Monorails
Introduction
The monorail,[1] also called monorail,[2] monorail[3] or metrorail,[n 1] is a railway transportation system in which trains move or are suspended on a single rail structure to transport people or goods. They have an intermediate transport capacity at a regional and metropolitan scale, generally greater than that of the tram and less than that of the metropolitan railway "Metro (transport system)").[5].
Colloquially, the term "monorail" is often used to describe any form of elevated rail or movement of people.[6] More accurately, the term refers to the style of track.[n 2].
Background
Efforts to create non-conventional railways began at the end of the century, with the aim of achieving greater efficiency, greater speed or lower cost. Several attempts were made to create a system in which a double-flanged steel wheel operated on a single rail similar to conventional one. The Wuppertaler Schwebebahn described below is the only monorail of this type in service.
Monorails have suffered and benefited from their novelty and concept of modernity. When The Walt Disney Company installed a monorail at its Disneyland theme park in 1959, it provided its large number of visitors with a form of transportation in a credible, if small, environment. At the same time, however, the monorails installed at Disneyland and other leisure facilities have led to a tendency to identify them more with entertainment than as a means of practical transportation.
The American popular press of the mid-century often presented the monorail as a "transportation of the future," alongside images of personal "rocket backpacks" and mass space travel, creating interest but also confusion about whether these were fads or feasible ideas.
As a means of public transportation, the monorail is used in cities such as Chongqing, Las Vegas, Seattle, Tokyo and Kuala Lumpur, especially in Las Vegas, since it functions as its main urban transportation system. Currently, the construction of two monorail lines is underway in the City of São Paulo as a way to expand the city's metro system. The first stations of the "15-Prata" line of the São Paulo metro.