Restructuring Transportation Funding and Implementation

Last: Importing Transportation Solutions

In a fundamental reorganization of the planning of funding priorities and initiatives of transportation system development, American Monorail presents a variety of transportation development plans that address specific problems, needs and opportunities that are generally, if not entirely within the capabilities of local governments, communities and their related financial institutions, to implement transportation systems and services which directly serve the best interests of local and regional communities. Such newly formed transportation planning and implementation coalitions would be able to direct and apply federal and state transportation funds, shape local project financing structures and focus the issuing of conduit municipal bonds, as well as, control local tax revenues, toward their respective local priorities and optimal uses. Go to the American Monorail Organizational Forum for an expanded description of strategic coalitions.

Primary stakeholders in the development and long-term operation of monorail systems and services could form development and bank holding companies, fashioned and organized to permit multi-interest participation and ownership of monorail assets in lending institutions. The primary purpose, and mission of each of these institutions would be to provide credit and construction loans for development of infrastructure, particularly monorail systems, as well as, manageable long term debt instruments and services through profitable lending mechanisms and institutions. Stakeholders, shareholders and other entities participating in such infrastructure-based lending institutions could capitalize assets previously considered inert, or valueless. Therefore, the continuous strips of land comprising some five hundred miles of Los Angeles County flood control channels could be considered to have significant value as potential monorail rights of way, as could other land and rights of way that, while not suitable for any other type of use or development, are uniquely developable with monorail guide ways and facilities. Owners of these right of way assets, including city and county governments, public institutions, authorities and utilities, as well as, private institutions and corporations ranging from universities and hospitals to industrial parks and railroad companies, may realize the new found value of their property and right of way assets in the common ground of infrastructure- or monorail-based holding companies, financial institutions and municipal bond authorities.

Basing urban and suburban development patterns on monorail technology and networks could fundamentally change growth and building practices. In light of the California Attorney General’s 2011 assumption of ultimate control over the planning and administration of the development of Los Angeles County’s vast Santa Clarita Valley, to assure County compliance with state global warming objectives and restrictions, monorails pose the most practical and immediate solutions to a comprehensive array of transportation-related environmental issues.

Locally-based and-organized financial and funding support for monorail system development and operation would be best facilitated with domestic monorail manufacturers and system builders. Involvement with foreign producers may pose legal and financial impediments to local control and initiatives, would certainly increase the costs of rolling stock and operations technology, and would tend to contradict the basic organizing concept of local and community control of transportation planning and services. The solution, or antidote to the current regional authority-dominated transportation planning and funding regimes that consistently produce inefficient, expensive and unsustainable mass transportation systems is likely to be found in the flexibility, adaptability and efficiency that monorail systems present to every level of community and government, as well as, the US economy. Monorails, and monorail industry can assume a central roll in the main stream of the American economy as an organizing economic force, and project their impacts and potentials to every level of American society.