FOLKS, let's take a look at ridership on a small, unusual company in the outer suburbs of Tokyo: the Shonan Monorailpic.twitter.com/8KUlv5IDxp
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The Shonan Monorail is one of the *only* companies in the Tokyo region which doesn't accept smart cards (Suica, Pasmo, etc)...
...which goes to show just how truly independent it is. A small, profitable, railway company.
Most of its ridership, I assume, is commuters using it as a feeder to get to Ofuna, where they can pick up express trains to downtown Tokyo.
As a suspended monorail, the Shonan Monorail has very expensive (per mile) infrastructure maintenance costs...
...so it's very important that its total mileage stays low, and its passenger count at each station stays high. Fortunately, it succeeds.
If ridership at most stops was only in the hundreds, or if the line were much longer, it would probably be unviable...as a monorail.
But as a conventional railway? Sure, it could still work--as other private railways in Japan show.
#TrainTwitter
We almost had our version of this, called the Skybus. One crashed to the ground during a test. The idea was scrapped.
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