Stop the presses. Did someone just propose a monorail transportation system in Southern California? Anaheim Mayor Curt Pringle (doesn’t that name just make you crave junk food) just proposed building a monorail that would connect Anaheim’s growing transportation hub with its established tourist zone.
A top priority is seeking funding from private businesses to build a monorail running from the Disneyland area to the proposed Anaheim Regional Transportation Intermodal Center, east of Angel Stadium in the Platinum Triangle, which the city is trying to turn into an urban village.
Pringle said a monorail would “symbolically and technologically bring Walt Disney’s iconic vision of 50 years ago alive today and bring a physical connection to the various destinations in our city.”
This was a long time vision of Walt Disney himself. I certainly hope the Walt Disney Company of today gets on board with making it a reality.
Here are a few tips I offer to Anaheim officials. Go to Las Vegas and learn from the mistakes they’ve made. The monorail needs to be Front of House, not hidden off the strip somewhere. Encourage ridership by making the stations easy to find and access. Also, don’t charge exorbitant fees to ride. You practically have to take out a loan to ride the Las Vegas Monorail making it just slightly cheaper than what a taxi would have cost you, but much less convenient. There has to be value in using the system, not just novelty.
(photo courtesy Stephen G Donald via Flickr Creative Commons License)
It would be great if Anaheim and even other cities in Orange County built a sensible monorail system. Traffic in southern California is horrible.
And he needs $250 million to pull it off — and that’s PRIVATE funds as the local gov’t won’t pony up a dime. It’s doubtful that Disney would either.
Will never happen.
Since when has Vegas started charging for the monorail? Now, it has been almost 9 years since I have been there, but I distinctly remember riding the monorail between Bally’s and MGM for free. And I believe that monorail was an old version from Disneyland.
James,
if it’s been 9 years then you’d probably didn’t hear about the new LV Monorail system. See:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Las_Vegas_Monorail
and
http://www.lvmonorail.com/
Just last week I was standing in Anaheim City Hall looking at the model of the Platinum Triangle with a co-worker saying how ARTIC needed to have a monorail component. It would be great if this proposal wasn’t just one to get between the Platinum Triangle and Disneyland, but also connected John Wayne Airport, downtown Santa Ana and the other major destinations in Orange County.
With living near the Big A and working near John Wayne, if we had such a system I would be a daily rider.
Why build a monorail when you can build a raised train ?
my thoughts exactly. Why go all out with something exotic and expensive like a monorail, when it would be cheaper (both to build and to ride) to simply expand the coverage of the existing Metro rails to include Orange County? Give us stops at Disneyland, the Honda Center, Newport Beach, and a few other hot spots, and we’d never be sitting on that effing 91 freeway ever again!
Disney might consider shouldering the cost, especially if California voters pass the bond measure for High Speed Rail. The prospects of visitors traveling only 2 or 3 hours from densely population Northern California (San Francisco-San Jose-Sacramento) would certainly present an opportunity for the original tourist attraction in Southern California.
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