Two days after a reopening that was postponed for four weeks because of malfunctioning doors and brakes, the Seattle Monorail was shut down again for most of yesterday after the blue train stalled. Passengers (or should we just start calling them "hostages"?) had to make a precarious mid-rail transfer across a precipitous gap high above Fisher Plaza from the stalled blue train to the no-doubt-soon-to-be-stalled red train. Against all odds, no one plunged to their death.

At least this time nothing burst into flames or sent debris flying into the pedestrians below. In monorail-terms, it was a successful day.

And as long as I'm on the topic of monorail danger...

As Radical Sasquatch noted, the Mawas of Johor, Malaysia are now facing a new threat: a Chinese high-speed maglev monorail.

It will be one of the first Zhui Feng ("Hunt the Wind") monorails, which were developed for the Chinese military. Yes, that's right, the military. However, German monorail makers Transrapid -- who have a line at the Pudong International Airport in Shanghai -- claim that the design was stolen from them. China denies this. One notable difference is China's maglev uses cheaper permanent magnets, unlike the electromagnets used in German and Japanese technology.

And for those of you wondering: yes, maglev monorails are prone to spontaneous combustion too, as was illustrated when the Shanghai one mysteriously caught fire on Friday:

The Johor monorail project will be funded primarily by monorail agitators in Dubai (a land whose citizens will soon be threatened by a combination of monorails and robotic dinosaurs). Initially it will only be menacing the human controlled sectors, but given the global hegemonic aspirations of monorailists I don't think we can count the forests of Mawasistan as safe, especially since Japanese monorailists are already pestering the Hibagon with their preliminary incursions into the forests of Mt. Honita:

Will the horror of monorails ever end?