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A 14-year-old male who was spray-painting a building was hit and killed by the Seattle Center Monorail Sunday night. Seattle Police said it happened shortly before 9 p.m. near Fifth Avenue and Denny Way. The man had climbed onto the roof of a building. Surveillance video reviewed by the Seattle Police Department shows the man was spray-painting graffiti on a building next to the tracks before he was hit. We believe this is the first time anyone has been hit and killed by the train, although there have been at least a few other high-profile incidents involving the Monorail in...

Restored film of an astonishing suspended train over some lively German towns in 1902, like something from H.G. Wells. Or is it a sophisticated modern animation? Hard to tell. What do you think?

Elon Musk, no stranger to outlandish pledges, just teased around-the-world flights aboard one of his rockets. The chief executive of Tesla Inc. TSLA, +1.63%and Space Exploration Technologies Corp. was tweeting about SpaceX’s latest mission when he veered toward the stuff of sci-fi. Earth-to-earth rocket flights could carry about 1,000 people. Alas, all seats would be coach, and there would be no toilets, but on the plus side most trips would take only 15 to 20 minutes, Musk tweeted. It would be “unwise” to let passengers move about during the flights, likening the experience to Disney’sfamed Space Mountain roller-coaster ride:

An expansion of the taxpayer-financed boondoggle that is the Las Vegas Monorail won’t be ready in time for the 2020 NFL season when the Raiders are expected to begin play in the Las Vegas Stadium. City planners want to extend the monorail from its current southernmost stop at MGM Grand about one and a quarter miles down to Mandalay Bay, allowing patrons easy walking distance to the new stadium at the corner or Russell Road and Interstate 15. The project is expected to cost about $24 million. Las Vegas Monorail Co. has yet to break ground on the project as...

Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti has proposed building a monorail along the Interstate 405 to connect the San Fernando Valley with West Los Angeles on Tuesday, relieving traffic on one of the world’s busiest and most congested roads.

Vienna to Bratislava in 8 Minutes In 2013, Elon Musk’s SpaceX revealed the concept for a high-speed ground-transport system, dubbed the Hyperloop, which would travel around 700 mph and deliver passengers from Los Angeles to San Francisco in just 35 minutes. The idea: to create a faster, cheaper, safer and more environmentally conscious transit option — one in which pods travel through tubes with near-zero air pressure, and which is eons ahead of the hell that is Interstate 5. Three years later, however, the California Hyperloop is still a far cry from coming to fruition: SpaceX is currently holding an...

One person dies and at least two others are injured after a beam falls at the construction site of a monorail project in São Paulo. One person has died and at least two others were injured after a beam fell at the construction site of a monorail project in São Paulo, it was reported. The accident happened at around 5.20pm local time on Monday in the south of the city, which is due to host the opening match of the World Cup on Thursday, according to news website G1. The monorail had been due to be finished and running before...

The much-awaited Mumbai monorail was inaugurated by Maharashtra's Chief Minister Prithviraj Chavan and Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar on Saturday. The service will be open to the public on Sunday, making Mumbai the first Indian city to ever use such a transport facility. The monorail service that will link the city to major stations will begin its first phase of 8.93 km between Wadala and Chembur in the eastern fringes of the Commercial Capital. The second phase (to be completed in 2015) will cover a distance of 11.2 km and will include the following 11 stations: Chinchpokli, Chembur Naka, Wadala...

Most of the city’s 2013 mayoral candidates came together to broach public-transportation issues in back-to-back forums at Baruch College in Manhattan on Wednesday. Anthony Weiner was there, looking very determined to come across as thoughtful and focused rather than bored (as the press corps has branded him at previous debates). But it was John Catsimatidis, the grocery-store baron and long-shot Republican hopeful, who made the biggest splash of the morning when he called for building a monorail alongside the Long Island Expressway. “Not subway, ABOVE-way,” he said, dismissing the possibility of expanding the existing underground rail system as a pipe...

LAKE BUENA VISTA, Fla. - Waiting at Walt Disney World is not uncommon, but recent park guests had to wait longer than usual because of a squirrel. A video recorded and posted to YouTube on Monday shows a monorail train heading from the Grand Floridian to the Magic Kingdom moving slowly -- starting and stopping -- because a squirrel was on the track and wouldn't jump off. The video was recorded by a park guest awaiting the train at a nearby station. Monorail passengers at Disney World had a 45-minute ride between stops because a squirrel got on the track...

The Las Vegas Monorail was developed at a cost of $650 million — but based on its meager ridership and revenue levels it’s now worth just $16 million to $20 million. That caused a bankruptcy judge to express skepticism Monday about Las Vegas Monorail Co.’s plan to emerge from bankruptcy in which it would still be encumbered by $44.5 million in debt — more than twice its value as a company. On top of that, Judge Bruce Markell noted, the monorail’s own financial projections show it facing a deficit of $38.4 million in 2019. “I don’t buy it,” Markell told...

Rocco Rossi says if he becomes mayor of Toronto he will deliver subways — not streetcars — for the city's transit users. “Torontonians want subways, and as their mayor, I will deliver,” said Rossi in a mid-morning news conference held on the Kay Gardner Beltline trail, overlooking the subway yards at Davisville Avenue and Yonge Street. Rossi said his administration will end "the culture of dependency" that has surrounded the Toronto transit system — and do it all without charging drivers an extra fee. “A Rossi administration will not impose road tolls," he said in a direct swipe at the...

Like the gleam on the tracks from an oncoming locomotive, high-speed rail transportation in the United States may be finally coming into sight. Before the end of the decade, rail backers promise, Americans will be traveling on bullet trains, the way Europeans and Asians have been doing for half a century. At speeds of up to 220 mph, high-speed rail will make it possible to travel from Los Angeles to San Francisco in less than three hours, or half the time it takes to drive. Tampa to Orlando will take less than an hour, or 35 percent faster than by...

Santa Monica is known for thinking in ways other cities don't. So where's that thinking as it relates to mass transit? Have you seen any city or area transit authority study comparing different methods of transport and the short- and long-term costs? No? That's because they didn't create one. Is light rail the best plan for Santa Monica? Will it make a profit? One of our most recent investments in mass transit was the L.A. downtown Metro. Why did the Metro go underground? We have some of the best weather in the world, with only nine rainy days a year...

ROTURUA, New Zealand (Reuters Life!) - It's economical, ecological and good exercise: a new human-powered monorail is attracting the crowds in New Zealand, and may become a new mode of transport within cities. Geoffery Barnett combined a laid-back, recumbent bicycle with monorail technology to create the "Schweeb," whose name is derived from the German word "schweben" which means "to float" or "suspend." Barnett said the marriage of the old and the new makes sense: he said recumbent cycling is faster than traditional, upright cycling, while a monorail is the safest, and possibly the only, way to get around congested cities...

With a steady stream of new foreign investors coming to Mongolia, and to UB, in the wake of the recent Oyu-Tolgoi deal, it leads one to think maybe we should spruce the place up a bit. There’s a definite dearth of public parks, and even in the height of Summer, it’s hard to find many patches of anything even remotely green.  There apparently were public parks, but they’ve been replaced now by new condos and shopping centers.  There were clean sidewalks left by the Soviets, but they’ve since crumbled into a montage of rocks, and dirt.  That leaves us with...

"Obama to Announce $8 Billion High-Speed Rail Plan After State of the Union Speech" Wednesday, January 27, 2010 By Julie Pace, Associated Press SNIPPET: "Washington (AP) - A day after delivering a State of the Union address aimed at showing recession-weary Americans he understands their struggles, President Barack Obama intends to award $8 billion in stimulus funds to develop high-speed rail corridors and sell the program as a jobs creator. Obama and Vice President Joe Biden plan to announce grants for 13 major corridors during a town hall meeting in Tampa, Fla., Thursday..."

Since the inception of the Las Vegas Monorail, Nevadans have been repeatedly reassured that they will not wind up on the hook for its bills. Nevermind the high salaries monorail executives and board members are getting, that won’t ever wind up coming out of the public’s pockets. The Nevada Business and Industry Department’s issuance of $650 million in tax-exempt bonds to construct the transit system? Not to worry, no liability there. Granting state sales tax and county property tax exemptions to the monorail? Yes, it helped the monorail system avoid putting millions of dollars in the public coffers, but it...

Cheap speed in all weather, Fazio says; build 'em here, tooA well-known Long Island business advocate pitched the benefits of superconducting magnetic-levitation trains for the local economy to Suffolk lawmakers Friday. Maglev trains, as they are known, hover above magnetized tracks along which they are propelled at speeds of up to 300 miles per hour. The latest maglev technology can accelerate a train from 0 to 60 miles per hour in 11 seconds, and stop it faster than conventional trains through instant reversal of the magnetic pulses pushing the vehicle, according to Long Island Metro Business Action President Ernie Fazio,...

JEDDAH: The operation of a monorail system during the Haj next year would facilitate the transport of millions of pilgrims between the holy sites of Makkah, Mina, Arafat and Muzdalifah. Habeeb Zain Al-Abidine, deputy minister of municipal and rural affairs, said the monorails would transport 500,000 pilgrims between the holy sites within six to eight hours. “This will help withdraw at least 30,000 small and large buses from the Haj service,” said Zain .Al-Abidene while addressing a seminar on civil engineering projects for Haj. Zain Al-Abidine said the monorail project, which is estimated to cost SR6.75 billion would bring about...