Persistent Phantoms

Yonks ago I struck up an acquaintance with the fellow who wrote the email you’ll find over the fold. He wanted to promote urban monorail as a mass transit system, and I saw benefit in helping him. I provided some HTML authoring and scrubbed up his dowdy website, but soon found the man to be not just obsessed with his pursuit, but dangerously one-eyed ideologically as well as just a little disingenuous of his promotion of a specific manufacturer for said urban mass transit system.

We parted company when his political allegiances began to cloud both his reason and the ultimate aim of lobbying for an efficient mass transit system as an adjunct to what already exists. Strangely, even after several years, it seems he still cannot manage his email address lists sufficiently to delete mine from his polemic posts berating the Beattie government for their corrupt lack of foresight in not taking on his proposals.
The following email was sent out in response to this article in the Courier Mail. He makes at least one appearance in the comments to the tale, although I suspect a few more are him as well. The fellows name is Robert Mcjannett, previously a wanna-be National Party candidate and most recently an independent candidate for the seat of Redcliffe. He failed miserably both times, due almost entirely to his fixation on the monorail issue and not offering the voters anything of real substance. Probably a good thing, given his stated allegiance to Eurotren Monoviga S.A. (EMSA), a Spanish company which developed a system of magnetic levitation using linear induction motors, for whom he is the sole Australian representative. Something Robert Mcjannett rarely, if ever brings into his ‘discussions’ with opponents of his hobby horse.
I don’t know, and at this point, could care a whole lot less but I strongly suspect that cost-benefit analyses put to politicians by knowledgeable, non-partisan experts have shown that a maglev train concept turns out to be a whole lot more expensive to construct and maintain than does the presently understood light-rail / tram technology. Add in Mcjannett’s abrasive personality, and you’ve probably arrived at just why he’s never succeeded in selling his ideas to the establishment. Anyway, Brisbanites, have a gander and probably a chuckle, at a long proposed alternative to Chairman Beattie’s ‘newly proposed’ light rail project.

From: Robert Mcjannett [skyrail1@bigpond.net.au]
Sent: Monday, 16 July 2007 11:22 AM
To: Undisclosed-Recipient:;
Subject: Trams and corruption
The Brisbane light rail project was scrapped 5 years ago for very good reasons. Trams clog the streets, kill pedestrians, cause huge law suits, require enormous taxpayer subsidies to operate and are very expensive to construct. When the Brisbane Light Rail project was scrapped I made a public prediction on the sunshinemonorail.com web site that it would return in a few years. The kick backs and incentives on offer by the tram manufacturers and road construction companies is just too big a carrot for our corrupt politicians to ignore.
Road construction companies like the idea of reinventing trams in Brisbane because everywhere the tram goes the road will be torn up and reconstructed at an enormous cost. The only possible winners from this hair brain scheme are the tramway suppliers and construction companies. The big losers will be the Queensland taxpayers and the commuting public who are about to be ripped off in excess of $750 million dollars to end up with a second rate mass transit system that competes with road traffic and kills pedestrians. There will also be major disruption and bankruptcies to businesses along the route during construction.
The only logical solution to the transport problem in Brisbane is to build a modern mass transit monorail system overlayed down existing roadways. There are presently no mass transit monorail systems operating in Australia. The 3 monorail systems operating in Australia are all Von-Roll theme park people mover class monorails, they are not modern mass transit monorails like the ones presently under construction in countless cities throughout the world.
The corrupt transport studies being carried out in SEQ have all wrongfully pointed to the Sydney monorail as an example of monorail technology. This is a deception tactic being used to muddy up the water and confuse the public. To study an example of modern monorail technology one must look overseas to cities like Kuala Lumpur, Tokyo, and Las Vegas. Many cities like Cairo, Jakarta, Tehran, Dhaka, and Mumbai are turning to mass transit monorail systems due to their ease of constuction down the centre of crowded streets without the need for tunnelling or disrupting businesses.
The Queensland Government and Brisbane City Council are ignoring this wonderful technology because there are no kick backs in it for them. Should anyone require an essay on modern monorail technolgy or the drawbacks of light rail please contact me at the address below. Click on the link for the tabloid story.
http://www.news.com.au/couriermail/story/0,23739,22079627-5003406,00.html
Robert Mcjannett
President-A.F.U.M.E.S.
Director- Skyrail Australia
skyrail1@bigpond.net.au