Originally Posted by
fairviewroad
The older DFW system had a land-side AND an air-side component, IIRC. I believe the air-side component mainly served the AA terminals. I only rode the air-side component, but I recall that it was certainly adequate. The fact that it was 1974 technology makes the EWR train seem even worse. Heck, even Disneyland could have done a better job.
The old DFW system was pretty bad, but it was functional.
As far as the reasons for the EWR monorails problems, there is not nearly enough transparency in the Port Authority system to know what the problem is.
What little public information there is states that Von Roll (then acquired by Adtranz and ultimately by Bombardier) was the low bidder, but that the system ended up costing $354 million.
Here is a pretty detailed explanation of the problems from the NY Times:
http://www.nytimes.com/1996/05/30/ny...adtranz&st=cse
The problems were evident that far back and the P.A. was already planning to use a more standard technology for the JFK AirTrain.
I think most likely what happened is that the P.A. acquired a technology that simply did not live up to its promise at Newark.
This is my favorite excerpt:
Airport managers said the monorail would allow people to move quickly from the parking lots to their terminals instead of having to wait for a shuttle bus. More important, those taking the monorail will know how long it takes to get to their terminals and will not have to worry about traffic tie-ups.
"There will be no more people saying, 'I got to the airport in 10 minutes but it took me 30 minutes to travel around the terminals,' " said John J. Haley Jr., deputy executive director of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.