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Apr 10, 2011
Sunday Statshot

Sunday Statshot with Nick Chu

Post by nickchu

A quick look at some of the things that makes suspended urban transit work (or not):

The Aerobus

Aerobus operating directly above street traffic in Mannheim's 1976 BUGA (Garden Festival)

Aerobus: Self-propelled suspended urban transit

Inventor: Gerhard Mueller

First installation: 1970, Schmerikon, Switzerland

Distance between Aerobus tower spans: 0.6km

Distance between Peak2Peak gondola tower span: 3.0km

Only major installation: 1975, BUGA Mannheim, Germany

Months in service: 6

Riders served: 2.5 million

Length: 2.8km

Aerobus vehicle length: 19.5m

Standard bus length: 12m

Capacity: 100 persons

Bus capacity (crush): 70-80 persons

Weight: 11 tons

Bus weight: 20 tons

Number of incidents: 1 (Mannheim mayor evacuated via ladder during 1974 test run)

Year system completely dismantled: 1987

1980 Kuala Lumpur Aerobus proposal: Failed

2000 Chongqing Aerobus proposal: Failed

System under development: Weihai, China

Estimated cost per kilometer: $23 million

Cost per kilometer for LRT: $20-225 million

Year slated for construction completion: 2011

Number of Aerobus systems in operation today: 0

Number of suspended urban transit monorail systems in operation today: 3 (Wuppertal, Chiba, Shonan)


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12 Comments

  • matthias says:

    First Installation was Schmerikon, Switzerland. Its spelled wrong on the Aerobus website and i wrote them an email years ago.
    The test track in Schmerikon crossed the lake and as a remarkable feature it had a floating pylon.

    Dortmund and Düsseldorf so have suspended type monorail (H-Bahn or Siemens SIPEM)

    Another Aerobus installation operated in Mt. St. Anne, Canda for 30 years

  • Sean Turvey says:

    @ Matthias

    Do you mean Mont-Sainte-Anne, Beaupré, Quebec, Canada? I used to ski there in the ’80s. Do you have any info on the installation? When was it there? That would have been something to see!

  • ant6n says:

    Looks kinda cool. Combines fixed guide and cable transit by using rails in tight curves, switches and stations, and cheaper cable on everything else. Looks a bit more complex and expensive than traditional gondolas, though. And seems to allow only one vehicle between two pylons in general.

  • matthias says:

    It was Ste. Anne, Quebec, Canada / 1975 ~ 1992
    I don’t know wheter there are other towns with the same name. According to what i could find out it was used as the feeder for a ski resort.
    The first two pictures are from St.Anne
    http://faculty.washington.edu/jbs/itrans/aerob2.htm
    As you can see are the stations smaller than the ones for gondolas or aerial tramways. And single track is possible for routes with not that much traffic.

  • LX says:

    Hmm, I’m wondering if the forum is really needed? But what I sort of always missed is the opportunity to integrate small pictures here in the comment-section. Steven, is it possible to integrate that feature?

    Seems like Caracas always has been a bit more progressive than other cities, huh?

    http://img35.imageshack.us/img35/2464/nuevoidealnacional.jpg

    • Steven Dale says:

      @ LX,

      I’d really like to get the forums open. We often have a lot of discussion that should probably find it’s way there. Particularly when things become very technical and engineering-heavy, I find it alienates some of the less tech-savvy readers.

  • Nick Chu says:

    @matthias

    Thanks for the correction. I searched for the city on google and couldn’t find it and was getting a little more skeptical whether the system was really built.

    Floating pylon eh, interesting feature? Do you know anything more about that?

  • LX says:

    Lots of great photos of the Aerobus installation in Mannheim: http://picasaweb.google.com/jhm0284/AerobusMannheimBundesgartenschau1975#

  • Sean Turvey says:

    @ Matthias

    From the link, it is one and the same. Weird that I don’t remember it. I would have been fascinated by it.

  • Sean Turvey says:

    @ LX

    Steven mentioned to me in January that he was working on a redesign which he hoped to be complete by the end of last month. From recent posts, it looks like he has been quite busy. I suggested that he try Livefyre (http://bit.ly/etncfo) for the comments and he said that he had been unsuccessfully looking for a replacement.

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