The only way is up

Anyone who has ever inched towards their destination in a car in Dublin's city-centre rush-hour traffic will have some understanding of the mayhem that the construction of Luas will bring to the city's already choked streets. Indeed, in August the Minister for Public Enterprise, Mary O'Rourke, received the latest report from the Light Rail Advisory and Action Group, which seemed remarkably understated when it mentioned the public restraint which will be required when construction gets into full swing.

Among all of the pages documenting the "slippage in timetable" for the Luas project and updates on platform dimensions, the chairman of the group, Dr Pβdraig White, concluded "an immense degree of co-operation, efficiency and goodwill" would be necessary from all parties concerned when the system is being put in place.

Even though the city centre section of the project is to go underground, Luas will undoubtedly play havoc with city traffic when tracks are being laid, tunnels dug and platforms constructed.

But if city planners had taken their lead from Sydney during the four years they consulted on the finer points of the Luas plan, they might have found another way of dealing with Dublin's traffic problems. Its name is monorail. The idea is a pretty simple one. If you don't want to suffer the expense and delay of tunnelling under city streets or don't favour the idea of on-street tracks taking up valuable car space on narrow roads, simply build upwards.

There are more than 1,000 monorail systems in operation in 58 countries worldwide. The cheapest system costs US$4 million per kilometre and unlike other modes of public transport, many monorail systems turn a profit.

The Sydney monorail's carriages are mounted on a single steel rail about a metre wide. It is all suspended approximately 20 feet in the air on a number of steel support columns rooted to the pavement below. The track weaves around city streets for four kilometres, with passengers embarking and disembarking from Bullet Train-style carriages along the route at platforms suspended in the air.

It is both clean and quiet. And because it doesn't share the sky with any other traffic, it never has to stop at a traffic light. Rather, it zooms its passengers from A to B over the heads of vehicles on the ground which have to negotiate all manner of delays.

It is the kind of system that would fit neatly into Dublin streets. In Sydney it's all a bit of a joke, as the project has been far from a roaring success, financially speaking.

However, that is because it is seen as a tourist attraction more than a general mode of transport, probably because it doesn't service the most densely populated parts of the city. Most Sydney residents use the city's excellent rail network which, for many, negates the need for the monorail.

But with the right routes in Dublin, it could remove the need for any other mode of public transport. Recent Australian research has shown the most modern monorail systems are capable of travelling at up to 50 miles per hour in silence and can move up to 80,000 people every hour on short suburban routes - a load which beats heavy rail networks. Monorails regularly operate at 99.9 per cent reliability. Reportedly, the entire system takes about six months to construct for a track under 10 kilometres.

And this system has one other advantage. On hot days, when the sun is beating down on the pavement, Sydney pedestrians can be found seeking refuge in the shade of the monorail. In Dublin, no doubt, pedestrians could make their journeys beneath the track, sheltering from a different element - the Irish rain.