Building a Monorail Is the Way to Go
It has been over 50 years since the ostrich farm near Lincoln Park closed, but a lot of us still have our heads in the sand. Unlike Los Angeles, Las Vegas has found the courage to erect a monorail (“Vegas Visitors to Zip Along Strip,” Aug. 15).
Save for Disneyland, monorails have never gotten the nod elsewhere in California. We built freeways and continue to inconvenience motorists by widening them. Nerve-racking congestion is in the near term for the San Diego Freeway. Gridlock abounds in the east-west Santa Monica Freeway corridor and Wilshire Boulevard is stop and go.
Why wasn’t a monorail system considered in these areas? It only takes up four feet of a street or freeway without impeding traffic flow and, unlike light rail (which is also a good idea), there is no cross-traffic and potential for accidents. It’s clean-burning and quiet. It’s also a lot less expensive than building subways.
It’s time to do what Seattle and Las Vegas are doing and take a gamble. Let’s put in a monorail. It’ll save homes from demolition and the need to expand more freeways.
Don A. Norman
Los Angeles
The article about the plan to build a monorail in Las Vegas raises the question of why this option seems to have been dropped from L.A.’s mass transit needs. In various articles published in The Times in the ‘70s, monorail systems were always the least expensive and fastest to implement. Realistically, no system using existing streets and freeways, especially one using buses, is going to solve the time and distance problems that keep commuters in their cars.
L.A. is 50 years behind in setting up basic, separate mass transit, and the time it seems to take to build projects makes them obsolete before construction even starts: 13 years for the Exposition Boulevard light-rail line? If it can still be put up quickly and cheaply, a monorail would seem to be a better solution not only for this route but for other disputed routes like Chandler Boulevard or Wilshire Boulevard, and even the much-desired route from the West Valley to LAX.
Rick Mitchell
Los Angeles
