Enough of Lost Streets and the past for a while and on to what could have been (and still could be) the future.
In 1956, when the survival of Liverpool Overhead was being fought for, and lost, a model of its potential replacement was shown in Liverpool by the International Monorail Company. The £2000 model was for a suspended railway to run between London and London Airport, carrying 60 passengers at up to 70 mph.
I am a great fan of monorails. Their installation appears to cause far less disruption than trams and are visually more stimulating. They also have a wow factor which Liverpool is ideally suited to benefit from. Imagine a monorail linking the city along the waterfront out to John Lennon Airport! Liverpool needs ambitious transport infrastructure projects. John Alexander Brodie, as City Engineer, was a man of great vision – planning the orbital Queens Drive, the first major modern inter-city road connection (the East Lancs Road) as well as the Mersey Tunnel. He saw the necessity of building a proper transport network to ensure economic growth and the argument is no different today, with the pressure building up to extend HS2 into Liverpool directly. What is important is not just to cut journey times to London and provide faster and more efficient freight transport (particularly with the new L2 Container project well underway) but also to make sure we have a more efficient and environmentally sound internal network. I think monorails are well worth another look.



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