#gadgetbahn

The Inferior Monorail:

Look who's there, my new sticker design ! Obviously a good pair with my "Train Good" sticker.

The TSB (Transport System Bögl), an inner-city maglev designed in Germany, is a nonsense Gadgetbahn that likely will never be built (except for test tracks) and definitely should never be built.

I don't think that's really surprising, right? It's a maglev, of course it's a bad idea. Like all Maglevs, it's a monorail, which makes it doubly a bad idea. Non-standard technology where you're tied to only one supplier, and things like e.g. switches are way bigger, slower and more complex. Just put normal rails there, like normal people, and enjoy the fact that you can order your trains from literally anyone.

And this isn't really controversial. TSB is popular amongst the politicians who also think we should spend government money to develop autonomous electric drone taxis, and nobody else.

But I think people are still missing something in the discussion, and that's a particular aspect about costs. TSB is supposedly cheaper and easier to build than normal subways. It's unclear whether that is even true, it's not like we have any data to compare it to, but it is clear that the figures we heard for the line proposed in e.g. Berlin are almost certainly wrong (also, fun fact, nobody knows where this line is supposed to go yet).

The thing is: TSB can be cheaper and easier to build than a subway tunnel because it's not in a tunnel. It's the tunnel that's the expensive part, not the rapid transit rail system inside it. So if you want the benefits to construction costs and construction timelines and land use of TSB… You can literally just put a subway train up on stilts and have the same effect. Elevated railroads are a well-established technology, and modern steel or concrete guideways are literally the same size as the ones proposed for TSB.