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Originally Posted by Quixote
^ I don't know why Garcetti even mentioned the idea of a monorail. All the monorails in the world (at least the ones I know of) are run on elevated viaducts. This entire Sepulveda corridor from the SFV down to LAX will be entirely subway, so we can eliminate talk of a monorail/maglev. The RFP also stated a desire to investigate proven technologies, so that also precludes anything innovative like a hyperloop.
My hope is for a fully-automated heavy rail line (see Paris Metro's Line 1) that has the potential to operate extended hours at high frequencies. This would probably save operating costs too, something the private entity would obviously be very interested in.
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If you want to save money, it would be a light metro more like Vancouver's Canada Line (Bombardier system) or the Copenhagen Metro (Hitachi/AnsaldoBreda system). Short 4-car trains, small stations = less digging. The capacity is still roughly the same as a full metro line, because the automated trains can come every 90 seconds. Outside of gadgetbahns like the hyperloop, the light automated metro is probably the latest promising idea in mass transit... despite being a decades-old idea, it's only in the last 20-30 years that cities have started to build such systems outside of closed zones like airports and convention centers.
However - it's totally possible to build monorails underground. Why wouldn't it be? The problem is that the same track design which makes elevated sections so slender and cheap to build turns into a problem underground, because you actually need a larger tunnel to accommodate the full height of the track beam plus a safety clearance. That translates into a lot of wasted space inside the tunnel as compared to a traditional subway, so virtually all the advantages of a monorail system evaporate. However, if you had to bore a short tunnel as part of a larger elevated system (to cross a hill or mountain, for example, or to cross through a historic district) it would certainly be possible.