In the mid-20th century, Los Angeles came surprisingly close to building a sprawling monorail transit system. This documentary provides an in-depth study of how the idea developed, the problems it promised to solve, and the reasons it was ultimately never built.
Chapters:
0:00 – Intro
1:47 – Chapter I: Half-Baked, Hair-Brained Schemes
5:52 – Chapter II: Red-Taped Inertia
11:27 – Chapter III: A Deadly Competitor
18:38 – Chapter IV: Highways in the Sky
24:44 – Chapter V: Giving Audiences to Everything
29:32 – Chapter VI: A Dark-Ages Monstrosity
34:32 – Chapter VII: An Elevated Nightmare
41:16 – Chapter VIII: So Much Irresponsible Hogwash
47:24 – Epilogue & Credits
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Music:
“Bachelor on the Move” by Ritchie Everett
https://open.spotify.com/track/6hLUV0MU9DKZJTbdDuaJCL?si=aadca3c4e53e4489
“Small Talk and Lemonade” by The Fly Guy Five
https://open.spotify.com/track/4IgVJe6L9Syr11LTdPHJ5g?si=0b74266197794fce
“Blue Zones” by The Fly Guy Five
https://open.spotify.com/track/2zYSjt4p6U2WyGoy3oI8za?si=1dd00f935f514c41
“Stepping On It” by The Fly Guy Five
https://open.spotify.com/track/4A34qPcYKHMDpbgvqcy7XX?si=877e8bd356434d3c
“Nation on Wheels” / “The Monorail Song” (Tomorrowland 2055 Version)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rIOocUG16dk
“Vintage Dream” by Mathilda June
https://open.spotify.com/track/5B06PwX8d6drWdzDzDTlEu?si=493ffb4e00a9444c
“We Were Like That” by Franz Gordon
https://open.spotify.com/track/3WmWFMQRa6YuowPQ0bHklD?si=f3e5f85e8d214e5c
“Leaving Clues” by Ritchie Everett
https://open.spotify.com/track/5fs7pOx7EqtssCqW4cRcQe?si=1332c56df61f4738
“Tomorrow I’ll Be Gone” by Franz Gordon
https://open.spotify.com/track/3ocKf3gVD0lRQb94IQei05?si=d9707f258e5b4657
“A Time to Remember” by Ritchie Everett
https://open.spotify.com/track/2n8XFH2ZL0h0gHUaBIgMCz?si=cf1c0032ca3d4455
“There’s A Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow” performed by Rex Allen
https://open.spotify.com/track/1LFX9caGBvgcOh7mlhAbdh?si=afbddf4d85754880
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Engineering Reports & Proposals:
Monorail Feasibility Study (1954)
Explored whether monorail was economically feasible as a transit system for LA.
http://libraryarchives.metro.net/DPGTL/lamta/1958_lamta_monorail%20proposal.pdf
Transit Corridor Study (1959)
Analyzed commuter traffic patterns along 12 potential transit corridors, recommending four of these for further study (Covina, Long Beach, Santa Monica and Reseda).
http://libraryarchives.metro.net/DPGTL/lamta/1959-05-09-coverdale-colpitts-study.-public-transportation-needs%20area-served-lamta-determination-routes.pdf
Transit System Study (1960)
Analyzed numerous types of transit systems, recommending three for future study (conventional rail, suspended monorail and saddlebag monorail).
http://libraryarchives.metro.net/DPGTL/lamta/1960_jun2_progress_report_initial_consideration_systems_routings_mass_rapid_transit_program.pdf
Transit System Recommendation & Detailed Route Study (1960)
Presented the recommendation for a rubber-tired metro rail system, and detailed the placement and design of the transit routes & stations.
http://libraryarchives.metro.net/DPGTL/lamta/1960_aug26_comparative_analysis_rapid_transit_system.pdf
Backbone Route Study (1961)
Presented the recommendation for a steel-wheeled metro rail system as well as the shorter Backbone Route.
http://libraryarchives.metro.net/DPGTL/lamta/1961_kaiser_general_description_rapid_transit_system_backbone_route.pdf
Goodell Airport Line Proposal (1962)
Presented the plans to build a monorail line between downtown and LAX.
http://libraryarchives.metro.net/DPGTL/monorail/1962_goodell_monorail_proposal.pdf
Alweg Monorail Proposal (1963)
Presented the plans to build a transit network of three monorail lines.
http://libraryarchives.metro.net/DPGTL/monorail/1963_alweg_monorail_presentation.pdf
source
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Oh what could have been. Greed and bureaucracy at it’s worst.
Well, the KA area was going to get an actual, heavy rail metro, but a large engineering oopsie made sure that didn’t happen. Look up the Hollywood Blvd sinkhole, really unfortunate event that scared the public away from an underground metro.
They rejected it but still took the tax dollars.
L.A. is a stupid place to live.
Such a great video! What an interesting time in history and I love the old designs. I think that LA did fine by choosing light rail and you can see that they are getting close to 100 stations which I think is by far more access then would be the case with light rail. But who knows, maybe monorail would have worked and expanded greatly.
Thank you Peter for you hard work putting this together, although it broke my heart to how bad people were corrupted by personal gain an/or power and made bad decisions for us all in California. I always wonder why the Disney Monorail wasn't in the L.A. and Orange counties, not to mention the Bay area. I was also sadden when Disney took out the People mover and thought that could be used as feeder line(s) into the Monorail.
california adopted Illegals…hence any andvances go to the wayside
I thought I would watch the first few minutes of this video then move on to something else. I watched the entire film which I thought was well done. It would have been interesting to include how Tokyo, for instance, added serious rapid transit to help solve its traffic dilemma (They’ve had high speed rail for over 50 years). Other than the Germany reference, which is hard to equate to L.A., there are examples other countries doing the right thing to better manage public transportation. I only visit L.A. when I must. Traffic is exponentially worse now than ever.
The Simpsons monorail episode was priceless
51:13 i remember this world of tomorrow. More than once did i stare entranced at soaring verticals neatly segmented by black and chrome.
☺️🙏⚡️
Great video, brilliant. So informative, clear, – admirably elucidating. Only one momentary horror: "dozens of communities sprUng up … " Somewhere along the line good old "sprang" got abolished, along with the red trolleys, but no one told me.
Hare-brained.
that's because no one wants to get mugged on public transit
Big oil has been guilty of starting wars to kill off inconvenient democracies in the 3rd world, as well as knocking off a sitting president and a leading presidential candidate. Don't think for a minute they wouldn't influence pulling the plug on a real mass transit solution in greater LA.
That subway line is eventually what got built
The fundamental problem with the LA Monorail project is the same as the fundamental problem with LA itself: You cannot build a modern metropolitan city with tens of millions of people in just 2 dimensions and expect it to be easily navigable. The distances between any two points is nearly guaranteed to be too long for convenient travel, and improving the transit options will cut through too many other people's backyards, and naturally they will object. There's a reason why successful large cities like New York, London, Paris, Shanghai, etc., have vastly more governmental authority over the use of publicly-accessible spaces, even privately-owned publicly-accessible spaces, than your average American-style small town does.
Hair-brained sounds even worse than hare-brained
Living in Denmark, the story of American public transport amazes me. Even though our public transport are somewhat covered by tax, it makes tickets rather cheap and a substitute for having a car. Also the (ridiculous) taxes on cars here probably also increase the need for cheap transportation overall – and future plans for making city centers a ‘no car’ zone
A bourgeois defense of the incompetent nature (or non-existent nature) of a viable form of public transportation in a capitalist city.
This is how many pubilc transit projects in the west go, we study the problem to death then in the end build something half assed.
It went from LA to Sacramento.
Who wants to go there except the state legislatures.
I wonder if they would have seen the monorail at disneyland, if it would have made them want to build them all over the city or discourage them to not want to build it.
Holy crap, so George Roberts was the inspiration for the character Lyle Lanley in the Simpsons episode of Marge vs. the Monorail?? Conan O’Brien knew his LA history when writing that episode.
As usual corporatism, greed, corruption and a lack of authoritative accountability ruins another aspect of society. We could have had monorails. We could have had high speed rail. Ffs
9:47 It's not a conspiracy. It was the business plan. A conspiracy is just a plan. It's not a "modernization", it was civic sabotage.
45:10 And there it is. The MTA had spent the past 10+ years trying to make no railed public transportation system possible at all, and they succeeded. There's your 'conspiracy' in action.
49:06 This makes complete sense if the MTA knows that it can drag its feet on any project if it simply suggests a somewhat plausible idea that it knows the public/business/governor/legislature will never approve, and then sticks to it until the end, in the hopes that nothing happens and nothing changes. This is exactly what happened.
50:00 No, the MTA was under no legal requirement to take public input (and this naively assumes that no corruption was happening in the famously corrupt LA political scene) and the conservative political forces that rule LA to this day would never actually want to get rid of the car that makes millions of dollars a day for them. FFS there are oil derricks hidden in buildings in LA to this day.
50:20 So the conservative people that run LA politics were able to block all forms of railed mass transit for 40+ years, literally over a generation. That sounds like a win for them to me.
SUPERB!!!
EXCELLENT!!!
WONDERFUL!!!
You are so good at this; fascinating documentaries. The intro of this one is a master-class in how to engage an audience. You rival Ken Burns.
Greetings and thanks from England.
Yes, back in the 40s-70s private streetcars were almost always owned and run by the developers of a new division that it connected to the "city." Once the new division is fully developed and sold they didn't care as much about being a transit operator.
So LA sprawled due to mass transit (so did Dallas) and then when cars came along the abandoned the mass transit until the mass transit went out of business. Then when densification and more and more cars made too much traffic they wanted mass transit again.
stupid decision
Sadly, America is no longer able to provide its citizens with efficient mass transit. Americans always seem to find political, economic and social reasons why not to build a rapid transit system, in Los Angeles or anywhere else in our nation. We'll have to go to other countries to see and use high speed rail, monorail and fixed rail systems. We are no longer a nation capable of progress.
they had electric cars first fact
Born in San Gabriel CA in 1963. SG Is approximately 3 to 4 miles due south of Pasadena CA. I saw lot's of progress fwy's, bus routes, metro train, Pomona Fair, anyone remember "the Pike" in Long Beach?? A giant amusement park! Christmas Lane Parade thru Hollywood.
Rose Parade🌹Pasadena-Van Halen!
So yeah' all that said, I wanted to say thank you this well presented project. Can't say enough about the narration, subtle music, detailed drawings, moving pictures, explanations, in depth maps, proposed as well as finished. Imo I don't think any documentary that I've seen, quite compares at this level. Informative and award winning.
📢🥇🏆🏆
Mta suck’s. They played everyone too just buy cars
"The climate here attracts all kinds of schemers and promoters, as well as all kinds of suckers for them to work on."
Glad to see Los Angeles hasn't changed a bit in almost 100 years!
Spectacular, best ever work. Seeing so many of the resources we've been digitizing over the past 22 years used to tell this story and illustrate its details is amazing. We would hand you an Emmy if we could. –Metro Library Staff
Thank you for your videos I just started watching them very well done I’ve learned a lot from your videos and I thank you retired US Army Sargent Major Gamsby
Many thanks for filling in a lot of gaps in the LA transit saga. I'm a native of the San Gabriel Valley, and as a boy rode the Pacific Electric Monrovia-Glendora Line. Much of my knowledge comes from studying the railway history, and these books usually ignore the monorail proposals that never got off the ground (literally and figuratively)
Nice story Peter. This experience was one of the most frustrating outcomes for Walt. It was also good to see the Seattle Century 21 World's Fair too. A great memory for me! Thank you for publishing this episode. Bob
As usual politics politicians will never let it happen They never do what's good for the city they do what's good for their pocketbook
I think it sounds like when they started their secret underground rails.