One of my favorite little-known tidbits of Los Angeles traffic history is the Alweg monorail proposal in 1963. The Alweg Monorail Company offered to finance an

One of my favorite little-known tidbits of Los Angeles traffic history is the Alweg monorail proposal in 1963. The Alweg Monorail Company offered to finance and build a 43 mile monorail system, which would be repaid with MTA revenues. The proposal got derailed when Standard Oil lobbied heavily against it. I'm convinced that if this proposal had gotten approved and built, the trajectory of public transportation in Los Angeles would have been significantly different, and the city would probably have a very efficient and extensive monorail system now. Los Angeles seems to be the perfect place for a monorail - it can be built around existing structures and doesn't require underground tunneling. I'm not sure that Los Angeles would be a 'car city' now if we had started building this monorail system 50 years ago. http://www.monorails.org/tMspages/LA1963.html http://www.monorails.org/tMspages/LA1963.html