A monorail is a railway in which the track consists of a single rail or a beam.
Human-powered transport is the transport of person(s) and/or goods using human muscle power. Unlike animal-powered transport, human-powered transport has existed since time immemorial in the form of walking, running and swimming. Modern technology has allowed machines to enhance human-power.
Personal Rapid Transit (PRT), also referred to as podcars or guided/railed taxis, is a public transport mode featuring small low-capacity automated vehicles operating on a network of specially built guideways. PRT is a type of automated guideway transit (AGT), a class of system which also includes larger vehicles all the way to small subway systems. In terms of routing, it tends towards personal public transport systems.
A people mover or automated people mover (APM) is a type of small scale automated guideway transit system. The term is generally used only to describe systems serving relatively small areas such as airports, downtown districts or theme parks.
The Seattle Center Monorail is an elevated straddle-beam monorail line in Seattle, Washington, United States. The 0.9-mile (1.4 km) monorail runs along 5th Avenue between Seattle Center and Westlake Center in Downtown Seattle, making no intermediate stops. The monorail is a major tourist attraction but also operates as a regular public transit service with trains every ten minutes running for up to 16 hours per day. It was constructed in eight months at a cost of $4.2 million for the 1962 Century 21 Exposition, a world's fair hosted at Seattle Center. The monorail underwent major renovations in 1988 after the southern terminal was moved from its location over Pine Street to inside the Westlake Center shopping mall.
SAFEGE is an acronym for the French consortium Société Anonyme Française d' Etude de Gestion et d' Entreprises and is pronounced in English.
The Wuppertaler Schwebebahn is a suspension railway in Wuppertal, Germany.
An elevated railway or elevated train is a rapid transit railway with the tracks above street level on a viaduct or other elevated structure. The railway may be broad-gauge, standard-gauge or narrow-gauge railway, light rail, monorail, or a suspension railway. Elevated railways are normally found in urban areas where there would otherwise be multiple level crossings. Usually, the tracks of elevated railways that run on steel viaducts can be seen from street level.
The H-Bahn in Dortmund and Düsseldorf is a driverless passenger suspension railway system. The system was developed by Siemens, who call the project SIPEM.
The term monorail or industrial monorail is used to describe any number of transport systems in which a chair or carrier is suspended from, or rides on, an overhead rail structure. Unlike the well-known duo-rail system, there are many rail-guided transport options which have been described as monorails, so that tracing the history presents a demarcation problem regarding what should be included and what should be omitted.
Rail transport in Malaysia consists of heavy rail, light rapid transit (LRT), mass rapid transit (MRT), monorails, airport rail links and a funicular railway line. Heavy rail is mostly used for intercity services and freight transport as well as some urban public transport, while rapid transit rails are used for intracity urban public transport in the capital city of Kuala Lumpur and the surrounding Klang Valley region. There are two airport rail link systems linking Kuala Lumpur with the Kuala Lumpur International Airport and Sultan Abdul Aziz Shah Airport. The longest monorail line in the country is also used for public transport in Kuala Lumpur, while the only funicular railway line is available in Penang.
The Memphis Suspension Railway, Mud Island Monorail, or Memphis Monorail is a suspended monorail that connects the city center of Memphis with the entertainment park on Mud Island. Celebrating its grand opening on July 3, 1982, it was located beneath a footbridge over the Wolf River Lagoon connecting to the southern tip of Mud Island. In 2018, multiple malfunctions occurred during passenger service, one of which required the fire department to attend to stranded passengers, and finally the motor failed.
The Putrajaya Monorail is an incomplete monorail system in Putrajaya, Malaysia. Construction has been stalled since 2004, but in 2020, it was stated that the system would be completed by 2025.
Skytran is a personal rapid transit system concept. It was first proposed by inventor Douglas Malewicki in 1990, and is under development by Unimodal Inc. A prototype of the skyTran vehicle and a section of track have been constructed. The early magnetic levitation system, Inductrack, which SkyTran has replaced with a similar proprietary design, has been tested by General Atomics with a full-scale model. In 2010, Unimodal signed an agreement with NASA to test and develop skyTran. skyTran has proposed additional projects in France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
Urban rail transit in India plays an important role in intracity transportation in the major cities which are highly populated. It consists of rapid transit, suburban rail, monorail and tram systems. According to a report published in 2021, a total of 2.63 billion people travelled annually in metro systems across India's fifteen major cities, placing the country as one of the busiest urban rapid transit hubs in the world in terms of ridership. The combined length of 859 kilometres of metro systems in India makes it the fourth longest in operation in the world.
A suspension railway is a form of elevated monorail in which the vehicle is suspended from a fixed track, which is built above streets, waterways, or existing railway track.
The Boynton Bicycle Railroad was a monorail in Brooklyn on Long Island, New York. It ran on a single load-bearing rail at ground level, but with a wooden overhead stabilising rail engaged by a pair of horizontally opposed wheels. The railway operated for only two years, but the design was adopted elsewhere.
