Quote:
Originally Posted by eisenwurst
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In the 1980s, at vast expense, a monorail was built for Sydney. It travelled in a big circuit around the CBD. There were plans to extend it out to the inner suburbs.
It was a bit "touristy" but it was a great way to save a lot of legwork to get from one end of the city to the other.
It lasted for about 20 years until the current City Council decided it didn't fit in with their "Vision". A bunch of "Sirius Cybernetic" clones ( Douglas Adams reference ) they are.
Anyway, here's a bit of now vanished history. The City Council tore it down, at vast expense. 
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That was very interesting. Way back 60 years ago, Disneyland opened a monorail system, that shuttles visitors to various destinations in the park complex. The company that built the monorail for Disney, Alweg, since they were already building at Disneyland, offered to build a monorail system for the City of Los Angeles Downtown area and they offered to build the system at their, Alweg's, cost. The offer was made because Alweg wanted to use the proposed Downtown LA system as a sort of showpiece demonstrator to sell the idea to other US cities. What stopped the proposal was bad timing; there was a big push by, mainly, three corporate lobbying interests: bus manufacturers (GM, Mack, etc.), the Big Oil companies, and the Tire Companies (Goodyear, Firestone, etc.). These special interests had already started to pressure for the dismantlement of the area's streetcar and subsidiary rail systems in favor of their preferred choice, buses. When Alweg made their offer and the City seemed to be leaning towards accepting it, the lobbies went into full offense and persuaded, (i.e., contributed heavily to politicians campaigns) and got the deal quashed; after all, monorails didn't require tires, gasoline or much oil, and the Big Auto/Bus Makers did make monorail cars. It is really galling to know that an efficient, modern rail system could have been started way back then for a very low price and, now, the local governments are spending billions now to create a system of light rail and subway systems to counteract the negative impact of an overly large concentration on cras, and, yes, buses...
Yesterland: Disneyland-Alweg Monorail System --
https://www.yesterland.com/monorail.html
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