The Only University With Its Own Suspended Monorail
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- čas přidán 29. 08. 2024
- Yes! Today we're visiting the only university on earth with its own suspended monorail. But, er... why exactly does a University need its own suspended monorail?
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MINOR CORRECTION: I have been informed that the thing I called "what appears to have once been a busy road" is actually a half-constructed road that was abandoned before completion. In other words, it was *supposed* to be a busy road, but never became one, following complaints about the traffic it might generate. Thank you to the many knowledgeable locals in the comment section for this extra info!
I'm just surprised that everyone that corrected you was a minor.
Tim, I emplore you to look up the O-Bahn in Adelaide, South Australia 🇦🇺
Vielen Dank für dieses neue Video!
Where is the Suspended Monorail that was used in the movie Fahrenheit 451 (1953)?
@@Thinker2-truth As far as I know it has melted at Fahrenheit 450.
Honestly I think all Universities should have their own weird, unique, mildly impractical, expensive gadgetbahn. Just imagining the race to build increasingly absurd ways for students to get to class makes me want to manifest it.
"Please consider studying here at Buxtehude-Hinternkamp U. , the only University where you can travel to class via trebuchet"
@@Tudsamfa "Here at Hinternkamp-Buxtehude U. we praise the safety record of our trampoline & nets based travel. We especially catch many disillusioned students from that _other_ university who prefer our unique way of learning."
We call that Departament of Physics😉
All hail the fart-copter! 😂
I'd say this one fails those requirements as it happens to be fairly practical.
The Dangle Train Trilogy is now complete. Excellent work, Tim.
He still needs to visit the fourth Schwebe-/Hängebahn in Germany!
@@1989Nihil
You're right! I forgot about tat one!!
Now off to Japan
@@alfiebullus2484Chiba Monorail, Tama Toshi Monorail, and Shonan Monorail
@@1989Nihilin which City is it?
Excellent video. And yes, Tim is right on the reasons to build the H-Bahn instead of just using a shuttle bus service. It was intended as technology demonstrator. Siemens recieved substantional public funding for developing the system. It was hoped to sell the H-Bahn to other cities; but it was only sold to Düsseldorf Airport. So Siemens has dropped out in marketing the technology. But Dortmund will extend the system. The city council decided in June 2024 to extend the H-Bahn so that it is connected to Dortmund's city railway network (connection to the U42, station Theodor-Fliedner-Heim). Commissioning of the entire two-kilometre extension to is scheduled for 2029.
Superb!
That's great. I will try the new track when it will be finished. Danke für die Info.
I'm almost 70...a grandma from Tasmania, Australia. I binge watched your videos the day I found your channel. I drop everything when I see you have a new video. I LOVE everything about you and your videos, especially your sense of humour. 🙃
There might be another advantage compared to buses: those cabins are driverless. They don't need an driver who might get sick, want his six weeks of vacation or salary. Well, some people are needed for the control center, but its far less than to man every cabin.
You're making it sound like a bad thing European nations have great work benefits
@@coastaku1954 If you are thinking about operating costs, it is a bad thing.
And since this is (like pretty much all German Unis) a public University, I wouldn't be surprised they got a large subsidy for that project from their state and/or city, maybe even the federal goverment. Whereas they'd probably have to finance "classic" transport themselves. Plus all the drivers would have been on the University payroll etc.
Not did any research on this, but this is how it often goes. The more unusual and more expensive solution gets you subsidies from somewhere else, so you'd be silly to use the cheap option, since that would have to entirely come out of your local budget.
@@morbvsclz The H-Bahn is part of the public transit network (otherwise you'd need a student ID to ride it), so it's owned by the city, not the university. If they had used classic busses, those would also have been part of the public transit network (ÖPNV) and also been paid for by the city. The whole Ruhrpott area (which Dortmund is part of) is one of the most densely populated areas in Germany, so any traffic taken off the road in that area is actually a good thing. I could see this as an alternative for busses in cities like Cologne aswell, especially considering that the subway system in Cologne is already past the point of collapsing, it's basically one subway train pushing the next one through the tubes, with demand for more public transport. And busses in Cologne are a catastrophe. Due to the massive traffic, their schedules are merely a suggestion (because they get stuck in traffic anyways).
Hey, my friend goes to that uni! He even uses the H-Bahn regularly. I was planning on visiting him sometime, mostly because I want to visit my friend, but also because I want to ride the H-Bahn. Can't believe Tim beat me to it.
Tim have beaten me in every video, exept the one about Campione D'Italia. Yeah, take this, Tim!
The Dresden Suspension Railway stands out in that while it's a suspended monorail, it functions as a conventional funicular. Like the Wuppertal Schwebebahn, it was designed by Eugen Langen and opened in May 1901, just two months after the Wuppertal system opened! While World War II destroyed much of Dresden, the system survived the Allied aerial attacks. Tokyo's Ueno Zoo in Japan also used to have a suspended monorail! It shuttled people between the two halves of the zoo, the West Garden and East Garden. It was a constructed as a trial system for a future city plan. This line was not operated as an amusement facility of Ueno Zoo but as a means of public transportation system as per Railway Business Act by the Traffic Bureau of Tokyo Metropolitan Government. It was built similarly to the Wuppertal Schwebebahn, but rather than steel wheels, it used rubber tires! It opened in 1957, which made it the first zoo monorail in the world. It was suspended in 2019 due to the high costs of replacing the aging trains, and officially closed in December 2023, dismantling it, with its replacement being a transit line...on ROLLER COASTER track! Even Memphis in Tennessee built a suspended monorail, opening in 1982 with two suspended cars constructed in Switzerland. It was beneath a footbridge over the Wolf River Lagoon connecting to the southern tip of Mud Island, an entertainment park, from downtown. After multiple malfunctions in 2018, including requiring the fire department to rescue stranded passengers, it has been shut down, with the system mothballed in 2024 as 5 million dollars in funding for it in 2022 was reallocated after it was deemed it was not enough to repair it.
Other unique transit systems that serve universities: Oregon's Portland Aerial Tram connects the city's South Waterfront district and the main Oregon Health & Science University campus! The Rakavlit in Haifa is a cable car, from the HaMifratz Central Bus Station and public transit hub at the foot of Mount Carmel to the Technion (Israel Institute of Technology; the oldest one in the country as it was established in 1912 under Ottoman rule) and then onto the University of Haifa, for a total distance of 4.4 km and an elevation gain of 460 m! Mount Carmel also has an underground funicular for its neighborhoods, the Carmelit! The Carmelit opened in 1959, making it the oldest underground transit system in the Middle East, and has six stations with a length of just 1.8 km! The Carmelit doesn't serve the university however. Zurich's Polybahn is a funicular that links Zurich's Central square with the main building of ETH Zürich, formerly called Eidgenössisches Polytechnikum, which is why it's called the Polybahn! Cornell University in Ithaca, NY built a tech graduate campus on Roosevelt Island in NYC in 2017, built right next to the Roosevelt Island Tramway! The tramway wasn't built for the university as the tramway opened in 1976. Roosevelt Island was once used by hospitals and prisons (like a hospital made famous by Nellie Bly; The Octagon from that hospital has been incorporated into an apartment complex with limited access. A bridge was built to Astoria in 1955 and people once took an elevator from the Queensboro Bridge after riding a streetcar that stopped at the elevator, but it ended service in 1957. So the unique circumstance of the island gave the NY government a blank slate to redevelop the island as a mostly car-free transit-oriented residential community. A subway station was being built, but it was delayed, so they needed a form of transit to connect the island to Manhattan, thus they selected an aerial tramway! The island has a pneumatic trash collection system which was the second AVAC system in the US after Magic Kingdom's Utilidors. Their AVAC system is one of the largest in the world, and trash is collected from each tower to the Central Collections and Compaction Plant at up to 60 miles per hour.
Dortmund University was built from the "Aufbau- und Verfügungszentrum" (the centre for construction and disposition), which is now the South Campus, while the North Campus was being built. Between these two was a projected four lane street that was meant to connect directly to the A45, running through a valley in between the campuses, since abandoned and overgrown.
I studied Physics there a long, long time ago, and a fellow student lived close to the terminus in Eichlinghofen; we used that thing on an almost daily basis.
Hey, as a Student there who rides the H-Bahn multiple times a week, I want to confirm that it is indeed a very nice idea, and makes absolutely sense there. Without it, making it from one side of the campus to the other, multiple times a day, is quite annoying. Reaching it by foot doesnt only take long, but also requires quite a lot of stairclimbing, because of the steep terrain. Not only that, but it links the two halves of the University, the Train Station, the Industrial/Research Area on one end, and a Suburban Street with good Bus connection, a Store and many Residential Buildings and Dormitories on the Southern end of the line. Without it, it wouldnt feel like one Campus, and Accessibility would be impaired as well. People use and appreciate it a lot, so thanks for showing it :)
1:30 The mechanical noises on scrolling cracked me up! 🤣
"You could go all-in and just become a student." Because why wouldn't a monorail fan do just that? 😂
Indeed, it sounded like a very noisy VCR fast-forwarding or rewinding! 😁
Excellent video as always, Tim! ❤
And yah, a technical university is the perfect place for that kind of train. Hard _not_ to love how retro-futuristic it is, especially those older stations! They look like something out of 70s-80s sci-fi, like they ought to be part of a moon base or a Star Trek colony world. 👨🚀
Tom Scott doesn’t like monorails, so I am pleased you are putting positive spin on these transport systems 😊
He likes that one that climbs hills!
@@harrytodhunter5078 That’s true. But in general 🙂
I think it's less that he dislikes them and more that he acknowledges that there's almost always (except in that one video he did) a more practical option.
Monorails make perfect sense on uneven/steep terrain where traditional rails won't work and where tunneling isn't cost effective. These SAFEGE installations also are good when it snows as the track system is protected from accumulation and exposure.
@@bentoth9555 All the more reason to like them
Don't tell me there's _another_ suspended monorail system in North-Rhine Westphalia that I have to visit!?
There is one in Gelsenkirchen as well xD
Ich wohne seit über 20Jahren in Nachbarstädten von Gelsenkirchen und bin regelmäßig da. Welche Schwebebahn gibt es bitte in Gellek?@@leduc6919
@@leduc6919 where exactly?
@@HerrVonEulerich It shut down in 2014. It was called the Panoramabahn.
@@FoobarDesign The forbidden town, where Dortmund sends its pigeons to take a s*it.
It's worth noticing that there are extention plans for the H-Bahn to connect it with line U42, so that there are more opportunities to connect the university with other districts of the city. As well as to be a good alternative when trains of the S1 doesn't show up, which happens fairly often
And there are also plans for a connection to Dortmund airport. I think these dangletrains are very interesting for congested citys. Cheaper to buid than a tram, they dont interfere with ground traffic, therefore they could be driverless and they are driven by rubber wheels on wooden tracks in a capsulated box section, so ithey have no problems with slippery tracks and can go up much steeper inclines than steel wheels on steel rails (like Wuppertals Schwebebahn). Stations can be built at ground level and then they climb up to avoid street traffic.
@@stefansikora5183 cheaper tu build than a tram? Ha, ha ha. Show me the numbers.
Generally speaking, Dortmund has great public transit. The H-Bahn is just the cherry on top :) I still remember the Stadtbahn running overground through the city center, though... @@stefansikora5183
@@stefansikora5183 And it's exciting and a little adventure in all day life. I like the H-Bahn very much.
“We’re not here to study any of that.” 🤣🤣
The Wrocław University of Science and Technology has a gondola lift. It covers a distance of 373 meters. That might sound pointless, except for the fact that it goes over a river, and going between the two ends of the campus on foot is about 1.3 km.
I was going to mention it, they built it while I was studying there. We always wondered why to build a gadgetbahn while a simple footbridge would suffice :P
Later we realized that it was supposed to be a proof of concept for a longer system along the Odra river, but it was still not really understandable to build it as a gondola one instead of rigid tracks like the H-Bahn. The PoC cannot be repurposed to run in a continuous loop, it works by switching the direction of operation ;)
Portland, Oregon, USA also has a gondola lift, designed by a swiss firm. It started up in the mid 2000s and connects a medical university with a second campus 1,000 ft lower on a river.
plus that, I also wanted to mention this, having visite Wroclaw back in may, but didn't have time to try the gondolas (so many things to visit there, not enough days :) )
Doing "Oops!...I Did It Again" was one thing, but then doing "Go Your Own Way" by Fleetwood Mac...your music selection for these is always stellar! Glad you briefly mentioned the Morgantown PRT system in West Virginia, it's quite the interesting system! A key reason why Morgantown wanted the PRT was its geography! As West Virginia University expanded in the 1960s, geographic constraints, as the city is in a valley along the Monongahela River, forced WVU to build a second campus over 3 km away in Evansdale. While free busing was offered for students so they can move between the campuses, all the roads led through the city center, creating gridlock more typical of a megacity, so Morgantown needed something more efficient to move its students than buses. And the PRT was cheaper to build than mass transit. The Morgantown PRT has three modes, demand, schedule, and circulation. Demand mode is true PRT and acts like an elevator. In schedule mode, this is activated during periods of well-known demand patterns, and operates the cars on fixed routes of known demand, lowering wait times. And then there's circulation mode, and in this mode during off-peak periods, it acts like a bus route with a small number of vehicles stopping at every station. While the construction for it ran far over budget, it still resulted in an efficient way that unified the campuses despite the terrain, offered on-time service rates better than the buses it replaced, eliminated the gridlock in the city center that the buses caused, and no injuries were reported for over four decades until an accident happened in November 2016!
When geography is an obstacle to build transit, you have to think out of the box, and for a place with interesting terrain, a monorail, cable car, or an elevated rapid transit system can work efficiently, like in Chongqing, China! Chongqing is a huge densely populated but mountainous city, with multiple river valleys. So using monorails leverages the ability to negotiate steep grades and tight curves with rapid transit capacity, like Chongqing's Lines 2 and 3. Chongqing Line 2's Liziba station is such a neat station because it goes through a 19-story residential building! Contrary to some misreporting, the station and building were constructed together as one whole structure, the monorail was not retrofitted! People may think living in those apartments is constantly noisy because of the monorail, but the station uses specialized noise reduction equipment to isolate station noise from the surrounding residences! Another example of a monorail that goes through a building with a station inside is at Disney's Contemporary Resort in Florida! While Liziba station opened in June 2005, the Contemporary Resort opened with Magic Kingdom on October 1st, 1971! The resort's main tower was built as an A-frame with outer walls which slope inwards around an inner atrium. This design was a collaboration by Disney, United States Steel, and Capitol Records architect Welton Becket. To construct it, steel frames were erected on-site and modular pre-constructed rooms, designed by California architect Donald Wexler, were lifted into place by crane. If that's not interesting enough, the monorail station is part of the Grand Canyon Concourse which features a huge Grand Canyon-themed mosaic (that has a five-legged goat; this was done on purpose to reflect human error) by Mary Blair, who also created character designs for It's a Small World and also worked on Alice in Wonderland! The resort is also the location of the infamous Nixon "I am not a crook" speech in November 1973.
Another example of a system tackling a geographic challenge is the North Hudson County Railway which originated in the 1860s and lasted until the 1940s. The North Hudson County Railway was a complex streetcar network that connected Journal Square in Jersey City, Hoboken, Weehawken, and Union City. To overcome the formidable obstacle of ascending the lower Hudson Palisades, or Bergen Hill, it devised numerous innovative engineering solutions including funicular wagon lifts, an inclined elevated railway, an elevator and viaducts. The system included 20.52 km of at-grade and 2.01 km of elevated trackage!
Thanks for explaining more about the system in Morgantown. I taught a week long class in Morgantown 20 years ago and I took a trip on the train for fun.
as a non-English native speaker, when I saw the title of the video "Suspended Monorail"....... "Is it not suspended? It is still serving, isn't it?" then I opened wikipedia, ohhhh.......
You've kept us in suspense long enough!
Student from TU Dortmund here. I use the H-Bahn twice a week and like how fast and reliable it is to get from one campus to the other. Recently there was "H-Bahn-Ersatzverkehr" (Bus instead of H-Bahn) in the daytime. I waited for the Bus almost 10 Minutes and then it took 15 Minutes to get to Campus-Nord because the circled only in one direction and stopped at every station and i got off at the last one. Therefore I wouldnt change it with a Bus ;-)
There are new plans to enlargen the H-Bahn network.
Das ist meine Uni! 😀 Toll, dass du dir die angesehen hast. Und gut, dass du nicht zur Mensa-Zeit da warst. Da ist es so voll in dem Wagen, dass man sich nicht festhalten muss. Und die Bremsen muss man dann auch mal erlebt haben. War eine tolle Zeit.😊😊
Was ist aus der Etage geworden, wo die Hochschule fuer Musik Detmold/Abteilung Dortmund drin war? Ich hab da studiert. Die Schwebebahn war damals so was von neu, dass wir da einfach aus "Abenteuerlust" mit gefahren sind. Hin und her.....waren ja nur ein paar Hundert Meter am Anfang.
it's fun recognizing the music you use. You Can Go Your Own Way is just a classic, but the Simpsons Monorail song is extra thematic.
Missed half the video trying to figure out what that weirdly familiar tune is.
Yeah, the "Monorail" song was awesome and yet understated!
Me too! I like how well the songs match what's being discussed, like "You Can Go Your Own Way" when talking about requesting a destination, and "Oops I Did It Again" when he's talking about covering dangletrains previously. I swear we need these covers on some streaming music service, I love them!
You’ve done it again, Tim and snuck in some perfect musical references.
awwww at some times of the day, you can Go Your Own Way awww
oops, he did it again!
Mono Doh
actually at a bit the music at a part became a bit to good. I just stopped listening to Tim and just listend to the banger.
And of course it closed on the monorail song from "The Simpsons." 😆
Today's 'Halloooo' is airy and light. It goes well with chinese food and the feeling of gratitude your university days are well in the past.
It's a lovely little monorail! I studied at the nearby FH Dortmund, which is on the eastern part of the campus. The train runs right through. : )
One fun thing is, it was considered to expand the H-Bahn much further. And even today there seem to be some small plans and considerations.
The 'old street' you were on is the "Universitätsstraße" (university street), which was planned to go further east, but aparently never completed. That abandoned part of it was (as far as I know) never used. So another fun story of the area.
I'm looking forward to more videos from the area, if you were around there! :D
It was used for shooting scenes of the 1999 film Bang Boom Bang, as well as for late night racing before being entirely abandoned.
Someone mentioned above that expansion plans were approved in June 2024 to connect to the city's train station.
Again, compliments to the music in your videos - love the semi-ragtime versions of "Oops... I Did it Again" and "Go your Own Way". 😊
Was waiting for The Monorail Song, was not disappointed :)
Gadgetbahns for city transport, no, but for weird uni transport, absolutely yes!
As far as gadgetbahns go, these aren't really that bad. They even have some niches where they are conceivably the best option. Chiba Urban Monorail in Japan uses the same technology and works very well.
If a city wants an elevated railway over a street or park, a monorail is much less visually obnoxious. I've been on a street that has an elevated railway, and it was awful. Who would want to be there? I've been under monorails, and it's fine, or at least much better. Quality of life for the citizens matters, and where a line affects that, "gadgetbahns" should be very much on the table if they improve quality of life, and are viable like monorails. For goodness sake, monorails are as old as I am, not exactly novel technology.
@@bearcubdaycare it is UGLY and it has less transport capacity than an elevated railway. That is THE issue. And another lot of them.
@@bearcubdaycareits like old metre gauge trams. In Theorie a nice thing, because they can turn on every sharp corner, but with much less capacity than a normal gauge tram. A Bus could be a better option. Gadgetbahns could be usefully in special situations, but in the most cases not. The Schwebebahn in Wuppertal is extremely loud and extremely cost intensive. The tram system in Wuppertal was closed in the 1980‘s and most of the old tramways/space in the middle of the roads are still unused. Under the line, they should kept the tram and closed the Schwebebahn. ;)
@@Buchstabenkrahn Getting rid of the tram system was stupid, but getting rid of the Schwebebahn would be even more stupid, because it's much faster than a tram could ever be. Wuppertal is a very long city and thus benefits from having faster transit modes.
It's also very old which is why it's noisy; modern suspension monorails are much quieter. Chiba Urban Monorail was built running through residential areas and is not very noisy.
The General MIDI rendition of Fleetwood Mac’s 1977 smash ‘Go Your Own Way’ stirred my soul despite being relegated to background music.
I knew that song sounded familiar, but I couldn't place it. Thank you.
Well now I'm intrigued about that abandoned road!
When I remember correctly, they began to build this road (I think it was somewhere in the 80's) to connect a nearby district to the highway through the university. Until they noticed that it's not worth it to continue building that road. And since then it stayed like this
Student at the TU here. That road is nothing spectacular. One side is connected to an access road towards the industrial area west of the north campus. It's hilariously over-built. Two lanes into each direction, a divider in the middle. It was essentially build to Bundesstraße-standards, but never connected. It ends in the forrest dividing the north campus from the south campus. Nowadays its mainly rotting away and pretty dirty from leaves. The part that is connecting the access to the industrial area is mainly used by truck drivers to park their vehicles and for some reason some boat trailers as well. Some construction equipment has shown up there too, but I'm not too sure, when or if the re-naturation will happen. If I remember correctly, some self-driving test from our robotics institute where done there a few years ago. So nothing spectacular, just an impressive waste of taxes.
@@deadhamster7570I do love an impressive waste of taxes
@@PineappleSkip Students and citizens of the area at the time protested against the project. It was meant to connect to the Autobahn. High speed, high dense traffic and all of that. The city decided it wasnt worth to push an unpopular project like this and abandoned it.
As a mechanical engineer, I think that this might be the best design for a people mover. The support structure is very simple, and the fact that it has very simple switches makes it much more flexible than other monorails. There is no reason that it couldn't use multi car trains, other than extending the stations and terminal stub tracks. Thanks for posting this!
My brother goes to that University! Before his first semester started, we explored the campus grounds and briefly rode on the H-Bahn. It actually has a pretty good connection to Dortmund's subway network too. (TU Dortmund itself has a good connection to the subway network, with stations being directly under the campus grounds I believe!)
While Wuppertal is the oldest one, it is worth mentioning that the concept was first patented in 1821 by British engineer Henry Robinson Palmer as a horse-drawn suspended single-rail system and demonstrated it at Woolwich Arsenal. Before Eugen Lagen, German Friedrich Harkort built a demonstration track of Palmer's system in 1826, in Elberfeld, at the time commercial center of the Wupper Valley. The steelmill owner had the vision of a coal-carrier railway between Wupper Valley and the nearby coal-mining region of Ruhr, which would connect his own factories in Elberfeld and Deilbachtal. Due to protests from mill owners that were not integrated along the line and from the transporting branch, this idea could not be executed. There was also the Enos Electric Railway demonstrated in Greenville in what's now Jersey City in 1886. An electric-powered monorail with wagons suspended from an elevated frame of open steelwork. This rail-frame design influenced Eugen, as the Wuppertal framing bears a likeness to it. And at one point, many department stores in the US used suspended monorails, letting kids see a bird's eye view of the aisles of toys, the naughty ones threw pennies and aimed squirt guns at people below. These were known as the Christmas monorails as they were especially popular during Christmas season. In the 1960s also in the United States, besides department stores, a large number of suspended monorails systems were opened but none were for transit. These included 1962 at the LA County Fair (closed late 1990s), 1964-1965 at the New York World's Fair, in 1964 at Houston International Airport (closed 1966), and in 1966 at two Busch Gardens parks at Van Nuys in California (closed with the park in 1979) and Tampa in Florida (closed 1999).
The Shonan Monorail and Chiba Urban Monorail are two Japanese systems still in operation. The Shonan Monorail first opened in 1970 and runs in the cities of Kamakura and Fujisawa in Kanagawa Prefecture, the prefecture famous for Yokohama. Trains run on a 6.6 km line called the Enoshima Line. It is used by commuters that work in Tokyo or Yokohama, tourists visiting Enoshima, and, in summer months, city dwellers who are visiting the parks or baths of Enoshima. It was developed by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, who built the former Higashiyama monorail in Nagoya that ran between 1964 and 1974, and later the Chiba Urban Monorail. Based on the success of that line, Mitsubishi then constructed a 7 km single-lane line between Ōfuna and Nishi-Kamakura. The alignment was ideal for SAFEGE, with a narrow corridor and hills to negotiate. The rest of the line opened in July 1971. The Chiba Urban Monorail opened in 1988 with its first segment (Line 2 from Sports Center Station to Chishirodai Station), while the rest opened in March 1999. The system has a length of 15.2 km, making it even longer than the Wuppertal Schwebebahn! Chiba City decided to introduce this suspended monorail in 1977 as a response to the worsening traffic condition and noise pollution due to the rapid population increase in 1960s.
This part of the Universitätsstraße where it is crossed by the H-Bahn was never used. It was planned to serve the additional dorms on this side of the campus, but these were never realised. Currently they want to reduce the street to 2 lanes.
Regarding the H-Bahn, there are some additional extensions to a railway station and a Technologiequartier planned. Mayve even a test track for a newer generation of monorails
Tim still needs to visit Japan to visit the Shōnan Monorail.
And just today at the launch of this episode, the H-bahn apparently closes for 2 weeks for infrastructure works, I read online.
The study year ended and it's summer holiday, that why they do these works now.
I mean... deep down we all knew you'd come back to cover the third one as well :D
This video couldn't have cropped up at a more perfect time. I'm heading through Dortmund/Wuppertal tomorrow and had no idea about this! Will definitely be stopping by!
I used to be a student myself at the TU but unfortunately I wasn't there very often, because of the corona pandemic. This was the main reason I hadn't the happiest two years at this uni before I quit, but the ride to my building in the South campus with the H-Bahn was a special event every time
Born and raised in Germany. Living here for over 35 years. Still i didn´t know this exists. Thanks for teaching me things about my home country Tim!
Perhaps the most important point in this video is that to ride the H-Bahn you just buy a Dortmund area 24-hour ticket. Those tickets are valid on all forms of local public transport within the city - H-Bahn, Local trains, buses, trams, U=Bahn etc. Now the British King's Speech today (17 July) did give some prominence to reforming buses in Britain. But that should only be the first stage towards integrated ticketing COVERING ALL MODES OF TRANSPORT.
Or buy a Deutschlandticket ;) But its quite a mess, you must buy an subscription in the app and immediately cancel it. If you buy or cancel it, after the 10th of a month, you must pay the full price for the actual month and the next month. 😅 Buy it on the first of a month and cancel the subscription immediately and you‘re save. :) 49€ (2024) for (almost) all Busses, Trams, Metros, RB-, RE- and S-Trains.
If it's a train that dangles, Tim will visit it! 😂 This further backs up my impression that some of the most futuristic types of transport hit their peak in the latter half of the past century (like the hovercraft Tim covered). Really cool to see working examples!
Yet again, your subtle music cues are perfection.. (monorail!)
YOU AND YOUR PIECES ARE T H E B E S T !!!!
Thank you for your perfect writing, shooting, narration, editing, and graphics.
dangletrain is a fantastic name
Thanks for visiting my home town! Hope you enjoyed :)
Tim, a suggestion to visit the DB train museum in Nuremberg! It's an amazing place if you haven't visited.
I used to take the H-Bahn every day! Got my masters degree a couple of months ago and now I am kind of missing it already. Great video!
You might want to check Wroclaw Technical University Funicular :)
As someone who lived on the campus, near the S-Bahn station, using the H-Bahn to go shopping in Eichlinghofen was really convenient :D. Also Eichlinghofen had some good Döner Kebab shops right next to the station, now sure if they still exist.
I wondered how I knew nothing about this, having lived 4 years in Dortmund. But, we left 10 years before the system opened, so there's that
Thank you for your videos on dangle trains, Tim! You inspired me to take a side trip to the Chiba suspended monorail during a recent visit to Japan that I thoroughly enjoyed. As a bonus a was able to travel over a curved railroad truss bridge on my return to Tokyo, a bridge type that is difficult to find in the US.
You've kept us in suspense long enough!
The 'once busy road' at 4:29 was in fact never open. It was a planned extension to the 4-lane-Universitätsstrasse nearby, but then the extension was dropped. Party because the demand turned out do be lowed than anticipated, ad party because the extension would have impacted houses and settlements along its way, while the first part could be build more through open land.
Music is on point once more! I recognize "University Challenge" and of course "Monorail", which ones did I miss?
"you can go your own way" and I think "oops I did it again"
There was some Fleetwood Mac in there too
"You can go your own way" 😃
"Oops, I did it again"
Brilliant, as ever.
Here, in Picardy (northern France), students just have to get on with it (and without fancy transport), in the rain.
You should be so lucky, in Göteborg (Gothenburg, mid Sweden) going anywhere involves walking up hill BOTH WAYS and it will either be raining or, if you are really lucky, snowing.
Oh this is awesome. I was planning to have an exploration on the Rhine-Ruhr region but don't know what to do in Dortmund. This is fantastic and definitely going into my list!
If you need other things for Dortmund,you might want to check out the beer brewery museum or take a tour through one of the several breweries, go for a guided tour through the BvB stadium. If you have the time and a way to get there I can also really recommend the "Freilichtmuseum Hagen" in a neighboring city. It is a village of relocated houses from pre- to early industrial times showing various manufacturing processes and is overall quite a good looking place. The bread they bake there is quite good as well.
yay for my course of study at dortmund getting mentioned (journalism) and thanks for visiting :)
Hello my friend. I discovered your channel, watching the Wuppertal Monorail video... and I became a big fan since! Here we go again!!! ;) cheers
Very exciting to see your film.
I grew up in the village near the university, close to the south campus.
During the first public test operations, I was able to ride along as a boy - it was fascinating.
And the road at 4:20, yes, it used to lead a few hundred meters from the town of Witten in the 1980s. Where it now ends at an earthen embankment, it joined a road that led past the south campus. It was one of the roads on which I received driving lessons for my license.
I witnessed the individual construction phases and the expansion. Now I live elsewhere and have not used the H-Bahn for a long time.
I was last there, for work, because of an accident on the railway. A truck had not lowered the tipper, so there was a collision. As a journalist, I reported on this accident for local television in the news broadcasts.
Fun fact : when I lived in that region I used all three of the Suspended monorails. Also TU Dortmund has a few spin off companies ( eg Elmos where I used to visit ) on their campus ( which also serves as a Science Park), so it's also used by some commuters. And I am disappointed you didn't talk about the plastic Rhinos . . .
Potential for a future video!
Tim, you do great work. Cheers
I've applied to City Planning for the next semester, hopefully gonna use that soon!
4:51 I live in Camerino, Italy, famous for its University, and, despite having less than 10,000 inhabitants, it has its own urban bus network with six lines, and most lines serve and connect different facilities of the University, which are located in different parts of the town. In fact, most of its passengers are students.
Love to see that Video after 5 Years of Studying threre! I lived directly next to a "H-Bahn Haltestelle" :)
I’m shipping off to University this fall in Boston Massachusetts! As a certified Zoomer™ I love your content, and I hope you keep making it through my graduation!
I've gone to that University for about three years but used the H-Bahn only twice, just for fun. When studying exclusively at Campus Nord its stations are not very practical. But I still think it's a great system and love that it's being expanded.
"You Can Go Your Own Way" while talking about the single track for both directions... I see what you did there, Tim!
Loving the Fleetwood Macchiato 🙂
Your videos always have a calming and joyful effect on me. I think I would enjoy spending time with you traveling or hiking. Thank you as always
I walked from north to south and back because the library is open on Sundays, but the train doesn't run. Together with a fellow student we wanted to go out for something to eat in Eichlinghofen (which is the southernmost station). That was tiring because not only is it a 2 kilometer walk, but it also goes down steeply and then up again. The H train, on the other hand, remains on one level.
I absolutely love these dangle trains. They are so cool and surprisingly practical! I wish they were in more places!
I'm quite impressed with how well my brain can pay attention to the video while at the same time figure out what the song is in the background audio.
As always, thank you for including proper, non-autogenerated closed captions from the start!
Thank you - good to hear that they're useful!
@@TheTimTraveller I have hearing issues, plus English is not my native language and I had no language immersion experience until last year so I always rely on closed captions, ahaha… And automated ones are hard to follow and often contain egregious errors (especially in numbers)
What I find interesting: There seems to be both signalling and speed restriction signs, compliant with the BOStrab (operational ordinance for trams). Maybe there used to be manually operated vehicles?
Well, it's more that automated operation is the special case here (while being the H-Bahn's *usual* mode of operation). There are provisions to drive these trains manually if required, e.g. for shunting and special situations. A few more details by the operating company in German: h-bahn.info/technik/fahrzeuge-h-bahn/
The Wuppertal one is really actually nice. The stations are also beautiful and there's this weird amalgamation of futuristic rakes and deco stations :)
love the "oops i did it again" piano cut.... XD
Bravo on the use of the "Monorail" song from "The Simpsons" @5:20! Made me laugh! 😄😄😄
Now that you already visited three of the Schwebebahns, you have to complete the German quartet and visit the one in Dresden.
Currently there are plans to extend the H-Bahn, to make it better integrated with the subway and therefore city-centre!
Swansea University could DEFINITELY benefit from a monorail to link the old and Bay campuses.
2:10 Very fitting choice of music.
Not quite the same but OHSU has a sky tram that you can take to get to their hospital.
Hiking/riding the 4T Trail sounds right up Tim's alley tbh 🚡🚋🚈🚶🤔 The walking portion even takes you up... well, not exactly a mountain I suppose, but to the highest point in the city at least.
Unusual and interesting subjects, creative camerawork, great editing, witty and informative narration, but what makes these videos is the background music. Love the Wish You Were Here jingle 👍
Something you might be interested in (though it sadly never happened), is that RWTH (the Uni in Aachen) once planned a cable car route from the city centre out past the main Uni building and over to the university hospital. In itself not completely out of the ordinary, but as the hospital is just ~1km away from the Dutch border, there was also the discussion to extend the route over into the Netherlands in order to get external funding from the EU due to it being cross border.
One of the pleasures with The Tim Traveller is the choice of background music. It's often worthy of a good chuckle and even the occasional guffaw (a greatly underutilized word, imho)
“Go your own way” 🤣🤣🤣
I rode that train more times than I could count and I even had a date on the H-Bahn. I will never forget that little H-Bahn, even though I have not taken a ride for over 15 years now.
The H-Bahn is planned to get a second task in the future: Dortmund wants to expand it to the U42 station Theodor-Fliedner-Heim which is close to the Westfalenstadion so stadium visitors will then be able to use the university's parking lots and travel to the stadium then. That helps a lot because the currently used buses are often stuck in the traffic jam.
Just came home from a bicycle trip through the uni grounds, never expected you to upload a video about a place I've seen today!
looking at the interchange and knowing what i know about those and monorails i can see why it’s a suspended monorail vs. traditional one: the switching is far easier
compared with the need to have a complicated section where the entire track moves to switch between two preset track alignments or rolling to put the right alignment segment in place this line just uses walls to guide the wheels much like switches/points on regular train tracks. it’s brilliant yet effective!
A place I have been to (and worked at for a summer)! Thanks for covering this Tim
This video is out on such a good time! I just moved 3 days ago to Wuppertal nearby, another town with a susepended monorail!
Love the 'you can go your own way,' background music. Perfect!
Good use of "Go Your Own Way"!
I love these things so much! I wish the whole world could have them!
Omg, I studied there my PhD and I am so happy to see this in your channel! :) I didn't really needed the H-Bahn, but when those 3 years I made sure to use it for whatever excuse lol! although it was very useful a month I lived in the campus dorms, the H-Bahn brought you to the residential neighorhood south of the university, that had supermarket and stuff (and is also very useful for people living there too, if they want to use the Sbahn).
I love this because it takes space that cant otherwise be used, ie above roads, rivers, parking lots. I wish there was larger faster versions of this in cities (a la Wuppertal, but more comprehensive layout). And its got to be less expensive than a subway.
Ive been on this, its a very clever system with bi-directional single track running and more. The stop for the S-Bahn railway is double track and is directly above the trains ... which are underground. Lifts make access very easy. The section which runs above the road is high enough for most road vehicles to pass below, but nevertheless there have been a few instances of the monorail cabins being hit by exceptionally tall road vehicles.
Excellent vid as always, but a piano version of "oops I did it again" playing under after mentioning "this is not the first time I'm making a video about..." LOL love it. And "you can go your own way" HA! Excellent.
Wow, and here was me thinking that me being able to get to uni via train using the only train station actually _on_ a uni campus in the UK (University Station, at the University of Birmingham) was a kind of neat bit of transport trivia :o
Thanks for covering my university. Such nice memories 💜