Monorail is a guided transport system where vehicles run on a single track, rail or concrete beam. By extension, the term applies to any type of vehicle using a rail or guide beam. Monorail vehicles are wider than the guideway that supports them.
They quickly find suitable and efficient applications in the transport of goods on mountainous or uneven terrain, where conventional solutions would have been more expensive or even impossible to implement. As technologies become more refined, structures become longer and the rail gradually moves significantly away from the ground. A few modest passenger transport projects are emerging, mainly exploiting the possibility offered to passengers to be positioned at height.
Excerpt from the patent filed by Henry Robinson Palmer in 1821. This is the second patent in the world filed for a monorail system and the very first for an elevated and suspended railway system.
From the second half of the 19th century, several monorails were installed on fairly short lines at universal exhibitions in Europe and the United States to cross the sites while offering a panoramic viewpoint.
It was at this time, taking advantage of the exceptional excitement of the exhibitions of the time, that the monorail — half a unique means of transport, half an attraction in its own right — became a desirable innovation, whose imagination would continue to run wild, in total contradiction with the contexts and real needs of urbanized territories. We then witnessed fantasies of a future life that were more or less achievable.
The monorail has not yet been used in Algeria, but it is part of the solutions considered in the past and for the future.
In 1954, there was a raging debate between choosing an underground metro or a monorail to facilitate traffic in the Algerian capital.
Prefiguration of the Algiers monorail, 1954
The supporters of the monorail, to show the relevance of this means of transport, will carry out an experimental section tested in 1960. Unfortunately, its development will remain without follow-up, in particular because the authorities of the time were more attracted by the proposal of the metro, and also, that two years later, Algeria gains its independence and the decision-makers change.
Testing the Safege monorail in Algiers, 1960
However, the idea of a monorail for Algiers resurfaces, but for long-distance transport (instead of urban transport that is too expensive and whose global experience is doomed to failure) like the project presented by the company COSIDER in 2014 for a line between the SAFEX of Algiers to the new city of Sidi Abdellah or that of 2023 presented by the wali of Algiers, Mohamed Abdenour Rabhi who had mentioned a simulation for a 67 km network. The first line would connect the city of Bananas to Sidi Abdallah passing through strategic points such as the Great Mosque of Algiers. A second line would serve Bir Mourad Raïs, Birtouta and other key areas. As for the Minister of the Interior at the time, Brahim Merad, he had mentioned:
"For the moment, it is only an idea that needs deeper reflection given the importance of the project" ... "We could move towards registering this project as long as it contributes to achieving the objective of decongesting the capital in terms of transport."
In November 2024, the Chinese construction giant CRCC (China Railway Construction Corporation) will also present a monorail project in Algiers at the International Public Works Exhibition (SITP 2024).
A model based on their achievements in China and which have been crowned with success, because as it explains "instead of putting all the traffic on a single road, we can build another road above so as not to take up too much land".
Concretely, nothing has been signed yet and all this remains only project ideas, yet the very idea of the monorail seems to excite the people of Algiers. We are still at the reflection stage and choices will have to be made.
The next article is on the rail.
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