Wank US Monorail

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*man, I love retro-futuristic art

The challenge here is to wank the prevalence of Monorail systems in the US from 1950-onward as much as possible.

Bonus points if you can devise a way for it become the second most popular mode of transportation.
 
I'm writing this from a state of pure ignorance about the advantages/ disadvantages of using one rail as opposed to two for trains. There are also relevant things that I don't know, such as how many monorail systems were actually built in the US IOTL, and how many were built outside of the US.

However, one point that I can contribute is that IOTL elevated train systems became considerably quieter and less pollution spewing in the late twentieth century, to the point that they are a considerably different proposition from the "els" of popular imagination. And they can be built in the medians of highways, which also lowers their impact. But there is still considerable NIMBYish to them, probably for cultural reasons. I think this has to be addressed to get more monorails as pictured above built. Presumably you could have single rail underground trains, but probably for technical reasons you never see them.
 
Have Eugen Langen, the designer of the Wuppertaler Schwebebahn, immigrate to the United States in the 1880s or 1890s.

There, his comparatively cheap and easy-to-build suspension rail system finds supporters in East Coast cities such as New York City, Boston, or Philadelphia and subsequently sees a rapid expansion to most urban centres of the country.
 
I think for the city of NY you'd have to do something about Robert Moses, the man who truly built NY and Long Island. And in The Power Broker it is shown he didn't care too much about public transportation, he was auto oriented. Buses couldn't even go on the parkways. If you change anything about Moses you irrevocably change the very look of NY, affecting every thing from Coney Island, Jones Beach, Central Park's playgrounds, Triborough bridge, and multiple highways, bridges, and tunnels.
 
Taking another look at the photo, could monorails even be feasible along the US interstate system?
The cost of building and maintaining literally thousands of miles of electrified (I'm assuming) rail, bending and weaving across pastoral lands between cities and towns would be astronomical!
 
I'm writing this from a state of pure ignorance about the advantages/ disadvantages of using one rail as opposed to two for trains. There are also relevant things that I don't know, such as how many monorail systems were actually built in the US IOTL, and how many were built outside of the US.
Practically none, in either case. There are a handful of more or less successful demonstration systems in a few cities (Tokyo, for example), but they're largely tourist attractions. The largest monorail system I am aware of is Chongqing's, which actually has somewhere like 100+ miles of monorail trackage. The trouble is that it's a special case, apparently because of the geography of combining a deep and wide river valley with tall mountains nearby, so it's hard to see how to replicate it.
 
Are we talking intracity or intercity? For the former, have fewer people but cars or have the traffic system be more unworkable. For intercity, delay the airplane.
 
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