A railway system that runs on a single rail or track, usually elevated above the ground, often used in cities for rapid transportation.
From 'mono-' (one) plus 'rail.' The word was coined in the late 1800s to describe early single-rail transportation systems; many were patented but few were built until the 1950s.
Monorails were supposed to be the future—the 1960s Simpsons joke about Springfield's monorail mocks the real utopian dreams Americans had about them, but they turned out to be expensive and inflexible compared to subways!
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