Guess WHICH supervisor for more than 20 years has backed the sensibility of monorails and not let himself be railroaded (no pun intended!) by idiots who think that just because Disneyland uses them, they're fantasty fun and not seriously sensible? L.A. County supervisor Mike Antonovich, a Republican (though that's pretty relative here in So Cal!). Subways in Southern California are ridiculously stupid. It's like building a gigantic freezer in Anarctica -- totally wasted effort. But worse -- this writer didn't include the fact that when that silly, ridiculous "subway" that goes only a few short miles in downtown L.A. was built, it not only went overbudget by a huge percentage, but the shaking and rattling from the excavation caused serious damage and closures in many local businesses and really whanged a lot of business owners. It was stupid from the git-go. This is NOT the East Coast, and East Coast transportaion models don't work here.
Monorails should have been installed at least 20 years ago on the already existing and well-though Red Car right-of-ways that are still all over the place (they go all the way from Pasadena to Huntington Beach, if I remember correctly) in the form of very wide medians down main boulevards. They went to Redlands, San Bernardino, Long Beach, Riverside -- pretty much where there are freeways now, Red Car right-of-ways go or went.
For the specific circumstances in Southern California, considering its climate, traffic density, and geography, monorails would perfect and extremely cost-effective not just in terms of materials and right-of-ways and maintenance, but in terms of safety. Again, this article (probably for reasons of space) really downplayed the lethal danger that Light Rail presents in So Cal. People get killed via the ligh rail trains all the time, plus they're noisy as hell and disrupt traffic.
If you've ever been to Disney World's Contemporary Hotel, you know EXACTLY how sensible monorails are. The monorail runs literally through the hotel, where and while guests are sleeping, dining, etc., and they're so quiet you don't even hear them. The tracks can be pre-fabbed, trucked to the location, and erected so the trains run with minimal disturbance to traffic -- again, it is well demonstrated at WDW.
But most of the time, people who object to monorails do it on pure emotion, though they tell themselves that it's the opposite. One guy who should have known better told me the reason I, Antonovich, and others liked the idea of monorails for LA was because they're "sexy," sexier than light rail or subways. This guy was more worried about being perceived as a non-macho Disney geek than he was about a sensible, smart solution to a pretty ugly problem in L.A. HE was the one rejecting it based on emotion, not reason. Very ironic.
If this is your criterion, then roller coasters are "sensible" transportation too. Last time I looked Disney was an amusement park with people paying substantial sums to get in, not a city.
I was doing some freelance writing work years ago for an engineering company in L.A. that was involved in the subway project. I used to live in Chicago where we have the el, so I know from elevated tracks. What I was told was that the problem is air rights--property owners own all the sky above their property, and negotiating those rights is much more expensive and difficult than underground rights. That's what I was told, anyway.