Transportation Planning Casebook/Sydney Monorail

Summary
Monorails are railway systems in which the train runs along a single rail all beam. While having some advantages such as above ground rails and quiet travel, the technology has struggled to gain traction in public transit in relation to technologies such as trains and light rail due to its lower capacity and cost inefficiency. Usually found in airport transfers or medium capacity metros, the use of monorails has been generally been confined to tourist transit, rather than large scale commuter travel.

The Sydney Monorail was announced in 1984 to support the redevelopment of Darling Harbour, with the Sydney Convention Centre, Harbour Side Shopping Centre and a host of entertainment options being built to revitalise the previously industrial inlet. Although light rail was proposed, the private funding from TNT assisted the monorail in becoming the preferred option. Despite protests over its cost and damage to both the environment and city image building went ahead, with service beginning in July 1988.

Throughout its operation, ownership of the system switched from TNT to CGEA and eventually to the state government, who closed the monorail in 2013. With patronage dwindling due to various factors such as low patronage to Darling Harbour and delays on World Square construction, the route was ultimately limited in connecting useful transit locations. While tourists took advantage of the views from the city sky, locals' reduced usage meant that revenue was never enough to cover investment.

Map of Locations
The Sydney Monorail was a 3.6 kilometre loop featuring the following eight stations:


 * Harbourside
 * Darling Park
 * City Centre
 * Galeries Victoria
 * World Square
 * Chinatown (closed in 2006)
 * Paddy's Markets
 * Convention

This route served major attractions such as Powerhouse Museum, Sydney Convention, Exhibition and Entertainment Centres, Sydney Aquarium and Harbourside Shopping Centre. Due to these locations drawing large numbers of tourists, the monorail carriages featured advertising to attractions such as the aquarium.

Darling Park, Harbourside, Chinatown and World Square stations still remain, with the state government and City of Sydney council at odds as to who should remove the stations.

Early Introduction
The government’s decision on redevelopment of Darling Harbour was announced by the premier of NSW in 1984, where two maintenances of the redevelopment of Darling Harbour include the Sydney Convention Centre and the Harbour Side Shopping Centre. As part of such development, the state government intended to build a transport link from Darling Harbour to the Sydney Central business district. Numerous transport options have been looked into and the light rail system and the monorail system stood out. The light rail system is investigated to have reduced ticket prices by half or acquired the street space, where the monorail system was viewed as futuristic at the time.

Although the Darling Harbour Transport Plan didn't recommend a monorail and the light rail is more preferred by the Sydney City Council, Transport Minister Laurie Brereton announced a monorail would be built in November, 1975, operating by the Australian Transport Company, TNT. Given the level of opposition to the announcement, the monorail system was then quickly placed under the aegis of the authority set up to plan and oversee the construction of the Darling Harbour Project (Ross). It could be argued that this was a way of avoiding lengthy legal battles over whether a range of laws and regulations were being violated, and indeed, such was the probability of legal challenges that 'the NSW Government introduced into Parliament the Darling Harbour Authority (Further Amendment) Bill in November 1985’.

In the Minister for Transport’s speech given in the Legislative Council, he mentioned that ‘the purpose of the bill is to allow construction of the monorail for the bicentenary’, where it was then achieved by overriding thirteen existing laws, including those on environment and planning, heritage, traffic and fire safety, as well as the authority of the Sydney City Council (Ross).

Monorail Fares
A variety of Monorail fares are set dependent upon the many uses and needs of the customers. The following table shows the Monorail fares for the single trips. The $5 monorails’ tickets of such a short trip is considered expensive for most Sydney-siders, where most passengers chose to walk to their destinations instead. One of the passengers Barry Matheson mentioned in the street interview that “we’d be happy to call an ambulance or some sort of transport to get to our home quickly. I don’t think anyone would be wanting to take the monorail anyway” (Price, 2019).

Problems and Incidents
While the monorail opened to much fanfare, it soon became a plague of problems. The automatic system designed for the monorail experienced plague of problem and frequent breakdown, resulting in TNT making the decision to convert the monorail to manual operation through the use of drivers (Price, 2019). The preliminarily designed computer-controlled driverless system was never used again in the monorails’ lifetime.

On the 28th of July, 1988, an electric fault caused the system to stop operating, where 50 passengers were stranded in carriages for two hours between 3:50 and 5:50 pm. TNT was then criticised for failing to call emergency services until 5:40 pm. The passengers were on the rooftop disembarking at a station by the time the fire brigade arrived at the scene.

One of the most notable accidents for the monorail took place in February 2010. Two monorail trains collided at the Darling Park Station, hospitalising four people including a three-year-old boy and a pregnant woman.

Decommission
With all the issues occurring, in early 2012, state government announced its intention to purchase Metro Transport Sydney for $18,600,000, where the Metro Monorail was rebranded to the Sydney Monorail. However, almost immediately after, the state government announced that the monorail would close in three years and be removed for infrastructure developments in the CBD and Darling Harbour. As such, the state government’s action of purchasing Metro Transport can hence result in extending the light rail system and demolish the monorail without the need to negotiate with the private owners.

At the end of 2012, the closing date of the monorail system was confirmed to be the 30th of June, 2013. Barry Robert O'Farrell, the New South Wales premier at the time quoted that “the real problem with the monorail for most Sydney-siders is that it doesn’t actually go anywhere that you want to go”. He suggests that the decision paves the way for the development of a world-class Sydney International Convention Exhibition and entertainment precinct as the New South Wales government aiming to make NSW more international.

Darling Harbour Redevelopment Plan
To mark Australia’s bicentennial celebration, a total of $200 million redevelopment scheme of Darling Harbour had been proposed, including a new transport infrastructure that would support the new entertainment and retail precinct. Among all eight short-listed initiatives, the majority of them adopted suspension designs that have elevated tracks or monorail. Only one light rail transit system was taken into consideration. The monorail and the light rail remained as the final two contenders. The monorail would be a bicentenary gift by TNT, thus it would not require any investments from the NSW government. And TNT claimed that it’ll be an autonomous people mover (APM) with a $1 fare that operates above the street level so that avoid congesting the street.

The light rail proposal would cost 20 million less than the monorail and has other merits such as 40% cheaper on fare price, and higher passenger capacity. Moreover, it was supported by National Trust, and public transport supporters, and environmental organisations. Eventually, the monorail won the bidding, making it widely criticized as a political decision rather than a rational one. It is regarded by the NSW government as the most advanced transport mode that has a high sense of ‘futuristic’ representing transportation in the 21st century. Laurie Brereton, the Minister of Transport, regarded monorail as the most efficient solution and claimed that the conventional light rail would turn Sydney back to the 1960s city which streets are congested by trams.

Protest and opposition.
After the $60 million monorail project was proposed, it attracted a series of protests and critics. On July 20, 1986, more than 7,000 people went on the streets to protest against the monorail.

Major critics were about its damage to the environment, heritage and the city image.

Construction
In November 1985 the construction of the monorail was announced by Minister of Transport, Laurie Brereton, at the same time, NSW Government established the Darling Harbour Authority (Further Amendment Bill) in November 1985 to ensure the construction progress on schedule and to avoid legal challenges during the construction.

Commercial Service Commencement
Planned to open to service in January 1988, before the Royal Visit, the construction was delayed by the difficulties of underground earthwork in the CBD area. And by July 21, the monorail was finally ready for commercial service. The promised driverless feature was cancelled due to safety concerns.

Patronage
Two years after the initial service, by the early 1990s, the patronage of the monorail was still about half of the expected level. Many reasons have caused this low patronage level. Its major attraction nodes, Darling Harbour and World Square failed to derive enough passenger demand. Darling Harbour transition to entertainment and shopping centre did not go as successfully as it planned to be, while World Square construction took a few years to complete. The management realised the route of the monorail was hard to make a profit since it simply did not cover enough catchment regions. A station at Circular Quay would be a game-changer. At some point, the monorail managed to return profits by operating but never close to cover the investment. TNT has found another way to profit which is the carriage advertisement.

Sold by TNT
In August 1998, after ten years of struggle, TNT was merged into TNT Post Group and only keeping its core business: mail and logistics. The monorail was then sold to multiple infrastructure funds, including CGEA Transport Sydney (51%), Australian Infrastructure Fund (19%), Utilities Trust of Australia (19%) and Legal & General (11%). Later, the latter three funds reformed as Sydney Light Rail Company (SLRC) which also owned the Sydney Light Rail line. CGEA Transport (Later Connex) remained as the operator of the monorail after selling its share. CGEA changed their name to Veolia Transport Sydney in 2005 and again changed into Veolia Transdev after merging with Transdev.

Government takeover and closure
On 23rd March 2012, NSW Government took ownership of both the monorail and the light rail from Metro Transport Sydney so that to remove it in 2013 to make space for another transformation of Darling Harbour. Veolia Transport remained as the service provider for the last year of operation.

Removal
After the closure in July 2013, the removal of the monorail network commenced right away. Four stations and a 3.6km long elevated track were dislodged to allow the extension for the Sydney Convention, Exhibition and Entertainment Precinct which is on the monorail route.

All demolition and removal works were completed in April 2014.

Discussion Questions

 * Was the Sydney Monorail a successful or failed project? What were the factors that contributed to its success or failure?
 * Is the monorail system suitable as part of an urban public transport system? Why?
 * What are the benefits of using the PPP model for infrastructure development?

Additional readings

 * Rail Safety Investigation Report: Monorail Collision Darling Park The report shows the results of an investigation by the New South Wales Office of Transport Safety Investigations into a significant collision that occurred on the Sydney Monorail on January 27, 2010. The incident again led to a decline in ridership on the Sydney Monorail and contributed to its gradual decommissioning and removal.
 * Hallmark events as an excuse for autocracy in urban planning: a casehistory of Sydney's Monorail