ROAD & RAIL; One Rail, Many Problems
By RONALD SMOTHERS
They have long been the stuff of futuristic visions, their cocoon-like cabs cruising along silently and cleanly, gliding magically with the help of a single rail. Fully automated down to the computer-simulated voices and data displays, they promise antiseptic, airy and high-tech service on demand.
It all contrasts sharply with the gritty business of mass transportation -- usually associated with the deafening clatter of steel wheels on steel rails and long waits in dismal areas.
They are monorails...
Tony Cracchiolo, director of priority capital projects for the Port Authority, said, "My personal feeling is that the monorail technology doesn't provide any unique attributes over a two-rail system."
But Robert Cotter, the vice president of SkyTran of Raleigh, N.C., which is developing a monorail system that it intends to market as a flexible mass transit option, said that it was such thinking among transportation professionals, policy planners, and engineers that has kept monorail technology from soaring as high as the political rhetoric that extols it.
Even Port Authority officials acknowledge that the Newark monorail always ranks high among travelers as one of the features they like about the airport.
"People like them," said Mr. Cotter. "But monorails are often the victims of unenthusiastic and unwilling bureaucracies. It's like going to the post office 10 years ago and asking them what they think of this internet thing."