All costing I've seen for elevated tracks is actually significantly cheaper than at grade or underground options. I used to be on my local government and worked

All costing I've seen for elevated tracks is actually significantly cheaper than at grade or underground options. I used to be on my local government and worked with the state government on a number of transport projects so I can't cite sources directly. This website has some comparisons, but obviously is biased towards monorails. https://www.monorailsaustralia.com.au/ https://www.monorailsaustralia.com.au/ If you look at countries such as Japan that asides from population density have a very relaxed attitude to multifloor buildings having entrances at different levels you can see successful elevated railway implementations because the stations are integrated to existing large buildings such as malls, hotels & commercial offices. One thing I've noticed in Sydney was people don't tend to look up if their not expecting something, so in Chinatown and Koreatown (We don't really have a Japantown yet but Sydney Central Park is getting there) buildings have advertisements on the other floors to let people know they are upstairs. In the rest of the city you can walk past a building and have no idea who the tenants are on the other floors. This also stopped Sydney from noticing the (in hindsight) blatantly obvious, almost Jetsonesque monorail stations right above their heads.