Primarily designed to avoid interface with auto transportation infrastructure and vehicles, elevated rail systems and their supporting structures can create negative and disruptive impacts on existing settings and development patterns, as well as, complicate interface with other modes of transportation. The complete physical transformation of immediate environments through which elevated rail structures pass seldom improves local settings or environments; and most often divides, or disrupts the continuity of neighborhoods in which they are built.
Designed as exclusive and separate railway systems, elevated rail structures and track systems are not easily integrated into local or regional transportation systems. Transition, connection and interface between elevated rail and other transportation modes require conscious design and planning. Design criteria for the location and interconnection of elevated rail systems with other components of regional and local transportation networks should guide the elevated rail system development process from beginning to end.
