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khiemtranI took Liem for a ride on the Sydney Monorail today. It's the first I've been on it since I've been living to Sydney. I've got a vague memory of riding it once years and years ago on a visit to Sydney, but I couldn't recall any of the details.
The monorail is a spectacularly useless piece of machinery, extending, as Clive James once put it, "from downtown Sydney all the way to downtown Sydney". For many of the possible combinations of starting and ending points, it's not much faster than walking speed thanks to its circuitous route and frequent stops. Even for those with limited mobility, it's not much of an option because the stations are all elevated and hard to get to. My main experience of the monorail prior to this had been using the giant blue railing as a landmark around the city streets, and learning not to stand under the track on a very wet day just as the train goes past.
Up close, it turns out to be even more awkward. The thin carriages are actually made of separate cabins with no access between them, something I hadn't noticed when viewing them from the ground. This means that whenever a train comes to a station, there's a curious sort of shuffle amongst the passengers on the platform, as they try to align themselves with the door of whichever cabin will have the right number of empty seats for their party.
All that said, for $4.50, the monorail served its purpose today, providing a distraction for Liem (who loves trains) on a wet day in the city and giving us an first storey perspective of central Sydney and Darling Harbour.
The monorail is a spectacularly useless piece of machinery, extending, as Clive James once put it, "from downtown Sydney all the way to downtown Sydney". For many of the possible combinations of starting and ending points, it's not much faster than walking speed thanks to its circuitous route and frequent stops. Even for those with limited mobility, it's not much of an option because the stations are all elevated and hard to get to. My main experience of the monorail prior to this had been using the giant blue railing as a landmark around the city streets, and learning not to stand under the track on a very wet day just as the train goes past.
Up close, it turns out to be even more awkward. The thin carriages are actually made of separate cabins with no access between them, something I hadn't noticed when viewing them from the ground. This means that whenever a train comes to a station, there's a curious sort of shuffle amongst the passengers on the platform, as they try to align themselves with the door of whichever cabin will have the right number of empty seats for their party.
All that said, for $4.50, the monorail served its purpose today, providing a distraction for Liem (who loves trains) on a wet day in the city and giving us an first storey perspective of central Sydney and Darling Harbour.
