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polisMOBILITY 2023: Monocab – the visionary monorail

Monocab – these are gyrostabilized cabins that can utilize the railway system of the German railway. The clever part is that these pods balance on just one of the two rails. This allows traffic to occur in opposite directions on a single track.

Monocab - a monorail that allows traffic in opposite directions on a single track. | Photo: T. Kanzler
Monocab - a monorail that allows traffic in opposite directions on a single track. | Photo: T. Kanzler
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Each cabin accommodates four to six passengers. Many of these autonomous cabins can travel simultaneously in both directions and can be ordered like taxis for individual trips. The goal of the Monocab project is to become the central mode of transport for sustainable mobility in rural regions.

In the past, many rural areas were accessible by train with the so-called railbus. The wine-red diesel railcars were long considered the saviors of the branch lines, as their relatively inexpensive operation at least delayed the discontinuation of these little-used rail routes. Many of these rail routes have since been decommissioned, meaning they have been removed from the official rail network of the railway. The tracks often still exist, but could only be reintegrated into the DB rail network with immense effort.

"Our cabins can use tracks that are too old or too poor for the railway. Our cabin has an axle load of just 1.2 tons, whereas the tracks in regular train operations have to withstand at least 12 tons per axle. You can imagine that with the Monocab, we could even use bridges that have long been unusable for the railway," explains Fabian Kottmeier, who is responsible for the technical project coordination.

Ready-to-drive monorail vehicles from the project consortium comprising the Technical University of Ostwestfalen-Lippe, the University of Applied Sciences Bielefeld, and the Fraunhofer Society are already running on an abandoned railway line. The concept from East Westphalia is thus already well advanced.

What does this mean?

By 2027, the "test operational phase" is to be realized on a stretch of 1,000 meters – bringing the vision of rural life with modern, individual, and sustainable mobility within reach!

Translated automatically from German.
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