To the editor:
Re: "Tokyo's past and future make a perfect present," March 30.
Ted Davis must be a young man, discovering with enthusiasm what is old hat for the rest of us.
The Yurikamome (black seagull), an automated guided transit system that opened in the mid-'90s, is not a monorail but a transit system with sets of wheels on each side that run on tracks. Like all automated guided transit systems in Japan, France and a few other countries, the wheels have rubber tires and run on two parallel concrete tracks.
I'm surprised Mr. Davis hasn't mentioned what everyone not familiar with an AGT cannot fail to notice when ready to board the Yurikamome in the downtown station at Shimbashi. The tracks are separated from the platform by glass walls with sliding doors that open once the cars have stopped and line up with the car doors. This safety feature is found in all the AGTs used either as city transit or airport transit. SkyTrain and the Docklands Light Rail Transit in London are two of the very few that don't have these platform walls.
Most of the striking buildings on Odaiba go back to the mid-1990s, too-hardly 22nd century. I'm also disappointed by his fuss about the tea ceremony and ikebana-not that they aren't interesting but they are such cliches about Japan
Jean-Louis Brussac, Coquitlam
