monorail demonstration

RTA BUDGET STATEMENT 2004
With RTA approval, CTA invests some $400 million in third rail rapid transit each year, Metra some $300 million in commuter rail, CTA some $50 million in bus, and PACE some $30 million in bus. As I have been saying for the past decade and a half, it is high time indeed to question such prodigious investment in outdated rail technology, one that has not been substantially improved in over a century, the other in a half-century. In an age of topsy-turvy technical development, the RTA’s only venture into new technology has been the ill-fated, ill-conceived PRT project, again of a decade and a half ago. Otherwise everything has been invented. There is a so far little known and less used public transportation technology in which the vehicle runs under a standard steel beam held aloft by heavy-duty light poles. The vehicle is both propelled and suspended by a linear induction motor, running about 3/8" under the beam. The motor generates magnetic forces both along the beam and toward it. Thus it both propels and suspends the vehicle. Not a pure maglev by any stretch of the imagination, it has caster wheels to keep it from falling or clamping to the beam. It could do considerably more for considerably less than current technologies, including getting a lot of trucks off the road in a heavy-duty version. Where, however, to give it an initial shakedown cruise, to work out any kinks before putting it into regular service? An initial application should meet these criteria: 1. It should be short, not more than five miles or so. 2. It should perform a useful function, but not an essential or irreplaceable one. 3. It should be reasonably accessible to anyone who wantsd to check it out, but not in a busy, congested area where it might disrupt normal functions. 4. It should be possible to include it in a larger system, once it is proved. One possible demonstration would run from the Desplaines Ave. terminal of the CTA Congess line to the Maybrook courthouse complex, which also has a sheriff’s police office, a Com Ed facility, and an office building. It is barely a mile as the crow flies, but twice that by roundabout roads. A bus leaving the terminal now has to go about a half mile north-northeast, make about a 110% turn onto Madison, go about a mile on Madison mostly through forest preserves and over the Desplaines River, then double back a half-mile south on busy 1st Ave. and a quarter-mile east on access roads. The PACE 320 bus makes about a dozen runs a day between the two, taking 9 to 11 minutes. The monorail demonstration would need only a single steel beam between the two an a long abandoned railroad right-of-way. The vehicle need only be a skid that a bus can drive on and off. It could get the bus between the terminal and the courthouse in two or three minutes. At first the 320 bus could make its runs on the monorail. Once that is established, other buses going west from the terminal could use it. The second beam might become necessary. The old Chicago, Aurora and Elgin and Chicago Great Western rights-of-way both extend west from there, becoming the Prairie Path in DuPage County. Or it might extend west to Oak Brook and Yorktown over the expressway or east into the City once the Congress line needs to be replaced, at far less cost than rapid transit. Once proved, who knows, this technology could provide an overhead high-occupancy lane quite separate from existing traffic and provide long-distance express runs. With computer matched loads, it could offer one seat bus stop to bus stop runs of thirty miles in one hour. But it has to be tried first, and the RTA has to take some responsibility for that.