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The Guardian - AU
The Guardian - AU
National
Elias Visontay Transport and urban affairs reporter

The wrong track: remembering the embarrassing saga of Sydney’s monorail

Sydney Chris Minns Heath Ledger Rose Byrne TNT
The monorail with Sydney's skyline in the background.
The monorail was first opened in 1988, and closed after 25 years in 2013. Photograph: Universal Images Group North America LLC/DeAgostini/Alamy

Ever since a 1993 episode of The Simpsons about a travelling salesman selling a dodgy monorail system to Springfield, the word has been satiric shorthand for a flashy but faulty project governments jump to waste money on.

In Sydney, mention of “the monorail” carries a similar, slightly more embarrassing weight in the city’s collective memory.

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