Instead of sitting around in a permanent traffic jam on the 405 freeway, you might someday be able to speed over it on a monorail. Mayor Garcetti announced publicly yesterday that the city is in the initial stages of exploring the idea.
Monorails offer a single-rail elevated train service that can go places traditional light rail or subway trains sometimes can’t. That is what might make building one an appealing option for the congested span that connects the San Fernando Valley to L.A.’s Westside, currently considered to be among the most-clogged freeway spans anywhere in the world. The steep incline of the Sepulveda Pass has proved to be an engineering challenge for other transit options, but a monorail could be the answer commuters are looking for, according to Patch.com.
There are still other questions to answer though, one major one being that it isn’t known yet if a monorail line can be built to be as earthquake-safe as desired at a price the city can afford. To get to the bottom of that, Mayor Garcetti is looking into taking some city leaders on a trip to China where high-tech monorails have been successfully put into place to alleviate some of the worst traffic snarls there.
If the process moves forward, some funds from the Measure M sales tax increase could theoretically be appropriated for the project, though a lot of that money has already been earmarked for other upcoming public transportation and infrastructure upgrades across the region.
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