Chiba Urban Monorail

[Odainsaker 2,137]

I've recently been watching YouTube videos by Rambalac of long-take, un-narrated, high-definition walking adventures in Japan, and Rambalac's latest video riding the Chiba Urban Monorail might be of interest here:

 

I've ridden a monorail before, but it was not the suspended type like this, which provides here a peculiar view of the Tokyo region's urban jungle.  As the video is in 4K, watch it full screen or on a large television so you can really see the cityscape through the cab windows.

While no doubt engineered very carefully, this is "heroic" construction in the sense that the infrastructure feels almost absurdly large and lofty, as if it were infrastructure built solely for the coolness of building infrastructure.  William Gibson wrote in Neuromancer that the arcologies of the zaibatsu of the dystopian future would be in Chiba, and now I can see they will be connected by towering monorail.  I will admit Chiba's looks like it would be an irresistible magnet for some giant, radioactive monster to tear through while us hapless passengers trapped in the suspended cars scream in movie terror.

 

[Glenni 1,447]

Haha, nice! I recently found about another suspended monorail one in Germany, this one looks really cool, with the old steel girders and the like.