Moscow news
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30-Aug-2007
End of the Line for City Monorail
The head of the Moscow subway and manager of the Moscow monorail project Dmitry Gayev announced last week that "the further development of the monorail in the capital's northeast is inexpedient," thus confirming the failure of one of the most ambitious experiments in the city six years after its launch.
But officials said that while this experiment has reached its limit, the idea of monorails in Moscow has not.
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"Undoubtedly, monorails will be extended in Moscow," Gayev said. "We just have to rethink where and when."
Construction of the five kilometer monorail line between the All-Russian Exhibition Center and the Timiryazevskaya metro station began in 2001. It opened in December 2004, with eight trains of six cars each, capable of carrying 150 passengers in so-called "excursion mode," mostly for tourists and visitors.
The monorail project was supposed to have paid for itself within five to ten years. But it still loses around 216 million rubles (some less than $8.5 million) annually.
That is largely because a line that had been designed to transport 7,000 passengers per hour, in fact, hardly handled 3,000 passengers
a day.
Part of that may be that it is considerably more expensive than other types of public transportation. The ticket price came to 50 rubles for adults and 25 rubles for students. For comparison, the Butovskaya line of light-rail metro transports 22,000 passengers per hour with a ticket price of 17 rubles ($0.6), just like of any other public transport.
The monorail earned about 54 million rubles (more than $2 million) a year at most, while maintenance expenditures amounted to 270 million rubles (about $10.5 million).
The trains for the Moscow monorail were constructed by the Moscow Institute of Thermal Technology and were based on those by Swiss Intatim Transportation Ltd., which produced them for amusement parks.
Shortly after its launch, the project met operational difficulties thanks to Moscow's particular climate. In winter, the monorail is unable to brake properly due to snow and ice on the rails. In the summer, birds defecate on the track causing similar problems.
"We still have to carry out lots of refining work on our rolling-stock, [monorail] energy systems and control systems," Gayev said.
The trains travel on a single track six meters off the ground through six stations - which are Ulitsa Sergeya Eyzenshteina, Timi?rya?zevskaya, Vystavochnyy Tsentr, Ulitsa Akademika Korolyova, Teletsentr, and Ulitsa Milashenkova.
It operates from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. The trains run at a speed of 40 kilometers per hour, and stop at every station. Passengers, however, are permitted to enter the trains only on terminuses and Vystavochnyy Tsentr and Teletsentr stations.
The Moscow News