Extending Disney's monorail

The OC Register is reporting a new effort to extend Disneyland's famed monorail into Anaheim's resort community:

Anaheim Since the Disneyland monorail opened in 1959, residents and officials have imagined the possibility of the futuristic transportation mode stretching beyond Disney property. Today, Mayor Curt Pringle proposed a way to fund such a monorail to connect the tourist area with a planned transportation hub and downtown-like region. Pringle today gave his sixth State of the City speech to a sold-out crowd at the Grove of Anaheim, outlining his initiatives for the coming year. A top priority is to seek funding from the private sector to build a monorail system running from the Disneyland area to the proposed Anaheim Regional Transit Intermodal Center east of Angel Stadium in the Platinum Triangle, which the city is trying to turn into an urban village.

Photo: LAT via Disney

Comments

[Carl S]

"Pringle today gave his sixth State of the City speech to a sold-out crowd..."

They charge admission to a State of the City speech in Anaheim?! That place is even more of a ripoff than I thought.

[rY.]

Actually, the new "Mark VII" monorails will be the fifth fleet to serve Disneyland. You raise an interesting point though, since the two original steam engines from opening day still run on the Disneyland Railroad, having been joined (but not replaced) by three others-- one of which is, itself, over 100 years old!

In fact, since the steam trains are now more environmentally friendly than ever (having been recently retrofitted to burn biodiesel), and clearly they have more durable equipment and are based on an extremely well-proven transportation model, maybe there should be talk of extending the DLRR instead of the Monorail! ;)

[Donald Stanwood]

Of course, the time for extending the Disney monorail was decades ago, when the loop could have been easily expanded to reach the Convention Center and vicinity. But the Mouse didn't want to lend a helping hand to any hotels or other businesses not directly under Company control. Still, the dream lives on, at least for some. Funny, how monorail mania seems to go together with pie in the sky.

[Bart Reed]

The Disneyland cars are just being rebuilt. The first trainset has failed and is being returned to the factory. Here is the link documenting the failure: http://mb.laughingplace.com/MsgBoard-T-93601-P-1.asp

Further, the capacity and speed of the Disneyland Monorail is just not up to the needs of the community. Here is a comparison of the Las Vegas monorail versus the Red Line: http://www.wilshiremonorail.net/MonorailVsSubway.htm The Red Line carries 135,000 per day.

The one operating train at Disneyland can carry only about 5,000 per day, but as a tourist attraction with low expectations, maybe this would work for Anaheim. in Las Vegas, the monorail has been a financial disaster, so much that monorail advocates are referred in many circles as "Faith Based Transit" supporters, as the normal community sees monorails has an idea that's time will never come.

[rY.]

Well for goodness sake, if they're going to do that, lets hope they can have the other end touch the Amtrak Station / Angels Stadium!

[Richard H]

"Since the Disneyland monorail opened in 1959, [Anaheim] residents and officials have imagined the possibility of the futuristic transportation mode stretching beyond Disney property."

A fifty year old fixed guideway is called "futuristic"?

More like "retro".

They just got new monorail cars at Disneyland. I believe this the third set of cars since the attraction opened in 1959.