never ending cycle of warm/cold temperature shifting. Sure, I bet it is quite expensive to install, but once it is done. It must be fairly hassle-free.
@@HeyJinx Yeah I read up on it later. Such a shame :)
The angle of dangle suddenly takes on a whole new meaning...
Reality can be stiff sometimes
Don't take it too hard.
“Why not” is possibly the best argument for building a dangle train I have ever heard
The suspended monorail from Dortmund is located at TU Dortmund university, where I am working! Three interesting facts:
1) From Düsseldorf Airport, you can enter the train "S1" which drives directly to the station "Dortmund University", from which you can directly enter the "H-Bahn" (which is the name of the Dortmund monorail). This may also be a good addition for your advertisement :D
2) Currently, there are plans to even expand the Dortmund monorail to a newly built city district.
3) The Dortmund monorail connects two parts of the university which are mainly separated by a forest, so it is used regularly by every student
and not to forget: the "H-Bahn" in Dortmund came first by a couple of decades, running since 1984.
IIRC the "sky train" - formerly known as "people mover" - is basically the same product.
Before Corona (therefore, when I went to the uni) I used the one in Dortmund quite frequently, it's always a delight to use. And it's so cool that they are actually planning to expand it! One extension to a new area for technology companies, and other one to the tram/subway system. Like every public infrastructure project in Germany it will take forever, but I think it will get done.. eventually
Dortmund
The suspense nearly killed me.
Well, don't leave me hanging!
When someone tries way to hard to be funny in the comments section
@@cvdeiana When someone is way too fun at parties
@@theorae9108 what kind of a lame ass insult is that? Who even goes to parties
@@SiisKolkytEuroo When you're in New Zealand, you're actually legally allowed to meet people unmasked. Life's good.
There are two suspended monorails in Japan as well: Shonan Monorail between Enoshima and Ōfuna and Chiba Urban Rail. Once I took Shonan Monorail on the way back from Enoshima beach to Tokyo. It was a great ride.
Both of which are mentioned in the video
"dangletrain" legitimately sounds like a German word to my English ears.
It's such a German way to create a word too... Like, same
Der dängeltrain
The german word is Hochbahn or short H-Bahn though.
it is sometimes also refered to as Schwebebahn.
So the literal translation would be hightrain or hovertrain.
@@duke7803 Yes, because it is high up in the air or from below looks like it hovers aboth the ground.
Am I the only one here for the 3-in-1 deal of watching quality content from an English guy who lives in France and does great mini-documentaries about German trains? With on-point accents all the way?
Tim should have left the "e" on in "Time Traveller" in the credits since that's basically what he is doing here. :D
I live a few kilometres away from Chiba city, where their city monorail is located. I've only had the chance to ride it once before, but after watching this video it's made me want to find time to travel out to Chiba one weekend and spend the day riding the monorail just for the sake of appreciating its uniqueness, rarity, and fun. Thank you!
As someone who used Düsseldorf Airport quite often I never thought about the Skytrain being special. Thanks for teaching me something about my hometown :)
I used to live in Dortmund and flew quite frequently out of Düsseldorf. I also never once thought twice about the skytrain, it was just a normal thing. But then again, I also grew up riding the one at the Dortmund University for fun.
I don't think it is anything really special, other than being the best way to get from A to B. I do appreciate it, though.
Given how few actually exist, it's kind of mind boggling to think I have been in three different suspended monorails already (Düsseldorf, Dortmund and Wuppertal)
I would also like to add that a monorail takes up less space in the air than normal rails, therefore making the areas underneath “cleaner” with less “pollution” from above
yes in Wuppertal the Monorail goes above a river
@@jalchi8367 Certainly, rivers, parkland, fields, roads, railways and car parking.
That's the thing why the train in Wuppertal works and still busses are not sen as an alternative. It is independent from the traffic on the street and with the Wupper in the middle of the valley (and yes, it is a rather steep valley) and the city being more long than wide along the Wupper, it was the place available for a train.
And in the video you can easily see, where the masts for the rail sit, there is in parts of the route really not much space available for anything else.
A "track on stilts" as other people mover systems use would mostly have required two masts and made the street below a lot darker.
A retired collegue of mine worked on this one when he was still at Siemens :) It's a shame for me most cities now are focusing on buses istead of rail since it is cheaper (on paper). Monorails are the better solution to congested cities. EVs are not the solution. It does not matter if an ICE car is stuck in traffic or an EV.
Pre-Corona I used to take the Skytrain nearly every second week. Now the last business trip of mine was in February 2020. Feels like a lifetime ago...
Mono rails are terribly expensive vs traditional light and heavy rail and are only economically/net beneficial in niche cases (like this airport where a bunch of expensive infrastructure was already previously built). Its why there are so few monorails around in general, in many cases a U-Bahn is cheaper as well if you can't build above ground. Although at least you are not a car brain. Busses are actually net more expensive in the long run as they contribute to road degradation much more quickly like trucks do to the road (carrying several tonnes of weight in people tends to do that). Busses are the typical go to for a city, especially car centric cities because of their comparatively low initial cost and them not interfeering with car centric urban planning. A proper transportation network usually places cars as the 4th or 5th priority, where as cities that are expanding bus networks are usually treating cars as the first priority. (Typically well planned priority looks like this-> (Walking>=Bycycles>Lightrail/trams>Heavyrail>automotive vehicles).
Road infrastructure is by far the most expensive in the long term, a handful of railway tracks are vastly cheaper then hundreds of roads in the same area, carrys far more throughput and railway tracks can list for literal centuries with regular maintenance, meanwhile roads typically need to be rebuilt every 30 years (roads at the end of their life tend to be filled with potholes, cracks and also just look like shit).
Conventional trains (and some monorails, particularly the _really_ fast ones) do lean into the corners ("cant" or "superelevation", or even actual tilting mechanisms) but I guess it's handy to have physics take care of it for you rather than having to build banked tracks.
Fascinating. Though I suppose they must used banked turns or well-timed hydraulics (which may be what your jargon alludes to, sorry). So yeah, having 'physics' do the work for you must be a nice advantage.
The "Cisalpino" which was a tilting highspeed train between Italy and Switzerland was very unreliable and everyone hated it. The Italian Cisalpino just regularely broke down in the middle of nowhere and were never really fixed into reliable things...
The Swiss Cisalpino's worked always, but were hated because the tilting mechanism did work also in slow driving curves which there are plenty of, and they are all banked because all regular trains used this route too. People got all sick on those things, they were horrible to ride.
Now with the new Tunnels trough the Simplon and the Lötschberg, the track is build for highspeed trains, which means tilting mechanisms are no longer needed.
I'm not up to date if there are still Cisalpino's existing or if the tilting mechanism somehow got fixed and upgraded, but I remember many People avoiding to travel with the Cisalpino's because the Swiss ones made you sick and the italian ones didn't work....
@@samuelbhend2521 you do realize that most modern high speed trains tilt nowadays? Look up the pendolino system, it’s so good that you won’t even notice the train tilting or turning!
@@lightningbot85 I'm not up to date on that, cause I've stopped travelling alltogether years ago. I think the big difference between the 90's Cisalpino and the modern day Highspeed trains is, that the Cisalpino ran on shared 90years oldTracks together with Freight and regional trains, whilst modern Highspeed train systems run on their own Highspeed-only tracks.
The reasons suspended monorails are not much used are:
(1) Passengers cannot get out quickly in an emergency, e.g. if someone starts to shoot or stab people, or a fire breaks out. You must consider elderly, frail, and disabled people, and little children.
(2) If you make the windows breakable, so that people can exit, there is a possibility that someone may be thrown out deliberately, or plunge down as the result of being flung against a window. Passengers are effectively imprisoned. A supporting rail beneath a train can always be fitted with a footboard and catching fence/guard rail.
(3) A train that is supported from beneath is effectively fail-safe. If an axle fractures, the train will stop on the track. When an axle fractures in an overhead suspension system, there is a shock loading on the remaining wheels and axles due to the weight - hopefully enough axles at the correct positions to ensure the cabin remains more or less level. However, the system of suspending wheels and axles is necessarily stronger and heavier than in a system supported from beneath. In general two sets of wheels are fine for a cabin on a supporting rail, but at least three sets are required for an overhead rail.
(4) An overhead hanging rail is significantly taller than a supporting rail, so that the cost of the rail viaduct per unit payload is greater.
(5) If a train has stopped at an arbitrary point for any reason, a supporting rail beneath it with a guard rail and footboard allows maintenance staff to move easily to any point along the vehicle.
(6) A supporting track beneath trains provides some protection against items thrown or fired against them from below, such as bullets being fired upwards from motor vehicles.
Finally! Somewhere I've actually been to and something I've actually been on (in 2019), the only time I have ever been anywhere not on this rock we call the UK. Loved Dusseldorf and had no idea about the 'Sky Train' till I got on it. Great experience in a city full of great experiences. Would love to go back sometime. Global pandemics aside. Good video, I was still hyper ventilating after my first flight to be in any condition to film it. So thank you sir for stirring the memories again!
My first flight of a commercial nature was much less........
IOM-Liverpool !
Hello, fellow Stan ;)
By the way, if you want to see the "Skytrain" you should plan it within the next 10 years or so.
The city is currently extending its regular metro system ("Stadtbahn") all the way to the airport. In 2024 the train to the Airport proper (lines "U81" and "U82", connecting the airport to Düsseldorf and Neuss) will be finished, and then construction on the subterranean train continuing to the Airport railway station (and maybe even further to the nearby town of Ratingen) will start. The Skytrain would then be redundant and probably discontinued, even though there has not been made a definite decision on that.
By the way, the "Stadtbahn Rhein-Ruhr" would make for a nice video on its own. It was actually planned way back in the 1970s to connect all the cities within the Ruhr valley via Metro from Düsseldorf all the way to Dortmund. The cities are still working on the project, and nowadays there is almost a connection all the way through. Note that you wouldn't use the Stadtbahn to travel all the way from Düsseldorf to Dortmund, as Stadtbahn is meant as a high-volume trunk line for public transport within the cities. For medium distance travel, e.g. commuting between cities, "S-Bahn" and Regional Express exist, which both are regular train networks spanning the same area.
I was gonna say, even from as far away as Köln public transport makes the use of the SkyTrain completely redundant because there's an S-Bahn station right under the terminal where the S11 curves around away from the main airport station. Literally the only time I've ever had to use the SkyTrain in tens of trips through Düsseldorf is when the S-Bahn lines were affected by train driver strikes and I had to get to the main Flughafen station. As cool as it is, it's something so many can completely avoid by this point.
Are you sure they discontinue it? The skytrain also serves the parking lots. Original plans where, one the outer parking lots are also converted to multi level garages, to put in a fifth station. You can see the provisions already at 2:43 where the line splits to make space for a station.
Düsseldorf airport already has a train connection (in contrast to Berlin for example). Why are they extending the U-Bahn? They could also just use trains with more carriages.
The standard train has two carriages, one for 1st and one for 2nd class. The 2nd class is really overflowing because almost nobody buys 1st class tickets for just one station.
@@danielrose1392 Actually I am not sure anymore where I read about this. Unfortunately, the official web pages of the city of Düsseldorf for the U81/U82 project are currently sparse on details. But I said one year ago that the decision is not yet final, maybe it was just a politician in the newspaper thinking aloud.
I have found a recent article that the airport reduced skytrain coverage during Corona times and replaced it with Bus service. So the operating cost seem to be non-trivial.
Now considering that most of the people go from train station to terminal, when there is a redundant Stadtbahn line (with better service level) put in, it will pretty much obsolete the sky train, especially considering that Buses can provide service to more buildings on the airport campus, and therefore provide better service.
@@svr5423 The Stadtbahn light metro system is the main trunk of public transport in Düsseldorf, meant to transport a high volume of people to everywhere within the city.
Connecting the airport is not the principal reason for its existence, even though most people trying to get to the airport from within Düsseldorf will probably in many cases use the Stadtbahn, as not everyone is living near the train (e.g. S-Bahn) corridor.
On the same line (at least the planned scenario of the maximal running length of the line, which is not yet decided on), there are several more high-value stops, for example the Rheinparkcenter (Large shopping mall in Neuss), Merkur Spielarena (Large Stadium in Düsseldorf), or Ratingen-West (largest residential center of Ratingen). All of those connections will enable more people to use the Stadtbahn system and reduce car traffic.
See also that the new Stadtbahn line will introduce a new east-west connection (Neuss to Ratingen) where the railway train lines in Düsseldorf mostly run from north to south. IIRC, the new line will also be the first Stadtbahn line that does not have a stop in the Düsseldorf old town (Heinrich-Heine-Allee).
If you live in Ratingen and want to go to Neuss (or Krefeld) by public transport, this will probably cut down transit times compared to S-Bahn.
So the Stadtbahn system may supplement and enhance the coverage by train railway.
If you are coming from outside of Düsseldorf and want to take a flight, you will probably have a direct stop at the Flughafen on your ICE/IC or regional train line. If for some reason your train only stops at the main station (which only applies for connections like RE4 from Wuppertal or Hamm), you will still use one of the train lines, e.g. S-Bahn to take the last leg to the airport. The S-Bahn takes something like 10 minutes to the airport while taking the Stadtbahn would probably cost you approximately 30 minutes.
I knew it couldn't have been Germany the moment you said "efficient" :D
I'm still waiting for my appointment.
we do it "proper"... which means complicated and expensive
@@derauditor5748 Yet disfunctional.
its easier to already build upon a proven concept than come up with something completely new that instantely just works. The elevated train in Wuppertal works and yes its efficient given that nothing really changed on the concept of the Wuppertal line. Germany isnt just cars
@@elmariachi5133 How can it be dysfunctional, when it is in active use?
Cool video, I realized while watching that I've actually been on three of them in Germany and one in Japan! It's really a fun way of transportation, because of the bird's eye view and the sense of gliding through midair (its motion is way more stable than flying).
This is the most positive (relatively speaking) video about monorails I have ever seen.
I made all my decisions about monorails back in the 90s from The Simpsons.
"it's not economical" vs "yeah, but it looks cool"
@@TheGoukaruma Well, it can be economical in places where building a light rail or subway system isn't practical. That's certainly the case in Wuppertal. It's just a rather niche application. And it does indeed look really cool.
@@lewisfilby2394 I have also formed all my opinions about monorails on the basis of that Simpsons episode, but I only watched it till the part where they sing that catchy song. What's it called? Monorail!
That episode is about how monorails are actually great, right... right?!
@@brotlowskyrgseg1018 I don't disagree. For me personally "it looks cool" is enough. Bean counters have no value for things you can't measure like "the city is getting cooler". Tourists certainly will remember that.
Probably, not very efficient from the economical perspective, but God, it must be beautiful to just sit inside, watch the streets, canals, and buildings floating by! Just beautiful
The suspended railway is a unique system that simply stands out, an ambitious out of the box idea that is too powerful for cities to handle so they turn to building trams instead. Shame there aren't more of them. Goa was so close to being the next place to have one too...
On top of the three built by Mitsubishi, a fourth suspended monorail was built (though more similar to the Schwebebahn although it has rubber tires; in other words the designers had the idea of using rubber tires before the SAFEGE group thought of it) even before those in 1957 at the Ueno Zoo by the Tokyo Metropolitan Government who operated the zoo. It was not only the first monorail in Japan, but also the first zoo monorail in the world. It was a trial system for a future city plan that would ease traffic congestion. They used off the shelf parts to cut costs. Unfortunately the monorail has been suspended (ba-dum-tss) since October 2019 because replacing the aging fleet is just too costly. And while the one in Nagoya is no longer in operation, at least a train and a station of it is preserved on the botanical garden side of Higashiyama park.
Ah shame: I remember seeing them whiz by when I was in Tokyo, beautiful stuff
Well, can't blame the cities. Most of the time, monorails would simply be too expensive compared to trams. Wuppertal is pretty much the only place in the world where the system is an integral part of a city's public transportation network. And only because it's one of the few places where it actually made sense to build one.
@@leDespicable never heard of Chicago?
@@leDespicable Ooh, it's not for most cities, it's more of a Shelbyville idea...
@@leDespicable The Chiba city suspended monorail is the centerpiece of Chiba's public transport system, and that's a city of a million people. It's their only dedicated local rail transit (though other parts of the city use the regional JR and Keisei train networks for local travel)
Also the Shonan suspended monorail, while only a single line as part of a larger network, does serve as an important route in its area, and is most definitely integral at least to the area that it serves. It's real transit, not just for travelers/tourists. It was used for this line because of the extremely narrow footprint it had to fit into where there was no room for a traditional rail right of way, and not enough money to dig a subway.
I briefly looked into suspended trains a while back but it didn't occur to me that having the rail above would keep the elements and the vandals from messing with anything. Between that, the small footprint, and the sway difference, you kind of sold me on the design.
I'm not sure the small footprint is much to do with the design, as much as the weight. You could make elevated conventional light rail with this footprint - though admittedly it would block slightly more skyline.
I built suspended monorails in Dortmund, Wuppertal and Düsseldorf and boy did that put them on the map!
North Haverbrook? WOW
May the Force be with you
Can you tell me if sky train is feasible to cross the river banks?
@@nikkion2140, why shouldn’t it? The older Wuppertal suspended railway runs for most of its length over the Wupper river.
Could you make one for us in Stockholm too? Seems fun to ride.. Like an amusement park sort of...
Huh, I grew up in Memphis and never thought the Mud Island monorail was anything special. Cool video, thanks for sharing
“Düsseldorf: Gateway to the Dangletrains”
That really got me 😂
Only in German would you get a word like 'dangletrains' !
As a french viewer, I appreciate what you did
We invent it, you improve it, we perfect it. Old trusted circle.
As a german viewer, I was like "what wrong country dude"
I can imagine the car insurance accident claim form
Q) Reason for claim?
A) A train fell from the sky on to my car
If it fell from the ground I would be amazed.
Could be worse : It could have been an elephant ;)
@@gerardmorvan2232 Could be even worse: An Elephant jumping from a suspended train.
"Tuffis Wuppersprung"¹, anyone?
¹ de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuffi
@@1zaj34 "So what exactly caused the damage to your boat?"
"An elephant fell from the sky."
"Sir, you do understand that insurance fraud is a crime?"
@@1zaj34 That's the one I was thinking of.
I was born in Wuppertal, the main reason for the so called Schwebebahn was : the City Wuppertal is in a valley and the River Wupper is the creator of this valley - so the so called Schwebebahn is constructed allmost over the river - and allthough the Train stops at many stations it is still the fastes vehicle and way to reach from one end of the city to the other. I used to travel with it in my childhood two times a day thousands of times - it was our „schoolbus“ - never failed ! Really never ! Absolutly safe - no matter what weather or temperatur . Great - but ...its squeaking horrible in the curves and because the Schwebebahn fellows the river there is a lot of curves and horrible squeaking .
Great video. I'm German and didn't even know that there were four of that. Awesome.
Growing up in Düsseldorf and Dortmund (and also near Wuppertal) I always took those things for granted
I got all misty-eyed out of sheer joy when I heard the first notes of that beautiful rendition of the The Monorail Song. 11/10
OH MY GOD, THE FRENCH VERSION.
@@tcjdv the piano version took a while to register. But then the French one hit home immediately. Glorious.
I actually rode the skytrain at the airport on a regular basis when I was working near the airport from 2016 and 2019, the skytrain is pretty cool. Also fully automated.
The dangling does get a little bit scary whenever there's a storm tho. That's the biggest drawback.
Thanks for the video, I learned some things I didn't know :D
3:40
Monorail ❌
Underbus ⭕
I was going to go for Danglebüs
Having studied in Dortmund the sky train "H-Bahn" connects the southern campus with the northern campus and was a daily commute for me. Glad, that you enjoyed riding it so much taht you decided to share it on YT!
I recall the Dusseldorf Dangletrain was closed for around 2 years due to technical issues in the 2000s - I flew in and had to use a bus to get to the station which was very disappointing; and rumours at the time hinted it might never reopen. Luckily unfounded and I eventually got the chance to ride it a few years later!
please be smart and use the ü. The dots over the u really change the meaning kinda radical, for Dussel meaning "moron" :)
and yeah, the whole automatic-system was giving Siemens trouble. That's why they had to pay some hefty fines to the airport.
@⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻ true
or, simply press and HOLD the ALT-Key and then type, on the numpad, 129, then release the ALT-key
as long as the application uses the standard ASCII-table, it'll work. Otherwise, yeah, the ue is also a good way to tell the characters apart.
but simply forgetting about the dots over the u and writing a COMPLETELY different character will - best case - insult the people of said town, or - worst case - let you end up in a TOTALLY different city.
@@gajustempus My apologies - I didn't know the shortcut and my UK keyboard doesn't have any indication of how to get the 'ü'. I certainly wouldn't want to offend the people of Düsseldorf (which is a great city).
Dusseldorf. Munchen. Bërlin. Dreßden
@@Chironex_Fleckeri ...
Take Münster or Munster for example. Both cities exist. And both are about 200 kilometers apart, located in different states.
One has a military base in it, one a university.
This is the first time I travelled by a sky train. It was the same Düsseldorf one and love it.
from Australia :)
Fun fact, there is one more suspended monorail line in Ueno Zoo, Tokyo. It doesn’t use the SAFEGE, but its own system which looks like the one in Wuppertal. (Rubber tyres instead of the metal wheels, and smaller wheels on the side. No cover). Sadly, it’s service is suspended since 2019.
Answering this two year old comment to point out that if it were running it would still technically be a suspended service
@@wteff8586Lol
That Moment, if you watched this Video as a Dortmund local and thing: aaah, yo, right! There is one... Almost forgotten 😅
Thanks for that funny and informative Video! I like your Videos 😊
Greetings from Germany👋
0:16 Yeah, Tim is obviously trying to hide the fact that he’s a time traveller 😂
0:38 proves this
And yet Tim doesn't use it for admirable purposes like killing Hitler, Stalin, Franco, Mussolini, Hirohito, or Trump before they can hurt others...
I've just discovered another rare UA-cam treasure: The Tim Traveller. Enjoying your work . . . and your sense of humor. Thanks!
600 subs in 2019...crazy how fast you grew your subscriber base. Well deserved, of course!
what? I never realized he had more than 5k suddenly wow! Good job!
@@vocassen Tim and Jago Hazzard have excellent channels that ballooned from nothing - well deserved too!
Some of us have been here a long time, there were less than 1000 when I subscribed...
@@solracer66 - I was a late joiner - around 25,000 I think
I remember when I lived in Stockport, every time we had a change of Council (which happened quite regularly), a new idea for a transit system for the town would be proposed, including a monorail (which might be the Manchester system referred to). None of the ideas proposed were taken up - but about the only idea that was never proposed was to build a tram system to the same specs as Manchester Metrolink (other tramways to different specs such as Parry People Mover had been proposed).
Clearly building to the Manchester specs would have been the obvious choice as (a) the hard work of designing the specs had already been done and proven to work and (b) as Stockport is less than 10 miles from Manchester (and indeed much closer than some other towns that are now on Metrolink) it would seem an inevitability that the Stockport and Manchester systems would end up meeting somewhere.
25 years on, still no transit system in Stockport - not even Metrolink.
Next Video: The Transrapid....or what is left of it and its test track in Lathen... I rode that two times as a kid before the massive accident. Now it's running in Shanghai only.
The Transrapid was not a suspended monorail, but a monorail. I had the chance to ride it a few month prior to the fatal evident. A friend of mine survived the ride as their bus to Lathen was stuck in traffic..
Duesseldorf is my main airport you could call it and I absoulutly love the Skytrain. It's my favourit thing to do there. I remember that little Bunnys used to hop around on the grass patches underneth the rail and how much I loved them as a kid. I was so sad when the airport put them in the wilderness so they don't get under cars anymore. Now it's just the Skytrain itself that I love because it's such a unique thing
Coming from Pittsburgh, one of the few cities with any remaining wooden streets, I heartily approve of the wooden-railed French system.
I grew up in Pittsburgh (the 'h' means Pittsburgh, PA, USA of course.) I remember wood paving in the driveway of a high school but don't recall any public roads so paved.
@@GilmerJohn Only one left, alas. I'd thought that there were a few yet.
brooklineconnection.com/history/Facts/Roslyn.html
In the UK, where wood tends to rot rapidly in our damp climate, I'm not so keen on using it for rails. It was used by the Victorians for rails and viaducts but replaced by steel pretty quickly. Incidentally the Paris Metro decided its rubber-tyred trains weren't a great idea and reverted to conventional steel wheels for later lines.
@@iankemp1131 That was actually .... a commercial killer-battle between price offers from main manufacturers (Rubber tired patent : Michelin-Renault. Steel rail: any other) However, Montreal an Mexico bought in the "Renault system". Many many more followed, and in Japan it's quite popular.
I am right outside the Pittsburgh Metropolitan area and within Greater Pittsburgh in the Northern Panhandle of Wv. Lovely city would love to live up there but cost is a little bit of a barrier otherwise I would already be there.
One of the original French Dangle trains is now a Summer house in my Great Uncle's garden in Darvoy, Loiret. Will send link to photos I took a couple of years ago.
1:39 using the instrumental from the Monorail song in the Simpsons has made my day
Tim probably played it himself as he is an avid pianist.
I used to work there. Two things:
1: A suspended monorail is all fun and games until you are stuck in a broken one and the rescue wagon takes half an hour to show up.
2: You don't need a ticket. Don't get me wrong, the rules say you do, but in two and a half years of having to ride that thing every day I haven't encountered a single conductor.
Oh yeah, and be sure to wear a mask, even if corona isn't a thing anymore. Cought some colds and one time the actual flu there.
These could be a great alternative to teleferico systems when you need a bit more capacity. Very small footprint, and being suspended, handing hilly terrain should be much easier than with a tram/light rail or even a metro (having to build stations at different depths is non-trivial).
I used to fly into Dusseldorf every summer as a kid and loved the sky train, it was so exciting to go on and so utterly different to anything else, plus the automated voice was great fun to mimic- "Parkhaus P4 und P4" "Terminal A... B"
Fun and informative. I have to visit Düsseldorf again, it`s been over 25 years since the last time! Thanks.
Dear Tim,
You are , my favourite youtuber.
Thank you for such entertaining, educational ( yuk) and vistacially wonderful vignettes of fun ✌😁👍
Coincidentally, "SkyTrain" is also the name of Metro Vancouver's elevated light rail system. It's not suspended, and some of it runs underground like a proper subway (sorry... ahem... "metro"), but most of it is elevated. The first line was built for Expo '86, but since then it's been massively expanded - it has a really interesting history.
If you ever deigned to both cross the pond and visit Vancouver...
Little funfact from a student in dortmund.
There is a pastime called "H-Bahn Saufen" which means as much as drinking in the sky train.
You keep riding it and drinking beer until one of the conductors, who are watching the sky train from a control room via camera, tell you to get lost.
Rumor has it there is a record book, but I have never seen it.
I've been to Dortmund and Dusseldorf and not noticed these. I need to start looking up more.
In any older town or city, up is always the direction to look. Many centres of old cities are full of modern shop fronts, but look up and you will see the remaining architecture of the original buildings. It can be breathtaking at times.
The one in Dortmund is quite easy to miss honestly, it's transport area is rather small compared to the size of the city. You'll find it at the University if you ever visit again ^^
Those aren't exactly in the centre of the city. The one in Dortmund is on the campus, it's main purpose is to transport students from one side to the other. The one in Düsseldorf is at the airport, so that passengers can transit from long-time parking to the actual airport with all their luggage.
The one in Dortmund basically only connects Ali's Falafel Paradise with campus north and south.
Hi, on 2 November 2023 I went with the ICE train from Bruxelles MIDI to Düsseldorf HBF and then went with the S Bahn to Düsseldorf ✈️. This has been on my bucket list since I discovered this video.
So, the second in the sneakily unannounced series 'ALL THE MONORAILS'?
I'm hanging out to see that.
He'll take his time to get it out though, leave us in suspense.
@The Tim Traveller -
The Franch Suspended Monorail @ 3:44 seemed to be inspired by curtain/drape rails for the living room´s ceiling (it looks the same , even the rollers are the same , but in pairs)
"Dangletrain" 😂 brilliant. I always enjoy your videos Tim.
On again / off again viewer but my Gawd man, your videos are very enjoyable to watch and listen!
It looks like it’s much cheaper and faster to build than a subway, and accomplishes the same goal of transit that doesn’t interfere with the road system. 👍🏼
basically, though it does take up above ground space making it hard to retrofit into existing cities.
Then again, subway tunnels and station exits can also be very hard to place in existing cities (Amsterdam Noord-Zuid line, cough cough).
Yes, but it's more costly to maintain because everything has to be done in the air, and because monorails are so rare that economics of scale cannot drive prices low.
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And maintenance cannot happen overnight, the whole system often has to be closed diverting passengers elsewhere (this happened with mentioned line recently, and with Wuppertal system when it was renovated), because if tracks or support structures are moved, tracks need to be realigned by sending empty trains because supports amplify rail shift.
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Trams/trolleybuses/BRTs are cheaper to build and maintain, and typically some wait on some intersections does not warrant the increased maintenance costs.
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Airport links are an exception because people need to be on time to board the plane and not crowd airports too much, but airports have to be far from most other infrastructure making building metro or suspended heavy rail infeasible. They are also often built where there was nothing of interest (they require lots of land so need to aquire it relatively cheaply) so often do not have highways connecting them or place to build them without costly land acquisition and building demolition.
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Wuppertal is another oddity - town is stretched along the river that historically does not have a good road nearby. And building metro alongside rivers is near-impossible because of flooding. No-one is going to build a motorway over the entire run of the river either. So they have no other good option.
@@jwhite5008 Well Wuppertals renovation was a once in a centry event. And i don't believe that economy of scale works for subways. Surely not for the tunnel building, maybe for the carriages.
@@jwenting actually the opposite, easily to build above existing roads, canals etc
@@jantschierschky3461 not really. In theory maybe, in reality they take up a lot of space.
The pillars need to go somewhere, requiring buildings to be torn down, so do the stops/stations.
Most city streets aren't wide enough that you can just plop a line of say 20ft wide pylons on the median, and have wide enough sidewalks that you can have staircases and elevators leading up from those to the floating loading docks and still leave room for pedestrians to flow past without impeding traffic.
Also, especially with older European cities, you'd probably not get building permits because the structures would destroy the old look of the city. Not that much of a problem in modern American cities, in Europe it's not going to work.
And American cities aren't going to spend that much money on public transport that they'll ever have the budget for these things.
Its just awesome how much details you pack into a single video. Sounds entertaining but I imagine the research to do is quite a heavy lifting.
Thanks for another great video, Tim. When I was a child in the 1970s and we visited Epcot Center in Florida, I was certain the future would look like monorails everywhere (it was what Tomorrowland depicted of course). I cannot see a monorail without instinctively believing that the city I am in is progressive and futuristic. I'm going to have to go to Düsseldorf as soon as they open their border with the Netherlands now! Thanks.
Fun fact: The Monorail from Wuppertal and Dresden are not only build in the same year, no they even are the same system. Only the one in Dresden is build on a mountain side.
The good side of Monorails, suspended or not, is the fact that the track is realtively easy to build. I mean, compared to a normal railway track its WAY easier. First the pillars, then add the premanufactured track parts, and done. Only the stations need a bit more time to build but thats normal.
Another interesting system right between Dortmund and Düsseldorf is the kerb-guided bus in Essen - the first of its kind.
Hmm, the 'kerbcrawler' ?
@@millomweb It's basically a but with side-wheels, allowing them to go faster and more straight which is more comfy (like how train rides are more smooth than bus rides).
@@namibjDerEchte The side wheels only operate the steering.
The O-Bahn. Adelaide, South Australia has had one in operation since the mid 1980's.
@@ilmarvaim317 Essen has it since 1980. However, the system kinda failed and there is only one of four routes remaining.
3:54 Rubber wheels on laminated wood?
That's not a monorail, that's an office chair!
I've been inspired to start planning to build our own suspended monorail to add to those numbers
with a special separate line that will connect my bedroom to the other side of the palace at the McDonald's
We need your expertise in Toronto 😫. You created my fave food, the Burger. I love you.
tip: have it go over the crocodile pit and have a hatch in the bottom.
Disgraced henchmen get invited over, and dropped through the hatch for your viewing pleasure.
Germany had one more suspended Monorail in Mannheim. It was called Aerobus and built for the Bundesgartenschau in 1975. It was wrecked afterwards because it was not economical.
Came here for the Lyle Lanley cover, wasn’t disappointed!
This Monorail at Düsseldorf Airport took several years to function properly. At Dortmund university, they have had a similar one which always worked fine, but someone influential tweaked the decision for Düsseldorf towards Siemens.
I guess this channel has now 3 main topics: conventional Trains, suspended Monorails and Mountains. Where could we find a place, where all of them come together 🤔
Anyone know of a really weird hanging funicular up a mountain?
@@CannaCJ 1:36 Dresden?
And stuff in Paris
Definitely Dresden.
The answer is: Switzerland. Land of mountains and trains. And you can put your bicycle with you in most of them.
That did clear it all up! Thank you very much. Funny, delightful, and informative!
Monorail! Monorail! Monorail!
There was also a real "Dangle Train" in Mannheim for the Bundesgartenschau. It was called Aerobus. Slighty different approach.
Why have boring old conventional below-train tracks when you can add the danger of aerial derailment into the fun?
In Dortmund we are even extenting the network of the rails in near future.
Riding the train is almost like riding a rollercoaster. It is fun to ride and easy to install since you already have the room above streets.
Today's 'Hallooo' sounds lofty, possibly even elevated, but it pairs best with good old-fashioned lager.
Probably a Helles(ooo)
Wuppertal is a hilly city, which made it extremely difficult to build a conventional metro. That is why a suspension railway system was first built there. The main advantage today is that it can be built over existing infrastructure and property.