The Seattle Monorail

The Seattle Monorail is an elevated monorail line that runs a little over one mile along Fifth Avenue from Westlake Center to the Seattle Center. It opened on 24th March 1962 for the Century 21 Exposition, a World's Fair being held at the current site of Seattle Center. Eight million people rode the monorail during the half year the fair was open; today, annual ridership is around 2.5 million. At the World Fair (northern) end of the line, the Experience Music Project building was designed so that the monorail trains would pass through it. Originally, the south end of the line was a large station in Westlake Park that formed a lid over the park. In 1988 the station was moved north a block with the construction of the Westlake Center shopping mall. In order to fit the design of the mall the tracks were moved closer together, such that nowadays there is only room for one train to occupy the Westlake Center station at a time. This design decision introduced a collision risk at the station that led to an actual collision in 2005. At Westlake Station it is possible to interchange with the undergound / subway station of the same name which is served by the Central Link light rail line and major Metro bus lines. Westlake Center is also near the southern terminus of the South Lake Union Streetcar and numerous surface bus routes. The monorail uses two "Alweg" trains - Red and Blue - which are are 122' (37.2 m) long, 10'3" (3.1 m) wide and 14' (4.27m) high. Each train can seat 124 passengers and can carry 326 standing passengers for a total of 450 passengers. They have a top speed of 50mph / 80 km/h. The monorail has been very successful - both financially and in the popularity stakes. Despite their age the "Alweg" trains it uses still look futuristic. They are in fact not tied to any proprietary manufacturer and therefore whilst currently none are being built anywhere there would be no copyright issues if a transit manufacturer (or any other enterprising company) wanted to build more. OK, so the electrics and some other technical specifications would be of a more modern design, but the basic vehicle design could be copied and still remain forward looking.