History of Monorail

   From the 1980s, with the rise of traffic congestion and urbanization, monorails have experienced a resurgence in interest for mass transit usage, notable from the early use byJapan and now Malaysia. Tokyo Monorail, one of the world's busiest, averages 127,000 passengers per day and has served over 1.5 billion passengers since 1964.^[18] Monorails have seen continuing use in niche shuttle markets and amusement parks.

Modern mass transit monorail systems use developments of the ALWEG beam and tyre approach, with only two suspended types in large use. Monorail configurations have also been adopted by maglev trains. Chongqing Rail Transit in China has adopted a unique ALWEG-based design with rolling stock is much wider than most monorails, with capacity comparable toheavy rail. This is because Chongqing is criss-crossed by numerous hills, mountains and rivers, therefore tunneling is not feasible except in some cases (Line 1 and future Line 6) due to the extreme depth involved. India is developing monorails in several cities for mass rapid transit with Mumbai Monorail being the first one.