Monorail Plan Still on Board
By David Slade, The Post and Courier, Charleston, S.C.
Dec. 19–Given the struggles the Charleston area has seen over financing a public bus system, one can only imagine trying to round up investors for a new type of monorail.
The Futrex company of North Charleston has been at it for 10 years and still is trying. Company President Byron Waldman says he has reason to be encouraged that Futrex soon could land private financing or a contract to build one of its systems.
“We are very encouraged by conversations and discussions going on in several areas both international and domestic,” said Waldman.
The Charleston Citywide Local Development Corp. recently helped out by deciding the company need not make any payments on a taxpayer-financed loan worth roughly $1.7 million for up to three more years.
Futrex came to the Charleston area with bold plans for a new mass-transit system and the hope that 1,000 people could be employed building it. The company received a loan of $1.25 million in federal seed money and was supposed to have started paying the money back, with interest, in June.
“If it existed today, I’d be riding it to work,” said Charleston Citywide LDC Director Sharon Brennan.
The LDC is a nonprofit arm of the city of Charleston that helps businesses with loans, most notably a $10 million loan that helped build Charleston Place. LDC is awaiting repayment of that loan.
Futrex has plans for a high-speed, low-cost monorail that would be unusual in that the cars would not sit atop a beam, as monorails do, but would hang from the side of a beam so that cars could travel in both directions at once. A quarter-scale model of the system was demonstrated for then-Vice President Al Gore in 1998, and a plan that won some federal financing called for a working, $35 million Futrex system serving Charleston International Airport.
Congress appropriated more than $6 million for the project from 1998 through 2000, but the money went unspent for lack of private matching funds. Efforts by Futrex to win state funding from South Carolina and the State Infrastructure Bank were unsuccessful five years ago.
Monorails serve as little more than tourist attractions in the United States in Las Vegas and Seattle and, most famously, at Walt Disney World. But they are common and popular forms of transportation in other parts of the world, particularly in Asia.
“In Japan, they are more willing to try new things,” said Kim Pedersen, president and founder of The Monorail Society in Seattle. “That’s why they have had high-speed trains since the 1950s.”
Pedersen said he’d like to see Futrex succeed, but understands why it might have trouble finding a customer for a system that’s never been built.
“Nobody wants to be a guinea pig,” he said. “Most of the world uses monorail technology where the train straddles a beam. It’s accepted because it’s been proven.
“Futrex, in my opinion, needs to get a full-scale prototype that can carry people,” Pedersen said. “Where’s the hardware? That’s what I always say.”
Building a full-scale demonstration system always has been Futrex’s plan. The original goal, a loop from the airport to the Charleston Area Convention Center, fell by the wayside for lack of investment dollars.
One year ago, Futrex, through its local government sponsor, CARTA, asked the Federal Transit Administration for permission to use the roughly $6 million in federal money to build a smaller and less expensive prototype at the former Navy base.
“There has been no progress that I know of,” said Howard Chapman, director of the Charleston Area Regional Transportation Authority. No CARTA money is spent on Futrex, but its sponsorship allows federal money earmarked by Congress to flow from the Federal Transit Administration to Futrex.
Brennan said the LDC board approved the restructuring of Futrex’s loan around the time the company was due to make its first $60,000 payment.
“The board felt it was in the best interest of everyone involved,” Brennan said. “The repayment of the loan is (now) based upon the company receiving a contract for commercialization of the system — in other words, they receive a contract to install the system in some locale.”
And if there’s no contract, the first payment on the loan won’t be due until 2008.
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