Clyde monorail proposal for Glasgow

[kamnet]

http://www.clydemonorail.co.uk/

The official proposal for a monorail to serve from Glasgow International Airport to Glasgow Central Station. The proposal involves saving money by building directly on the banks of the Cart and Clyde rivers, and using right-of-ways from the airport and Queen Elizabeth Hospital.

[Redirect Left]

Well. The project website isn't very professional.
The title for it is "mysite".

[kamnet]

There's a few small inconsistencies on the site, but getting the information out is more important than worrying about the degree of professionalism of the site.

[NoMorePacers]

So basically, this is essentially the Glasgow Airport Rail Link (GARL for short) resurrected, but in the form of a monorail.

[Pilot]

So basically, this is essentially the Glasgow Airport Rail Link (GARL for short) resurrected, but in the form of a monorail.

It does say that on the first page of the website, see the quote below:

Clyde Monorail Ltd has been set up to develop a third choice to the proposed Glasgow Airport Rail Link (GARL).

[Ameecher]

Who's the guy behind this? Lyle Lanley?

[kamnet]

James Beckett MSc ARCST FIET CEng DipMS

James is a retired Engineer who graduated as an Electrical Engineer from Strathclyde University and after obtaining an MSc from Birmingham University joined the Smiths Industry Group as a development engineer in their industrial instrumentation division.
He then joined a firm of Consulting Engineers (Strain & Robertson) who were responsible for the design and overseeing the construction of Hydroelectric Schemes and large oil and coal fired power stations.
On leaving Strain & Robertson he was recruited to set up a Computer Department for James Kilpatrick & Sons (latterly Balfour Kilpatrick), one of the largest Electrical and Mechanical Installation Contractors in the UK. He was responsible for the design, development and implementation of their Management Control and Computer Aided Design systems. He remained with this company for 33 years and for 22 years he was the Technical Director of their Special Projects Division. He was also the Design Project Director for the electrical and instrumentation systems for the UK half of the Channel Tunnel. He ended his career as the Project Director for the design and installation of the electrical and mechanical services for The Royal Opera House, Covent Garden.

John Beckett BSc

John is a graduate of Strathclyde University where he obtained a BSc in Mechanical Engineering.
His early career was largely spent in the steel industry where he was involved in major projects at Gartcosh and Ravenscraig.
In later years he moved into computer engineering and, in the early eighties he set up his own company called DataCad Ltd which specialized in the design of engineering software for the oil and gas industry.

The key software produced by the company was a project management system which allowed many engineers to work simultaneously on very large engineering projects. It was used to design the high speed rail link to the channel tunnel.
​
He owned and ran this company for 15 Years until was bought out by his senior management .

[JamieLei]

It's a nice idea and I'm generally unfamiliar with Glasgow, but from a transport planning point of view:

- water-based transport (which this effectively is) suffers from the eternal problem of half-sized catchment areas, since no one can be expected to swim to your station. There aren't any bridges on that route, and passengers won't walk through the Clyde tunnel!
- water-based transport suffers from poor public transport interchanges, since cross-town bus links rarely divert to the waterfront for no reason unless they are to cross it.
- the main trip generator will continue to be the Airport. If this can be solved more effectively with a short spur, this should be the default option rather than building a whole new line.

[kamnet]

water-based transport (which this effectively is) suffers from the eternal problem of half-sized catchment areas, since no one can be expected to swim to your station.

Except it's a monorail line, not water-based transport. It's being proposed to build it over the river banks to avoid right-of-way issues.

There aren't any bridges on that route, and passengers won't walk through the Clyde tunnel!

It's monorail... the entire line is essentially one long bridge.

the main trip generator will continue to be the Airport. If this can be solved more effectively with a short spur, this should be the default option rather than building a whole new line.

The entire point of the project is to move more people more quickly between the airport and the central station, and generating more traffic for the hospital, museum and a few other stops to benefit people in city rather than just be a shuttle to the airport and back.

[The Growl]

This just seems stupid. You'd think people would want integrated services, but instead some people think a non-flexible standalone system would be good. It's like building HS2 on a maglev.

[supermop]

water-based transport (which this effectively is) suffers from the eternal problem of half-sized catchment areas, since no one can be expected to swim to your station.

Except it's a monorail line, not water-based transport. It's being proposed to build it over the river banks to avoid right-of-way issues.

There aren't any bridges on that route, and passengers won't walk through the Clyde tunnel!

It's monorail... the entire line is essentially one long bridge.

the main trip generator will continue to be the Airport. If this can be solved more effectively with a short spur, this should be the default option rather than building a whole new line.

The entire point of the project is to move more people more quickly between the airport and the central station, and generating more traffic for the hospital, museum and a few other stops to benefit people in city rather than just be a shuttle to the airport and back.

Jamie point though is that because the monorail is running over the river it is effectively a fast water taxi from a transit planning perspective. Any given station will have to be on either one bank or the other, so anyone living on the opposite bank cannot access the station (without swimming), just like a water taxi dock. This is why the issue about bridges is salient - if the city had many regularly spaced pedestrian usable bridges along the route, passengers could at least use the bridge to access a station on the other side of the river.


That said, with all these drawback - it is still a decent idea for a 'nice to have' addition to the city's transit network, since it does serve previously unserved neighborhoods, even if it does so inefficiently. Many airport lines have somewhat limited service to neighborhoods along the way. If Glasgow only has the money to build one major new transit infrastructure in the next couple decades though, this would be a really tough sell.

[kamnet]

While there may, indeed, be only intermediary stops which are placed on one side of the river bank and not accessible by the others, keep in mind that the other two plans have only one intermediary stop - Paisley - and that's only for riders to depart one vehicle and board a second which will continue their journey to the airport.

So for the trade-off of 90 seconds more travel time, the monorail proposal provides access to an unserved major residential area, underserved shopping center, tourist destination, and a hospital. And unlike the leading tram proposal, it will not be slowed down or stopped by road vehicle traffic. Unlike both proposals, it will not require switching trains. Unlike both proposals, it only requires securing one private right-of-way.

[supermop]

While there may, indeed, be only intermediary stops which are placed on one side of the river bank and not accessible by the others, keep in mind that the other two plans have only one intermediary stop - Paisley - and that's only for riders to depart one vehicle and board a second which will continue their journey to the airport.

So for the trade-off of 90 seconds more travel time, the monorail proposal provides access to an unserved major residential area, underserved shopping center, tourist destination, and a hospital. And unlike the leading tram proposal, it will not be slowed down or stopped by road vehicle traffic. Unlike both proposals, it will not require switching trains. Unlike both proposals, it only requires securing one private right-of-way.

I agree that these are all strong points for the scheme, and I feel that using an ALWEG type system is a natural choice for such an interesting approach to ROW. Regardless of the merits though, it does still suffer some of the drawbacks of water based transit. I would also like to hear from a hydrologist about the impact of all those columns in the river - they might catch a lot of debris.

[Kevo00]

A monorail is a ridiculous idea when less than a mile of new conventional rail track would be needed to link to the Paisley-Gourock line. This should have been done years ago and the whole thing has been subject to years of political bungling. It could and should be done tomorrow.

Seems to me this proposal is the fantasy of two engineers rather than anything serious.