Disney’s Monorail Vision for L.A.

If you’ve ever sat in the never-ending rush hour that is traffic in Los Angeles then you might be interested to know that Walt Disney had a solution for you — The Monorail, which opened at Disneyland in 1959. Walt Disney had a plan to run a monorail line from Anaheim to Los Angeles. Alas, it was never implemented by the region’s governments.

Immediately following the summer of 1959, Walt Disney brought numerous
city transportation groups to ride his new Monorail. Disney was so
taken with the concept and its potential benefit to the community that
he was trying to promote the train as a solution to the mounting
transit problems in America’s cities. A related story appeared in the
Real Estate section of the Los Angeles Times in June, 1959. Written by Al Johns, the story extolled the same advantages that Disney perceived.

On his blog, Marlowe recounts Walt’s vision and looks at the Los Angeles that could have been.

But it was the now legendary Imagineer Bob Gurr who foresaw the demise
of the project before it had ever gotten off the ground. In a skeptical
statement, Gurr had said, “city and transit line officials in Los
Angeles are letting rapid transit get further and further away by
studying and talking the issue to death instead of getting in and
building a system.”

And that’s why you’ll spend 93 hours sitting in traffic if you commute in LA this year.

[ disney, walt+disney, waltdisney, monorail, los+angeles, commute, imagineer ]