Backers Call Monorail Answer to Transit Woes

It looks like Disneyland’s popular Monorail. It travels with the ease of the Enterprise on “Star Trek” or Dick Tracy’s magnetic-levitation vehicle. Its backers boast that it will make all Southern Californians neighbors. But will it get off the ground?

Promoting this ultimate answer to California sprawl and freeway crawl is a group of businessmen turned dreamers who call themselves Southern California Monorail Project--or SCMP.

SCMP, which operates out of offices in Newport Beach and Beverly Hills, plans to weave the mishmash of today’s public and private transportation systems into a single, smoothly running whole to serve the commuter with efficiency, the tourist with style.

Flagship of this ambitious plan to make sense out of the chaos of the region’s public transit is The Beam--a monorail vehicle that backers hope will someday travel at impressive speeds on a spine of elevated guideways, bringing the cities and towns of Southern California within minutes of each other.

An ironic twist to SCMP’s game plan is the location of the translucent pylons of the monorail system along the center medians of Southern California freeways and major streets. Monorail commuters on their unimpeded trips could look down upon the sight of their less-fortunate peers caught in the snarl of traffic below.

Craig Hendrickson, chairman and chief ramrod of SCMP, admits that the ultimate aim of the project is to woo Southern California motorists out of their cars and off the highways.

“We don’t want to replace the freeway,” Hendrickson said, “but we think we have a better alternative.”

Hendrickson founded SCMP in 1983 with downtown Los Angeles developer Graham Kaye-Eddie. Since then the brain trust has grown to 17, including science fiction writer Ray Bradbury, conservative political activist Christopher Huntington and others from the legal, architectural and engineering fields.

And the project has grown to national, even international, scope, Hendrickson said. Future plans will be formed in SCMP computers for links with San Francisco, Seattle, Salt Lake City, Denver and points east. Next, who’s to say that the system might not spread its high-speed lines to Vancouver, Juneau, Montreal, Mexico City, Caracas and Rio?

Meanwhile, back in the 20th Century, SCMP pledges to have the first 1,000 miles of its six-county Southern California system in place by 2010, and the group plans to put in about 250 miles of it by 1996.

Routes for the elevated super-shuttle network have been fairly well set in Los Angeles, Orange, San Bernardino, Riverside and Ventura counties, but San Diego County was an afterthought. Proposed San Diego routes follow major freeways or proposed San Diego Trolley lines and are likely to be changed when local folks have a say in the matter.

“We’ve gotten a lot of positive feedback from San Diego but we haven’t had the time to meet with the people involved,” Hendrickson said. He doesn’t expect to run into the problems that his private, nonprofit corporation has faced with transit districts to the north--Los Angeles’ RTD and the Orange County Transit District--where local leaders have bristled at the prospect of being superseded by a regional super-agency, and a private one at that.

Hendrickson concedes that a truly regional transportation district can’t be implemented unless everyone marches to the same drummer.

To accomplish this, SCMP plans to put a statewide measure on the June 5, 1990, ballot which, if successful, would add half a cent to the state sales tax in the six target counties and hand the funds over to SCMP, whose board would become a powerful Southern California transit authority.

To cement its power, SCMP plans to initiate a one-fare “passport” system that would provide passengers with a cashless way to pay for all forms of transportation--taxi, bus, dial-a-ride, monorail, shuttle van--and receive an itemized bill at the end of the month.

Aside from convenience to commuters, the system will give SCMP ultimate authority over all the area’s varied transportation providers. If a firm is accepted into the passport system, it must meet the standards and follow the rules of the transit authority. If it doesn’t, it faces the fate of today’s “gypsy” cab and jitney drivers, forced to pick up the crumbs left by the organized systems.

“If the other systems don’t meet our standards, we might put in a competitive system offering better service and run them out of business,” Hendrickson said. He stressed that such a move would probably never be implemented, but it would ensure excellence, “something better than the garbage that local transit agencies are putting out now.”

As a benign dictator, SCMP would coordinate the many transportation systems, doling out funds to upgrade some of the links needed to form a smoothly operating system feeding into the portals (Hendrickson doesn’t like them called stations) of the monorail guideway system.

The projected monorail fare, including shuttle service between portals, is $1.50 to $4.50 for a one-way ride. Initially, speeds of 100 m.p.h. would be usual. Eventually, when magnetic-levitation technology became feasible, speeds of up to 400 m.p.h. would be possible.

Hendrickson is convinced that he has finally found a way to woo Southern Californians out of their automobiles.