Walt Disney World Monorail

Some interesting information about the Walt Disney World monorail system

Walt Disney World Travel Tips

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Would you believe ... that Walt Disney World does not need another monorail?

This is not an engineering report. Still it is useful to list reasons for expanding the monorail system.

A quicker ride?
Carry more people?
Lower operating costs?
Environmentally friendly?
More dependable service?
More magic? (enjoyment)

It may come as a surprise, but extending the monorail system has very little going in its favor.

1. Will a monorail get you there faster compared with buses?

Probably not.

Monorails are not intended for service with frequent closely spaced stops. A monorail line would therefore have to be built with just a few strategically located stations. Guests would have to get off, walk to bus stops, and wait for buses to take them the final mile or so to resorts. In the transportation industry, there is a significant advantage to providing a single vehicle ride without transfers, which WDW's buses do well.

2. Can a monorail handle the crowds at park closing time faster than buses?

This is a tough call.

It depends on how many trains we have versus how many buses we have. Currently, the wait for a Magic Kingdom day guest to board a monorail train or a ferry boat to the parking lot is comparable to the wait for a resort guests to board a bus to his resort.

No transportation system handles peak loads without significant waiting. Both WDW's monorail system and bus system are maxed out at park closing on heavily attended nights.

3. Can a monorail transport more people at less cost?

For operating costs, yes.

Operating cost is the one big advantage the current monorail system has over the current buses. One train withone driver, carries as many people as four to five buses (250 to 350 versus 60 to 70). Electric motors such as used by monorails and other rail mass transit vehicles are simpler to maintain than gasoline and diesel engines in buses.

The current cost of building extensions to the monorail system are so high that "recovering" these costs from the savings of driver labor will take many years if not be impossible.

The labor advantage of the monorail will be diminished if WDW should acquire articulated buses with up to twice the passenger capacity and build longer bus stops for certain routes using these buses.

4. Is a monorail more environmentally friendly?

Yes, but environmental impact is probably not significant at WDW.

The Disney monorails, being electric, do not emit noxious exhaust. Buses do.

WDW is a spread out operation so there is no large buildup of exhaust fumes. Therefore WDW can run many more buses without significantly degrading air quality in guest areas. Also today's engines have far lower hazardous emissions and newer compressed natural gas buses can be acquired if regulations demand this. It must also be realized that the power plant that supplies power to electric monorail trains probably does emit fumes or produce radioactive waste.

5. Is a monorail more reliable than buses?

This is a tough call but...

If a bus breaks down, only seventy guests are affected, and not for long as another bus is dispatched to rescue them. If there is a traffic jam, buses can use alternate routes most of the time.

If a monorail train breaks down, the entire line is out of service. With a larger monorail system Walt Disney World will certainly not keep and maintain enough buses and drivers to substitute. If such a breakdown occurred at park closing, delays would be tremendous. Whereas there is almost no circumstance where the bus and road system can be crippled to such an extreme degree. Currently the chance of a monorail breakdown is greater than the chance of bus service to a park being stopped because of a problem such as an auto accident at a critical location.

6. Finally, would more monorails to more locations give the guest a more magical Disney experience?

Yes, but probably in a miniscule way.

If you want to ride a monorail, ride on one of the lines that exist today.

Additional monorails will start to get monotonous as opposed to magical. If instead, different kinds of equipment, elevated trains, streetcars, shuttle trains such as Orlando Airport, were used, there would be the added cost of maintaining small numbers of trains of different kinds.

A few added notes about operating costs:

As one WDW bus driver pointed out, most WDW buses board through a narrow front door way with steps. Also guests must fold up strollers which in turn allows buses to usually fill to their capacity of about 70 people. Whereas the monorail's wide doors encourage guests to just wheel their strollers on. Together with the desire to load and pull the trains away faster, this means monorail trains often run with far fewer than their maximum 350 people aboard.

I have heard from at least two persons at WDW (one in person, the other via the Internet) that WDW's monorails, specifically, have had motor problems far more frequently than typical streetcars or subway trains.

There is one location where some form of elevated transit makes sense. This is the approximately half a mile stretch (one mile over Buena Vista Drive and connecting roads) from Marketplace to West Side at Downtown Disney. The problem here is simply too much private automobile traffic congestion that increases the labor hours for bus drivers. There is no safe and efficient surface route for a mass transit service, therefore two dimensional space, either an underground or elevated right of way, is required. As far as travel time for the guest goes, there is the need to transfer to a bus. There is also the time needed to ascend ramps, which might be compensated for by favorable station placement.

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