Even as experts cautioned that Mumbai's new monorail system won't do much to ease the congested city's commute, thousands of Mumbaikars converged on Wadala on Sunday to ride the new monorail on its first day in operations. The system -- which missed its deadline by three years -- was inaugurated on Saturday by Maharashtra chief minister Prithviraj Chavan.
Despite the public enthusiasm, transport experts remain wary. As Scroll.in has reported, they say that the capacity of the monorail is too low to cater to the huge volumes of commuters in one of the world's most crowded cities, that the technology is too expensive and that the system isn't properly integrated with other modes of public transport.
Eerily, their apprehension was echoed in an episode of The Simpsons cartoon show in 1993. In an episode titled Marge vs the Monorail, a conman named Lyle Lanley tries to convince the town of Springfield to construct a monorail system. Marge opposes the suggestion: she says the money should be used to fix Main Street instead. To win their support, the sleazy Lanley leads the townspeople in singing in the tune pictured above.
Of course, it all ends badly.