Roller Coaster over Los Angeles?

First of all, rails going over/under anything will require undergoing a long and tedious process of acquiring easements over/under private land. If they are going to bother with any project of that magnitude, they're going to go for higher capacity trains.

But now that you mention roller coasters, perhaps you'd be interested in learning about the history of another mass transit idea that today is really only seen in theme parks in the US: monorails. In 1963, Alweg Monorail Company, which had gained world-wide recognition for its demonstration monorail at the 1962 Seattle Century 21 Exposition, planned to build a monorail rapid transit system across the LA metropolitan region... which would be completely privately funded. That's right, LA rejected someone's offer to build a free mass transit system. Of course, this was because oil was cheap, urbanity was icky, and everybody loved their cars.

Today, cities all around the US would drool at such a proposal.

GatsbyGatz said:

But now that you mention roller coasters, perhaps you'd be interested in learning about the history of another mass transit idea that today is really only seen in theme parks in the US: monorails. In 1963, Alweg Monorail Company, which had gained world-wide recognition for its demonstration monorail at the 1962 Seattle Century 21 Exposition, planned to build a monorail rapid transit system across the LA metropolitan region... which would be completely privately funded. That's right, LA rejected someone's offer to build a free mass transit system. Of course, this was because oil was cheap, urbanity was icky, and everybody loved their cars.

Today, cities all around the US would drool at such a proposal.

Click to expand...

The Pacific Electric was privately funded mass transit and we see what happened to it. Privately funded mass transit systems fail in the US, perhaps because of policy or perhaps not. But the reality is, private transportation companies existed throughout the country and by the beginning of the 20th century were all failing and either being absorbed into public agencies or being killed off by other private companies like GM. Essential items should always have a public option and transit in particular just doesn't turn enough of a profit without public help. I mean, look at the airlines as a very good example. The public has to undergo the expensive building of facilities in order for the airlines to actually function. Because of its competitive nature, private industry is incapable of recruiting enough assets to benefit the majority of people, hence its limitations.

The monorail system would have eventually began to lose money and turned to the public to subsidize a system that is prone to breakdowns. Eventually the MTA would have had to take it over and we would have been stuck with a very expensive system that had never been tried on such a massive scale.

I don't think any of you realize the truth about the future:

No more transportation. Period.

Demolish those skyscraper offices. No more retail stores, schools, public transportation, billions of dollars wasted on street maintenance, etc. All human life can be conducted OVER THE INTERNET.

No point in wasting money for office space when all operations can be done online from home. Businesses will save millions simply by implementing a good "online office" system; these already exist.

No point in spending money to rent a retail space when most purchases are online anyhow; Amazon is becoming the world's #1 retailer.

Why spend billions of dollars on public education at school when you can streamline our already-terrible public schooling system from at home. The best part about it on our government: it'll cost a sliver of the cost. No more paying billions on teacher and admin pension funds or for all those expensive books. Everything will operate online and will hardly cost our government a few million dollars.

Nearly every state is struggling to continue funding public transit systems nationwide. Why bother raising taxes to spend billions on buses (and expensive bus driver pensions) when no one needs to travel in the first place. Virtual living is simply cheaper and we know money controls our lives.

Why invest trillions of dollars in expensive automobiles or insurance plans or in road maintenance when no one needs to commute for work anymore?

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In conclusion, our civilization will slowly but surely decline. As it is, the United States is financially insolvent and will inevitably collapse. The solution will be to minimize all costs necessary to survival and, fortunately or unfortunately, the internet can effectively eliminate all need for humans to leave their house besides farming/manufacturing/shipping. As it is today, we're already seeing how the internet is pretty much rendering many traditional human events obsolete (paper mail, bookstores, libraries, clothe stores, etc.) As time goes on, we will continue to see the internet replace many events that were once carried out in the physical world.

So yeah... How's that for the future? Sad... but most probable. :nuts:

I can see that happening but people still need to get out. We're not robots hardwired to live one type of lifestyle. How will we see our families? What if we want to eat out? What if we want to go to a live event? What if we want to people watch? What about Starbucks?...

But you do make a really good point that the internet will help us through a lot of hard deficits in the future. We'll make it through!