The great writer Ray Bradbury died yesterday here in Los Angeles. He wrote far better than your average science fictionist and produced dozens of novels and hundreds of short stories, but we love him best for his wacky, hopeful dreams for LA (he moved here in 1934 with his family and had lived in the same house in Cheviot Hills for the past 50 years when he died). In 2006, he wrote in the LA Times that the Purple Line subway wouldn't solve the city's transportation problems: "A single transit line will not answer our problems; we must lay plans for a series of transportation systems that would allow us to move freely, once more, within our city. The answer to all this is the monorail." Bradbury believed that monorails were ideal for our lovely climate (leave the subways to terribly-weathered New York, et al) and that we could build ten for the cost of one subway line: "In a matter of a few months, a line could be built from Long Beach all the way along Western Avenue to the mountains with little disturbance to citizens and no threat to local businesses."
Bradbury was a huge supporter of an early sixties plan from the Alweg Monorail company to build north, south, east, and west lines across LA at no charge. The county supes rejected the idea, but he spent the next year evangelizing in front of local groups (go outside, look up, and see how well that went).
And here was Bradbury's latest plan, as laid out in 2006: "If we constructed monorails running north and south on Vermont, Western, Crenshaw and Broadway, and similar lines running east and west on Washington, Pico, Wilshire, Santa Monica and Sunset, we would have provided a proper cross section of transportation, allowing people to move anywhere in our city at any time."
· Ray Bradbury Will Not Give Up His Monorail Dreams [Curbed LA]
· L.A.'s future is up in the air [LAT]
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