A monorail through Beverly Hills? Gucci forbid.

What's the product when you lump together the vision of one Westside executive with some upscale commuter angst, the savvy of a lawyer-politician and the whimsy of an E-ticket ride? The Yuppie Express? The last train to Saks?

Nope. Try the Westside Monorail, sure to be motif for at least a few cappuccino clatches when word of it leaks out.

Come Tuesday (July 14), the Beverly Hills City Council and, alas, the world will get their first official glimpse of the idea that sprang from the brakelight-weary imaginations of two men back in 1989.

"Why are we doing this?" asks Ed Friedrichs, managing partner at Santa Monica's Gensler Associates/Architects. "Because it's hard to get anyplace from here."

But through posh Beverly Hills? That's where the junk bond kings have given way to Banana Republic, and the old-money boutiques and poodle psychiatrists still flourish on nearby Rodeo Drive. Maybe Disney -- which pioneered the sleek, elevated train in Anaheim when congestion was still just a nasal condition -- could be getting some L.A. competition.

To be sure, the monorail proposition is not even off the drafting table, still in need of a feasibility study and then faces a Matterhorn of permits and public hearings. But one thing is for certain: Metro Rail this is not.

Take construction, an above-ground affair that supporters say would avert the subterranean nest of boulders, utility cables and toxic waste pockets that subway miners contend with.

Furthermore, there is no monied public agency or retinue of political bigwigs sounding the mass-transit trumpet. Try a two-man crusade led by Friedrichs and Alan Alexander, a Beverly Hills city councilman and a real-estate corporate attorney by trade.

These men first crossed paths two years ago when they were mapping out Sony Studios' Culver City home and Gensler was working on a monorail plan for Burbank.

"I told Alan, 'You ought to see what we're doing in Burbank' and he said, 'We could use one of these on the Westside.' Then, I said, 'As a matter of fact I've been working on something. . . . '"

Using a Macintosh, a satellite photo and some colored tape, Friedrichs developed the line's rough schematics, mainly in his off time. Alexander has dished out big-picture advice and City Hall connections.

Under current plans, the monorail would get rolling just north of where the Santa Monica (10) and San Diego (405) freeways coalesce to form gridlock's version of Hades.

With a spur into the Westwood-UCLA area and a southerly one dipping below Pico Boulevard, the line would follow a T-shaped route, almost 10 miles in length. From the Westside, it would zoom up Santa Monica Boulevard, snake around the highrises of Century City and end at the Pacific Design Center just inside West Hollywood. A second phase might later tie it to Metro Rail in Tinseltown.

As for the riders, Friedrichs believes it would tickle the fancy of more than just the Grey Poupon brigade. He hopes 9-to-5 commuters and "pass-through" drivers coming off the 405-10 junction would contract monorail fever and forsake overtaxed surface streets.

Every day, some 200,000 people come into Beverly Hills -- six times the city's population -- to browse, shop or work. West Los Angeles isn't far behind: it has nine of the city's 10 busiest intersections.

And if there are a few less Beamers, Mercedes Benzes or, God forbid, Chryslers tooling around, so be it in the name of mobility. With two-minute headway during rush-hour, Friedrichs figures 60,000 patrons can be whooshed around daily.

"Look," he says, "I've lived here long enough to know we need to intercept people at the periphery of major employment centers before surface traffic gets worse. I've worked my butt off on this because I'm scared to death about the viability of the Westside. What if (20th Century) Fox pulls up its stakes" because of pricey traffic fees it must pay to expand?"

Alexander has a different worry. He's concerned, even wrathful, that critics may scuttle the train by peddling falsehoods -- stereotypes of Gucci-made passenger seats, piped-in Mozart or liver pate snacks.

"This will be going as much to Century City and West Hollywood as Beverly Hills. Nobody is calling this the rich man's transit system," Alexander says sternly. "We're like the hole in the middle of the donut out here, surrounded by congestion from Wilshire and Santa Monica (boulevards) and the monorail is a way of relieving some of that. . . . We're serious people on this thing."

Lest we forget, the monorail proposal isn't Beverly Hills' first gambit to unclog one of its main commercial thoroughfares. Back in the late 1970s, a plan was floated to erect a freeway on Santa Monica Boulevard. Actually, the artery would have been built underneath Beverly Hills to placate environmental and aesthetic fears. in the end, however, expense and inter-city squabbling killed the idea.

Beverly Hills Chamber of Commerce President Les Bronte knows few of the new plan's details, but he pledges to be a monorail man if industry supports it and the Not-in-My-Backyard mentality can be corralled. Besides, what better way to help the city regain "some of its magic" and shore up the retail and tourism business by designing a transportation system that is just plain "fun."

"Wealth isn't being flaunted as much any more," Bronte adds. "People are leaving their Ferraris in the garage and driving their Broncos into town."

And monorail passengers would turn out in force, he says tongue in cheek, "if we could get the likes of Jimmy Stewart, Merv Griffin and Carl Reiner out at the stations welcoming passengers before they hop into the limousines."

Another selling point: Its $275 million total price tag is a bargain compared to the $300-million-a-mile cost of Metro Rail's first leg.

Tens of millions will be sliced off the potential tab, for instance, because the connected cities and the Los Angeles County Transportation Commission own most of the proposed line's rights-of-way on Santa Monica Boulevard. And instead of getting the populace in a tizzy by plopping a guideway in the middle of the street, the train's tracks and supports could actually be stacked on top of some municipal-owned parking garages, like those built by Beverly Hills along Santa Monica Boulevard in the 1980s.

There's also the environmental sex appeal.

"What's intrigued me about this is that's a pollution-free, quiet technology that could be constructed in five years because the design is simple," Alexander chirps. "Whereas with Metro Rail, it could be 20 years before it reaches us out here."

Even Laura Lake, champion of Westside slow-growthers, said she'd consider backing the Friedrichs-Alexander plan -- as long as no covetous developers were using it as a license to build.

"We have the density of Manhattan, without the rail system. Out here, there's always been the Scarlett O'Hara approach to traffic mitigation -- we'll do something about it tomorrow," says Lake. "But are these property owners going to want to have their buildings from an elevated Chicago-type El" train system?

Not to worry, retorts Alexander. The monorail would be no hoisted heavy rail, but more like an exotic and low-profile electric trolley.

Still, the big "if" is, who will open up their wallets to finance it? That's a question that would be addressed in the six-month, $80,000 feasibility study that Gensler wants to land.

Right now, the idea is for "public-private partnership" -- a favorite in lean times. That means commercial property owners, perhaps through a specially created benefit assessment fee, would be asked to fork up $125 million over a number of years.

Friedrichs says the cash-rich LACTC could supply the other half -- a risky assumption considering the commission's Westside funds are committed to extending Metro Rail and building an Exposition Boulevard project plus some type of undertaking linking the 405 Freeway and Little Santa Monica Boulevard.

If the LACTC doesn't bite, the rail may hinge on whether the monorail beneficiaries -- the shopping centers, the merchants, the developers, UCLA, the cities -- can get the private sector to swallow a hefty tax.

All Friedrichs can do is hope and wait.

"I'm just an architect trying to do something good for the community and my business," he says. "And I'm not going to give up just because some people think I'm nuts for trying."