As City Planners look to the future of Big Bear Lake, a not so new idea keeps minds whirling with visions of some sort of train/tram ride between the Village and the Ski Resorts (maybe as far as Bear Mountain). It's not a great distance so costs won't likely be on the scale of Health Reform, and on busy weekends it would certainly make sense to get folks out of their cars (Big Bear Boulevard) and from here to there much more quickly than the 20-50 minutes it might take you to get from Northwoods Resort to Bear Mountain to pick up kids. And then back again. This one example equates to one Esclade on our streets for almost 2 hours to accommodate 1 or 2 snowboarders. You do the math. We would need 5 or 6 buses to get frequency to 10 minutes on busy weekends, but the trip is still 50 minutes. It's a no-go.
Frequency and convenience seem to be the key for optimum usage and profitability of public transportation whether its the MARTA bus or a state of the art monorail. The goal (I'm sure, and like many other public projects) would be to recoup costs for building the system from ridership and via whatever grants (government subsidies) could be secured for getting cars off the roads, green technology and increased tourism that generates tax revenues for the State.
There is no doubt that if maximum ridership were realized, there would be plentiful quality of life benefits for valley residents and significantly improve the mobility options for year round visitors as there surely won't be any more roads built to alleviate the heavy traffic we all endure during peak visitor days.
This type of solution combined with bike/pedestrian paths connecting Retail, Lodging, the Lake and Forest along with adequate parking for the successful use of these connections, should have a place at the top of the list for our future planning.
Monorails can be found in the following places in North America:
Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida - The Walt Disney World Monorail System is one of the world's best-known monorail serves over five million passengers yearly. Disneyland in Anaheim, California - The Disneyland Monorail System is known as the "First daily operating Monorail system in the Western Hemisphere." Seattle, Washington - short monorail (Seattle Center Monorail) built for the Century 21 Exposition in 1962 Hershey, Pennsylvania - amusement monorail at Hersheypark. Lancaster, Pennsylvania - amusement monorail at Dutch Wonderland . Las Vegas, Nevada - public transit Memphis, Tennessee - a short monorail connects Mud Island in the Mississippi River to Memphis. Newark International Airport in Newark, New Jersey - people mover connecting terminals, parking lots, and to Amtrak/NJ Transit Northeast Corridor rail station Six Flags La Ronde in Montreal, Quebec - once part of a larger monorail systems built for Expo 67 Minnesota Zoo in Apple Valley, Minnesota San Diego Wild Animal Park near Escondido, California. It is the only monorail system in Hawaii. This a fully-operational, homebuilt, backyard monorail was constructed by monorail enthusiast, Kim Pedersen Dallas, Texas - Amusement ride at Dallas Zoo Miami MetroZoo, in Miami, Florida - Connects major exhibits at the zoo.
Criticism and comment about the Las Vegas Tram below:
http://mtcgi.kir.com/mt-search.cgi?IncludeBlogs=1&search=Las+Vegas+monorail
More on Monorails some above content sourced:
More on Monorails some above content sourced:
