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Monorail: Does Yesterday's Tomorrow Have a Future in the Present?

It comes as a surprise to many urbanists and architectural students that many high modernists were also, in a real

sense, romantics, whimsically in love with the fantasy of progress. Perhaps chief among romantic modernists, in the sense

of being most definitively such, was Walt Disney. At the same time as his studio produced the string of Germanic princess

fairy-tale movies for which it is now synonymous, Disney made plans to cryogenically preserve himself after death, and

obsessed over plans to develop a new community for workers in central Florida, a car-free high-modernist garden city (or,

some would say, panopticon) with separated uses connected by pod cars and monorail transit. It was meant to be a new

vision for American urbanism, for the future of sustainable living, an Experimental Prototypal Community Of Tomorrow -

EPCOT. Upon his death, it was considered too unprofitable and outlandish, and was whittled down to the permanent

world's fair of EPCOT Center. All that ultimately remained of the intensity of Disney's modernist vision was this,

Tomorrowland, and the monorail.

To the extent many American suburbanites have experienced mass transit, it was probably first a monorail at a

Disney park. This has created a schism of ironic remove in the way monorail is percieved in the United States, inextricably

linking it with fantasy – and, by extension, with both idealistic romance and unserious whimsy. Ultimately, it has been

consigned to the symbolism of an amusement park ride, something entirely other than transit. In this sense, monorail

receives short shrift. Despite a record of unsatisfied financial claims as well as various social and technical challenges, the

promise of monorail technology to provide much-needed high-level transit services at a competitive cost remains

essentially sound. It has demonstrated its value in many applications abroad, and planners should reconsider monorail

with a less jaundiced perspective so North American cities can best respond to the environmental and logistical challenges

of the 21st century.

First, however, we must understand what makes monorail unique from other rail systems. A monorail is any

railway that derives its support from a single beamway or structure. The Monorail Society, an interest group, expands upon

this definition:

A single rail serving as a track for passenger or freight vehicles. In most cases rail is elevated, but monorails can also

run at grade, below grade or in subway tunnels. Vehicles are either suspended from or straddle a narrow guideway.

Monorail vehicles are wider than the guideway that supports them. (1999)

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The two basic types of monorails were identified in 1963 by Frank Greenwood, who noted that monorails of some

sort had been conceived as early as 1821:

The monorail concept has a long history, the date of the earliest recorded proposal being 1821. Since the art is so

old, designs have varied considerably…. One in the German industrial city of Wuppertal has been in service s ince

1901. The current technology can be divided into suspended and supported [i.e., straddle] monorails. An example of

the overhead suspended type is the SAFEGE system. Developed in France, the train is hung on pneumatic tires that

run inside a hollow metal tube. The tube (rail) is held up by T-shaped supports or by A-frames. The train is

electrically powered and can attain speeds up to 60 miles per hour. It can accommodate up to 147 passengers

(seated and standing)…. *In a supported monorail,+ traction is via rubber sandwich steel wheels. The track is

supported on T-shaped columns. Operating speeds of up to 75 miles per hour are possible. (Greenwood, 26-27)

Originally, these monorails were suspended, as in the historic Schwebebahn (literally “swing-rail”) of Wuppertal,

Germany. This was arguably the first monorail as we understand it, and is still in regular passenger service today. Over a

century later, Germans still prefer suspended monorails; Siemens has recently produced systems for the University of

Dortmund and the Dusseldorf airport, and the term “schwebebahn” has become both synonymous enough with German

monorails specifically and suspended monorails generally that a recent Google monorail investment in a suspended system

(actively powered by human cyclists) refers to itself as the Shweeb. These systems also exist in regular passenger operation

outside of Germany, most notably in Chiba City, Japan.

Much more popular, however, and more immediately recognizable as a monorail to the layman, is the straddle

monorail, which straddles a single steel rail or concrete beamway. The typical setup involves “drive” tires or wheels riding

along the top of the beam while the system is supported from the sides, and secured from derailing, by (typically

redundant) columns of “guide” tires or wheels running underneath the length of passenger carriages along both sides of

the beamway. The train is almost invariably propelled by electricity received from a third rail or rigid wire running the

length of the track, which is converted to forward motion via friction (in the case of rubber-tired systems) or traction (as

with steel-on-steel systems). These systems are inherently less complicated than suspended monorails, and thus are the

dominant form of monorail today outside of central Europe.

Whether suspended or straddled, there are other real differences shared by all monorails that distinguish them

from other rail technologies. Some are liabilities: one of their most significant ones is in switching. It is not impossible to

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switch tracks on a monorail; this is done routinely with almost every monorail system. But these switches are notably

larger and more complex than conventional rail switches and fall into two main types: rotary (as can be seen on most

peoplemovers and modern steel roller coasters, given that the rails are of unibody construction and the roller-coaster cars

are fastened to the rail in a similar way) or segmented (which in a way are more like traditional track switches, as a

segmented section of track actively slides or bends over to connect with a different section of track).

However, there are other differences that are more ambiguous. Given the prominence of the beamway and third-

rail, pedestrians or motorists cannot cross a monorail track at grade. Therefore, monorails have to be separated from

traffic. This can mean running on the ground in its own right-of-way, or even in a tunnel on rare occasions (made rarer with

rubber-tired systems that have greater traction and can climb more steeply), but most typically as an elevated structure.

This is a liability that could also be considered an asset: grade-separation allows for the provision of higher-level service,

faster travel times, less time between trains and even automated train control, which reduces operating costs and limits

the general amount of subsidy needed for the system, if indeed any is needed at all. Ryan R. Kennedy reiterates the value,

however ironic, of a grade-separated, automated system:

Just as automation has always needed a monorail-like system on which to be implemented, monorail can benefit

greatly from automation. Whereas monorail’s relatively costly, “inflexible” guideway made it appear inferior to light

rail for the majority of medium capacity applications, light rail will not be able to benefit from automation due to its

non-exclusive right-of-way.” (26)

This inherent operating efficiency attracted a great deal of interest from planners and developers in the mid-20th

century. Had they had their way, several major metropolitan areas in the United States would have seen some extensive

monorail systems: two separate manufacturers proposed building and operating networks in Los Angeles that would have

exceeded the current extent of its heavy-rail Metro system as early as 1963. ALWEG, a supplier for the monorail at

Disneyland (and later at Walt Disney World), had experienced great success with its urban demonstration line at the

“Century 21” World's Fair in Seattle the year before, and consequently submitted a proposal to the Los Angeles County

government to develop the 43-mile spine of a straddle monorail system on a turnkey basis: they would design, build,

operate, and maintain the system at a cost of roughly $200 million (1963 dollars). The proposed system roughly parallels

and even exceeds the current or proposed length of the L.A. County subway system, the construction of which has cost the

county many billions of dollars. It also roughly imitated the similar route of a suspended system proposed about a decade

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prior, costing $105,275,000 ($747,830,000 in 2011 dollars), "plus any applicable sales tax” (Coverdale et al., 1953).

Despite apparently strong public support for the system, it was fraught with objections at the administrative level

from the start, ranging from parking in the San Gabriel Valley to views in Beverly Hills (“Emblem”, 3-5). This may have been

at least in part due to the influence of General Motors on the Los Angeles Regional Transportation Commission board; their

subsidiary National Bus Lines had, like in many cities, purchased the famous Pacific Electric streetcar system that had up

until recently covered vast swaths of southern California and replaced it wholesale with buses, eliminating the rail network.

This was, in significant part, one of the major impetuses behind the relentless expansion of freeway systems in southern

California, and one of the major stymies upon rail development in that and many other U.S. metropolitan areas for

decades.

To be fair, it is difficult to blame the entire collapse of passenger rail in the United States at the foot of GM: their

transit investments were relatively small, and the decline began before those did; it is arguable that the combination of

policy and market forces would have undone the system anyway had they done nothing. Nonetheless, the relationship

between Detroit and the Los Angeles RTC was in fact close and collusive and has become something mythical, with the

demise of Pacific Electric eulogized in films ranging from Who Framed Roger Rabbit? to The End of Suburbia (Bianco, 19-

20).

The systematic political rejection of rail in southern California in favor of automobile-centric mobility solutions

could be said to extend to monorail, here, as well. ALWEG folded, and its successors that piggybacked on its designs such as

Bombardier and Hitachi, did not appear to return with new proposals. (The derailment of a demonstration system at

Hemisfair 1968 in San Antonio did not help matters, even though none of the 12 injuries caused by the accident were

fatal.) Conventional rail suppliers, however, did step up to the task - and thus San Diego and, later, Los Angeles have

returned slowly and painstakingly to the streetcar and other conventional solutions. Meanwhile, monorail floundered into

the mid-1990s, at least, when Seattle and Las Vegas began to consider expanding their public and private systems,

respectively.

Given this entropic feedback cycle of a lack of public interest and a lack of private initiative, monorail simply faded

from American public view by the end of the 1960s, relgated to a few private theme parks and small circulators in cities like

Seattle or Jacksonville. The idea of it, when it was considered at all, was as something idealistic but dated, a retro-futuristic

aesthetic fad that was now over, like googie architecture or theremin music or cars with tailfins. Eventually, like these

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things, the idea of reviving such an unfashionable thing became prima facie ridiculous.

Probably the most famous and, however unintentionally, damaging ridicule monorail transit has experienced

comes from The Simpsons. Conan O'Brien probably did not mean any particular harm to public transit when he wrote

“Marge vs. the Monorail”, one of the most popular and famous episodes of the long-running animated sitcom, but its

theme is compelling, especially to lay people who know little more about the technology than they gleaned from the

episode's catchy “Monorail Song”. This was the crescendo of a pitch made to Springfield's town meeting by Lyle Lanley, a

con artist in the style of The Music Man, as he hears of Springfielders debating how to best spend a budget surplus. In lieu

of an urban beautification project, he recommends a “genuine, bona-fide, electrified six-car monorail” that, unbeknownst

to everyone but Marge, is fraudulent and prone to failure (which she discovers after researching the previous cities Lanley

has sold monorails to). The monorail he sells to Springfield is no exception, and Lanley's previous marks (or contract

recipients, depending on one's perspective) so revile him for this that they conspire to beat him within an inch of his life at

the end of the episode.

The episode is considered one of the best-written of a critically-acclaimed series, and would seem ultimately

irrelevant had the image of Lyle Lanley's whimsically disastrous monorail not haunted multiple proposals in the 1990s and

2000s to expand Seattle's monorail beyond the downtown core. “Marge vs. the Monorail” was rebroadcast numerous

times in the Seattle area prior to monorail-related elections, which upset monorail proponents, as the episode has the

appearance of dismissing monorail as an inherently comical absurdity at best, and as a dangerous “gimmicky money-

waster” at worst. It is unclear whether this was a deliberate attempt to influence public opinion, a reflection of pre-existing

tensions and uncertainties about the monorail expansion debate, or simply coincidental.

The meteoric rise and fall of Seattle's monorail expansion project has resulted in the creation of feature films and

the destruction of several political careers in the region. University of Washington information scientist Nina

Yuttapongsontorn describes the initial makeup and democratic objectives of the expansion’s implementation agency, the

Seattle Popular Monorail Authority, thusly:

In November 2002, 50.23 percent of Seattle voters approved Seattle Citizen Petition No. 1. This led to the institution

of a monorail authority (the Seattle Popular Monorail Authority, which would later be called the Seattle Monorail

Project) to build, own, operate, and maintain a city monorail system. The authority had two major funding powers.

First, an annual special excise tax could be levied, not to exceed 1.4 percent of the value of every motor vehicle

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owned by a Seattle resident. Second, the authority could issue no more than $1.5 billion in bonds for an initial line

and plan for a second line.

The monorail authority was structured as a nine-member board, with the [non-profit Elevated

Transportation Company] acting as an interim governing body. The interim board and city leaders were to appoint

some members of the monorail authority’s board, while others would be elected. The eventual goal for the

monorail authority was to have most positions publicly elected. (Yuttapongsontorn et al., 456)

Grant Cogswell and Dick Falkenbury are two former members of the Seattle city council and executives on the

Seattle Popular Monorail Authority board; both were pivotally influential in the expansion initiatives but have since retired

far from the public spotlight. Their anger at what at least one of them considers to be “sabotage” is palpable; Cogswell and

Falkenbury both feel very badly burned by the failure of the project, which was in its heyday strongly supported by such

luminary Seattelites as publisher Dan Savage and billionaire Paul Allen. After the approval of the necessary enabling

initiatives and the establishment of the SPMA to oversee the project, the authority spent years in rancorous process

reconsidering every detail of the system, ranging from the nature of divider columns to whether any of the original ALWEG

monorail system should or would be preserved for historic value. Eventually, in 2005, the clawback mechanisms both

Cogswell and King County executive Ron Sims had put into place were realized, and the public voted to recall and disband

the project and its enabling authority.

Nonetheless, until its cancellation, Seattelites did not appear to treat the system as exceptionally different from

any other big-ticket infrastructure project. West Seattle voters whose neighborhoods the expanded monorail would have

served or passed through never systematically opposed the project in such a way that the not-in-my-backyard stonewalling

of the SPMA would have suggested; in fact, three years after its demise, incoming mayor Mike McGinn proposed a rail line

with a nearly identical route, though with no particular stipulated technology or mode choice, this would likely be

implemented as a light-rail or streetcar line. (Also interestingly, McGinn replaced Greg Nickels, who came into office in part

due to his support of monorail expansion over Paul Schell's opposition to it.) To most potential passengers, there is no real

difference between one high-end rail transit technology and another.

Apropos of Seattle's political economy, the aforementioned stonewalling appears to occur with almost any major

regional infrastructure project. This is such a major condition of its political culture that it, too, has been enshrined in

popular culture – not just the upcoming monorail documentary, but also in films such as Singles, and books such as The

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Myth of “Seattle Nice”. This simultaneous need for and aversion to political consensus has resulted in endless visions and

revisions, such as the three-decade-long development of the Sound Transit light-rail starter line and the process of

winnowing down any sort of replacement for the Alaskan Way viaduct, a major elevated downtown expressway

condemned since the 2001 Nisqually earthquake caused irreparable structural damage.

Less attributable to political economy are the vagaries of the Las Vegas Monorail project, which was completed

roughly concurrently to the Seattle project. Expanded in 2003 from a short circulator linking the Ballys and MGM Grand

properties, the monorail is now a privately-owned and -operated service covering much of the Strip. However, the planned

expansion to Vegas' traditional downtown has not arrived, and another expansion to McCarran International Airport has

been delayed on arrival, primarily because the owner, LVM Holdings, has been bankrupted by bond debt. (McGee, 2)

Interestingly, Seattle’s monorail expansion had its own issues with ballooning unconventional debt, as

Yuttapongsontorn et al. illuminate:

After the declaration and release of the monorail contract, local newspapers exposed that the high-interest-rate

bonds would make the proposed Green Line’s cost reach $11 billion instead of $2 billion. The extra $9 billion was

caused by the nonrated bonds that had to be issued because the SMP’s revenues would not have been adequate to

pay off debt until after the line was built. One comment from a Seattle Times analysis of the project’s finances (De

Silver, 2005) was that in order to pay off the $2 billion monorail within 25 years (closer to the norm of such projects)

without using “junk” high interest bounds, the city would have to raise the [motor vehicle tax] from 1.4 percent to

almost 3.9 percent. This had the potential of causing greater uncertainty regarding the project’s viability.

(Yuttapongsontorn et al., 469-70)

Between this and reports of dangerous conditions delaying the initial construction of the line, monorail skeptics

might feel justified in saying that Lyle Lanley has survived and is living well in Las Vegas. However, the specter of

hucksterism has permeated public-private projects (or PPPs) throughout the United States, particularly large infrastructure

projects such as these. Such agreements all but invariably are more expensive for the public, left on the hook for loss and

risk while the private partner reaps whatever profit can be made. Ellen Dannin, who has spent her legal career researching

PPPs such as these, evinces that in addition to circumventing numerous environmental laws, equity needs and public policy

inputs, infrastructure PPPs rarely provide the sort of revenue projections they claim at the outset, and often create

onerous legal and financial burdens on the state:

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Key arguments for privatizing public infrastructure range from providing money so cash-strapped governments can fix

crumbling infrastructure and build much needed new infrastructure to shifting future financial risk from the public to a

private contractor.

The reality, though, is far different. Provisions commonly found in infrastructure privatization contracts make

the public the guarantor of private contractors’ expected revenues.... An effect of those contract provisions is to give

private contractors a quasi-governmental status with power over new laws, judicial decisions, propositions voted on by

the public, and other government actions that a contractor claims will affect toll roads and revenues....

In general, the terms that have received the most public attention have been the amount of up-front

money paid by the private contractor and the contractor’s rights to impose or raise tolls or other user fees. Missing

from public discussion and scrutiny have been the contract terms that make government parties to infrastructure

privatization contracts the insurer of the private contractor’s financial success....

Failing to have a national conversation about these terms and their effects has left the public ignorant as to how

these contract terms shift power over government policy and actions to private contractors. The effects of these

overlooked terms will be felt long after the contracts end. (49-53)

To wit, Lyle Lanley is more likely to fleece your idealistic Springfielder by offering them a genuine, bona fide,

privatized six-lane toll road than any sort of rail infrastructure project; nonetheless, the sort of corporate rent-seeking

behavior that seems to infect any PPP has extended to the Las Vegas Monorail as well. And to its credit, LVM Holdings

appears to be restructuring its debt in such a fashion as not to additionally burden Nevada taxpayers, nor has it requested

to do so. (McGee, 6)

Despite such setbacks to public-private ventures in the United States, monorail technology is succeeding in

applications abroad, even under the sort of private management that otherwise evinces a dubious track record. Tokyo’s

monorail from the Ginza neighborhood downtown to Haneda airport is privately-owned, like much of Japan’s rail

infrastructure, and has carried over a billion passengers not only to and from the world’s third-busiest airport, but also

along a route that passes through and services numerous densely-populated neighborhoods with a level of frequency and

capacity like that of any of Tokyo’s numerous heavy-rail commuter lines. Recently expanded as Haneda grows, this system

has thrived to the point of considerable profitability.

300 miles to the west, the Osaka monorail provides levels of service that are even more like those of a heavy-rail

system. Monorail critics often point to the inelegance of switching, with some justification; however, contrary to claims

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that this makes switching so onerous as to cripple the system, Osaka’s monorail has a branched route in regular operation,

serving millions of passengers daily. It was perhaps most crucial after the 1996 Kobe earthquake, whereby its inherent

stability prevented the track from deforming. (Monorails are actually less prone to derailment generally, due to the friction

of rubber tires reducing oscillation as well as the redundant and inherent stabilization of its guide tires.) Both the Osaka

system and, more recently, the Tokyo-Haneda line have provided unparalleled and life-saving service in the immediate

aftermath of major seismic events.

These are perhaps the two busiest of over a dozen monorail systems in Japan; others, such as those in Kitakyushu,

Tama, and Naha (Okinawa’s largest city) serve as the backbone of metropolitan transit systems. While Japan has an

extensive passenger rail infrastructure to be sure, local authorities have trusted monorail as an authoritative and reliable

transit technology, with numerous vendors (such as Hitachi, the largest in Japan) supplying standardized and

interchangeable systems that in many cases are ultimately indistinguishable from heavy rail transit other than the nature

of its guideway. This is especially the case with the system in Tama, whose train profile superficially resembles that of

ordinary heavy-rail systems in Los Angeles or Atlanta.

Increasingly, monorail is accepted and even preferred in some cases as an urban passenger rail technology in east

Asia. China has several systems, most notably serving as the transit backbone for the large inland city of Chongqing, and

more systems are likely to come to east Asia in the near future. Hitoshi Ieda, professor of civil engineering at Tokyo

University, and Hyuk Ryul Yoon, transportation planning research fellow at the Seoul Development Institute, have argued

that monorail is perhaps the most efficient way to further expand Seoul’s already burgeoning rail transit network:

In terms of comparative feasibility, monorail appeared to be most feasible, followed by [people-mover systems,

maglev, and personal rapid transit networks, which] are relatively weak. Its earnings ratio is just over 1.0, which

implies little risk as a large scale public project. In terms of sustainability, monorail proves itself to be stable, secure,

and flexible in the event of economic changes…. If the private sector invests in the new transit [line], monorail can

survive without government subsidy, and PRT can [survive] with 10- 20 % subsidy. Monorail has the highest

possibility of attracting private investment, as well. (Park, Ieda and Yoon, 3176-7)

Monorail has had even more of an impact in southeast Asia, particularly Malaysia, where the engineering firm

Scomi derived and developed a wholly indigenous and highly cost-effective straddle monorail technology from ALWEG’s

orphaned designs. This was developed first into the Kuala Lumpur monorail, one of the city’s three automated rail transit

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lines (and the only one slated for expansion). The efficiency of constructing the system in existing right-of-way, using a

combination of on-site and pre-cast concrete for the guideway and off-the-shelf parts for the trains themselves, attracted

the attention of cities in numerous emerging economies with crushing transit needs and limited funds to ameliorate them.

As Scomi’s technology became more nuanced, it was introduced in other Malaysian cities, then in Singapore, and now is

being exported to Vietnam, India, Brazil and Indonesia. Scomi is now considered a highly competitive provider of monorail

systems, behind only Hitachi and Bombardier, a Canadian rail engineering firm serving as Disney’s chief supplier.

So if monorails abroad, particularly in Asia and even in developing economies, succeed and thrive, why have they

failed in the United States? Some, like Kim Pedersen of the Monorail Society, argue that this is largely a perception of the

technology’s unseriousness combined with a broader antipathy towards public transit in general. This falls into a larger

transit cost and development paradox in the United States, according to Chicago-based urban planning analyst and

consultant Aaron Renn, one whose reasons are not fully understood:

Seoul, Korea is building a heavy rail route called the New Bundang Line as a public/private partnership. It will cost

1.1809 trillion won ($966 million) for 18.5km (11.5 miles). This is a cost of $84 million per mile – far less than

Chicago’s expansions…. Madrid too has a much lower cost approach. Its Metrosur line (admittedly opened in 2003)

was euro1.55B ($2.25B) for 40.5km (25 miles), including 29 new stations, six of which permit transfers with

commuter rail. This is $90 million per mile, again, far less than Chicago’s proposed expansion…. Alon Levy has

contrasted the cost of subway construction in New York with the much lower costs in Tokyo, for example. [The

construction+ system in the US… significantly inflates the cost of construction vs. the rest of the world. Many of the

typical complaints as to why this might be would seem to have no merit. Other countries are heavily unionized and

regulated, for example, so don’t blame organized labor. (South Korean unions are famously militant). Spain and Japan

are not exactly low cost countries. And basically all new systems world are fully compliant with equivalents to the

[Americans with Disabilities Act]. (Renn, 12 Dec 2010)

Whatever their ultimate reason, the differences in construction costs between Asian and even European public

transportation projects scale up proportionally for monorail or any other technology. In terms of their magnitude, the cost

overruns experienced by the Seattle Popular Monorail Authority roughly paralleled, but did not exceed, those experienced

by Sound Transit on its concurrent light rail project, as well as those in WSDOT estimates for a deep-bore viaduct to replace

the failing Alaskan Way viaduct, according to Cogswell et al. Had they been subject both to the whims of the bond market

and to similarly structured clawback mechanisms amid the vagaries of Seattle’s political culture, those projects may have

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themselves been rescinded by popular vote, especially the highly unpopular viaduct; indeed, Seattle’s current mayor

McGinn rose to power on a wave of popular opposition to that project.

Overall, the pratfalls of monorail projects in the United States have had very little to do with the inherent

problems of monorail per se, and very much to do with the sort of problems endemic to any capital-intensive

infrastructure project, combined with the additional hurdles afforded to a particularly unfashionable project to which

analysts and capital markets are particularly skeptical. But while much can be said for healthy skepticism, this is a bit much

to begrudge a mainstream technology whose efficacy and utility has been proven many times over.

Accomodating the needs of growing and prosperous societies while winning the end games of climate change and

dwindling resources will take courage, originality and a willingness to reconsider ideas that may have been wantonly

rejected by generations with little foresight. American cities are rightly and painstakingly reconstructing the transit

networks that were discarded in the rush to rebuild in the image of the automobile. In doing so, it is perhaps advisable to

look at all of our futures past, to consider complementing the restoration of our light rail systems and high-speed rail

network with a system that can provide heavy-rail levels of service at light-rail costs, at least in certain contexts. Monorail

should be given a fair go on the numbers, not rejected out of easily amenable aesthetic concerns, many of which could be

extended to elevated rail of any kind, any of which would be preferable to elevated highways. The future is littered with the

abandoned dreams of futures, but generations of emerging urbanists should not be expected to shoulder the burdens of

rebuilding a world devastated by our 20th century indiscretion without tools disregarded out of a misplaced (and ironically

impractical) sense of “seriousness”. Where would design and invention be without whimsy?

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WORKS CITED

Bianco, Martha J. “Kennedy, 60 Minutes, and Roger Rabbit: Understanding Conspiracy-Theory Explanations of The Decline

of Urban Mass Transit.” Portland, Ore.: Portland State University Center for Urban Studies, 17 Nov 1998.

Cogswell, Grant, and Dick Falkenbury. Telephone interview, 12 Feb 2011.

Dannin, Ellen J. “Crumbling Infrastructure, Crumbling Democracy: Infrastructure Privatization Contracts and Their Effects

on State and Local Governance.” Northwestern Journal of Law and Public Policy, Winter 2011, Vol. 6, Issue 1, pp.

47-105.

Greenwood, Frank H. “Monorails for Metropolitan Transportation.” Transportation Journal, March 1963, pp. 26-29.

Kennedy, Ryan R. “Considering Monorail Rapid Transit for North American Cities”. State College, Penn.: Pennsylvania State

University Press, 2003.

Kinsey, Barbara S., et al. “Location of Public Goods and the Calculus of Voting: The Seattle Monorail Referendum.” Social

Science Quarterly, September 2010, Vol. 91, Issue 3, pp.741-61.

Park, Naesun, Hyuk Ryul Yoon, and Hitoshi Ieda. “Feasibility Study Regarding New Transit System Implementation In

Seoul’s Congestion Areas”. Journal of the Eastern Asia Society for Transportation Studies, October 2003, Vol. 5,

pp. 3169-3178.

Yuttapongsontorn, Nina; Desouza, Kevin C.; and Ashley Braganza. “Complexities of Large-Scale Technology Project Failure:

A Forensic Analysis of the Seattle Popular Monorail Authority.” Public Performance and Management

Review, March 2008, Vol. 31, Issue 3, pp. 479-82.