OK.
Monorails are butt ugly.
Firstly, Gorillaman’s post a little way above has pretty much nicely summed things up in a sentence or two. Happy Wanderer, many of the advantages you are attributing to monorails are at least matched by modern light rail technology, and even surpassed.
Monorails are butt ugly.
I’ll start with the thorny issue of grade separation. As I have said, monorails either require it, or if at grade, they present an obstacle to everything else. As for light rail, the beauty is that you can do anything with it as far as grade is concerned. If you are in a high passenger turnover, short-hop area such as a shopping precinct, you can just run ‘er down the street, and the only visual impact, apart from some shiny rails in the road surface, is a thin wire above (none of these “thickets of catenary” these days). If you need to grade separate, guess what? You can! The important thing to remember here though, is for people not to conjure up visions of the Chicago elevated railways of the old days - a modern light rail viaduct is more on a par with your monorail, in terms of visual impact. I’m for avoiding grade separation where possible, but it’s certainly available as an option if you need it. It needs to be said again that grade separation as far as passengers’ need to board and alight isn’t a matter of “Ooh poor diddums, a flight of stairs too much for you, is it?” It has been demonstrated that people will resist this if they are only going a few blocks. For high speed, longer distance transit (commuter, usually), then grade-separate to your heart’s content, but for the inner city, downtown “hop on and off” crowd, it’s a deal breaker. There was a proposal years ago to route some of Melbourne’s trams underground to increase traffic flow - but this is what killed it. As LRVs and monorails tend not to be for longer distance journeys, it’s generally fair to say we should leave the grade separation/high speed stuff to the heavy rail and the subways. And that seems to be the basis of the problem - both competing technologies are short haul transit forms - they don’t fit with grade separation.
Monorails are butt ugly.
It’s also worth pointing out that LRVs don’t have railroad-style limitations on hill-climbing ability (they can get up some surpisingly steep pinches) or on curves (modern LRVs have axle-less drives that make the things pretty much able to turn easily at any 90-degree intersection).
Monorails are butt ugly.
For street impact, I’m not sure where you get the three lanes thing from. LRV can fit in one lane of traffic. One up and one down, and you’ve got a max of two lanes. Allow other traffic to use those lanes as well (which is one of the major things monorails won’t let you do), and you have minimal impact. There are also other options available such as having traffic lights favour LRVs, or having LRV lanes only open to buses and taxis, etc. It’s another example of LRVs being more adaptable on a city-by-city basis. Let City Hall fight it out, but the technology can generally do what they want it to. Sure, Joe Fuckwicket can turn in front of an LRV and cause an accident, but he can do the same to a bus or another car. It’s just another fenderbender and doesn’t “close the line down” for any length of time.
Have I mentioned monorails are butt ugly?
As for maintenance, modern LR right of way is set in concrete, and the rail-grinding is probably rarely used if ever (that shit is for 5000 ton freight trains). I’d wager the surrounding roadway would wear out first.
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Oh yes. I don’t find monorails very visually appealing. 