DC Metro to Disney monorail: apt comparison?

In the latest congressional oversight hearing about Washington, DC’s troubled Metrorail system held by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, Rep. Daniel Webster (R-FL), whose district includes Walt Disney World, compared Metro with Disney’s monorail system. Walt Disney World is the world’s most visited theme park, located 15 miles southwest of Orlando in Lake Buena Vista, FL.

“I have never seen [Disney’s monorail] broken in the 30-some years they’ve been there,” said Webster, “and we have a lot of people riding [it]. We have 66 million people that come to my district every year.”

Webster was widely panned for likening the nation’s second busiest subway, with 91 stations and 117 track miles in and around the capital city, with an amusement park ride. But I dug deeper to find out the extent to which the Walt Disney World monorail is actually a transit system, rather than simply a thrill ride, and whether federal and state regulators treat it as such. We also wanted to find out how the monorail’s safety record stacks up with that of Metro.

Disney’s monorail opened with two lines (serving the Magic Kingdom, two resort hotels, and the Ticket Center) in 1971, five years before the first section of Metro opened in 1976. The monorail has been extended twice: to Epcot Center in 1982 and to the Grand Floridian Resort in 1988. The system now totals 14.7 miles and five stations, including a non-revenue segment connecting to the maintenance yard. 

Disney’s fleet consists of 12 six-car Mark VI trains built by Bombardier Transportation that have operated since 1989. These replaced the original fleet of Mark IV trains built by Martin Marietta. Metro, by contrast, operates 1,126 railcars from five different manufacturers, delivered in seven phases between 1976 and 2015.

The Disney monorail caries over 150,000 daily riders, making it the world’s second most patronized monorail system (behind one in Chongqing, China) and ranking it ahead of Los Angeles Metro Rail (subway only), but behind Atlanta’s MARTA rail system. Washington’s Metro carries an average 836,800 weekday riders. However, the monorail carries many more daily riders per track mile than Metro does (10,204 for Disney, compared to 7,152 for WMATA).

Since 2007, the monorail has undergone plans and tests with the aim of converting the system to fully automated operation, but has not yet been able to achieve that goal. Metrorail used fully automated operation from its inception until June 2009, when in the aftermath of a deadly crash on the Red Line, it returned to manual operation, with automation only used in a very limited fashion since 2015.

Metro’s problems with deferred maintenance and safety lapses have been well documented, but the Disney monorail has not been without its issues. It has only witnessed one fatality. On July 5, 2009, a train operator was killed in a collision caused by a botched attempt to switch a train from one line to another in order to return it to the maintenance facility for the night. Instead of completing the switch, the train (carrying no passengers) began to roll backward and slammed into another train that was carrying a handful of passengers. After that incident, Disney installed “new safety sensors to monitor track switches," according to a note to employees reported by the Orlando Sentinel. The fatal accident also ended the practice of allowing up to five passengers at a time to ride in the cab with the operator.

More recently, on Oct. 10, 2015, monorail riders were stranded aboard trains for hours due to a power failure. Without air conditioning, the trains quickly became saunas in the Florida heat, forcing passengers to remove the windows for fresh air. Passengers were rescued from one train by cherry pickers, while a diesel-powered tower pulled two other trains to the nearest station for evacuation.

While Wikipedia describes Disney’s monorail as a “public transit system,” and it is shown as one on Google Maps (along with the train that encircles the Magic Kingdom, the streetcar on “Main Street USA,” and the “Planet Watch train” in Disney’s Animal Kingdom), it is unclear the extent to which Disney must follow the same industry standards as other transit systems. Florida statute (Title XXXVI, Chapter 616) defines an “amusement ride” as a conveyance “on, along, around, over or through a fixed or restricted course within a defined area for the purpose of giving its patrons amusement, pleasure, thrills or excitement.” While there is no question that a ride like Space Mountain, and even the Magic Kingdom train, meets that definition, the monorail does not fit squarely in that box as it serves to move people around the park and not simply to provide a thrill. 

The same statute, which requires amusement park rides to obtain an annual permit for operation from the state Department of Agriculture and Consumer Affairs (DACA) that is issued upon completion of an affidavit of inspection, exempts “permanent facilities that employ at least 1,000 full-time employees and that maintain full-time, in-house safety inspectors” — a category that presumably includes Disney’s monorail. Such facilities must still file an annual affidavit of inspection with DACA, and the law provides that DACA “may consult annually with the permanent facilities regarding industry safety programs.” Florida Department of Transportation spokesman Steve Olson confirmed that it does not exercise any oversight over Disney, as the agency considers it to be a private operation rather than a public conveyance. On the federal level, the US Department of Transportation appears to have no oversight over Disney, but the National Transportation Safety Board and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, along with the state DACA, performed investigations of the monorail after the fatal 2009 crash. 

A 2005 Associated Press article, which came after a 4-year-old boy died on Disney World’s “Mission: Space” ride in June of that year, reported that Disney World and other major theme parks “are exempt from most Florida laws governing carnival and amusement park rides.” The article attributed this exemption to the theme park industry’s political clout with the state legislature. On the federal level, traveling carnival rides are subject to Consumer Product Safety Commission oversight, but not fixed-location amusement park rides — presumably because the latter are not involved in interstate commerce.

So while a comparison of Washington Metro and the Disney monorail may not exactly be apples to apples, the two share remarkable similarities. The main difference is that Disney’s system is completely privately owned and financed and maintained in-house, and operates completely within a privately-owned facility, whereas Metrorail is owned by a public agency that receives funding and direction from nine different governmental units.