Over a hundred years ago Seattle had mass transit: the Interurban. This is pretty remarkable considering where Seattle is today- no mass transit and a population that has grown from 80,000 during the Interurban days to well over half a million today.

I’m voting for the monorail. I’m confident the monorail will get voted down as the current finances truly don’t make a lot of sense. It’s unfortunate that more can’t be done in our current political system to drive more compromise for financing, but there it is.

However, I feel it’s extremely important to support mass transit, in addition to current I-5 corridor light rail, that connects Seattle neighborhoods and eventually the outer suburbs.

If the monorail fails by only a small percentage, it will send a message that mass transit hasn’t died forever…despite what the big downtown developers (for reasons I can’t figure out...for them it's not just about the finances), want.

Yep, I am going to vote no. I haven't liked the monorail since the beginning. But please PLEASE do not see this as against mass transit. I am definitely FOR mass transit since I ride the bus every single day and only use my car to get out of the city (because transit options out of the city are a bit more limited). I just don't think the monorail is an efficient system. It is too limited and costs way too much for what you get. What I think we should really focus on is regional transportation. Traffic is horrible due to the lack of good REGIONAL transit options and thus we have congestions both in and out of the city. Instead of building a separate system, city transit should link up with light rail as much as possible. What I mean by this is focus on connecting some sort of transit system (I like a subway system personally AND we should continue to use and improve our pretty darn good bus system) to a light rail station at major transfer points and where lots of people live. I have travelled to many places around the world and I find that this system works quite well (such as in London, Paris, Manchester, Madrid, Barcelona...). I know, I know that the Ballard to West Seattle route is the first phase, but I personally will not be going over to Ballard to take the monorail to DT when I can easily catch a direct bus and I don't know of too many people who will be doing this as well and thus you will still have a traffic/congestion issue. That is the bottom line - getting people out of their cars and using mass transit. And when and how are they going to build additional routes/lines? I also do not like how the whole financing part of the monorail. I have a car and thus am paying my share of the bill and am OK with that since someone has to pay for it, but I don't think that car tab fees should be the lone source. I don't really have answers, but perhaps tax a little here, a little there or something (I personally think we should have people pay more to park and as a result this might sway them to leave the car at home or at a park & ride more than an increase at the gas pump). Overall, I think the monorail is just a bad idea. There has got to be other ways. Thanks for listening...

I've been kicking around this idea in my head lately, because it really seems like the monorail is going to fail. We need mass transit that isn't at grade because it interferes with the surface traffic. We already have the bus tunnel, why don't we keep digging and turn the light rail line into a subway? I know we'd have to deal with 99, and some bodies of water, but wouldn't it make more sense over time?

i'm a former HUGE monorail supporter, but learning about the amount of people it will get off the roads (not many), the costly financial projections and what it will look like, i am going to vote against the monorail.

i'm with jaders82 on this one. i'm a big supporter of mass transit. but, i feel like light rail is the best option. it will get federal matching funds because it gets enough people off the roads (the monorail won't).

as far as the underground part of it... a lot of the STLink system is underground. take a look at it here. (i can't seem to find a better map than ST's own for south of westlake)

this is already being built where i work (georgetown) and it gets me excited every time i pass it.

Subways are great...i'm from Boston, home of nations oldest subway system. I love it...i can get nearly anywhere in Boston on the T...and a combiniation of T and buses eliminates need for a full time car.

But look at all the grief/expense Seattle officials are getting for a Viaduct tunnel. While a subway tunnel wouldn't be as wide...it'd be longer and have to deal with going underneath all sorts of nastiness (yup, i've lived through the Boston big-dig). I doubt it'd be feasible to push through a subway system.

Elevated light rail (and subway wherever possible) linking with soon to be exisiting light rail and with commuter rail out to the various suburbs seems to me to be the way to go (that has any chance of some day succeeding).

I had no idea, Grant, thanks for pointing that out. Here I was thinking I was a visionary, and ST had already dreamed it up. I looked at both maps, and to my surprise, there is nothing for Ballard or West Seattle. So I guess my question for the pro ST anti monorail people is how does the ST line benefit those areas, and all the points in-between? Maybe that’s why the monorail idea was given birth in the first place. I suppose that with the light rail the traffic won’t be as bad through the corridors that the two areas use, freeing up bus service, but still until the time that metro and ST are completely converted to biodiesel (I’m talking B-100, not the bastard child B-20) there is still going to be a significant amount of pollution put forth by the bus service. As much as I love the bus (I use it almost daily) you have to admit that the emissions are not quite so good for us. So I ask the question now, where is the compromise point on this? When the viaduct is rebuilt a lot of W Seattleites are going to have less options for travel, and after the light rail line goes in, all points west from Ballard to West Seattle will not benefit from it.

In regards to the other post, I think burying the viaduct has to be one of the worst possible ideas ever. Burying a major roadway in unstable landfill is just another catastrophe waiting to happen. We have Boston to thank for the experiment with the big dig, but we need to think a step further because Boston isn’t prone to major seismic events. It’s called liquefaction, and it is a motherfucker. I would only hope that the Seattle city council will come to its senses about this. And uh, I wish Greg Nickels would go fuck himself. Seriously.

You said that we need elevated light rail. I agree, and this is my idea: we take a train, and we elevate it about 30 feet above street level. Now, in the interest of not burdening traffic too much, what we do is we use a train that uses the least amount of rails to run on. So we use this train on one rail. I call it the one rail elevated train! Nobel prize, here I come!

it's ironic. i'm pro-mass transit. i gladly pay the car tabs tax and i live in ballard and work in georgetown.

all together, i should be for the monorail. i just don't think it's a good option any more.

it's true, ST doesn't benefit those areas yet (except with bus lines). however, from the few ST meetings i've gone to, they're were playing a "wait and see" game with the monorail. if the monorail dies, i'm sure they'll have options.

i have to strongly disagree with your opposition to the viaduct tunnel. i'm 100% for it (again, I take the viaduct everyday). it's the best option. it'll revitalize the waterfront, complete a project we already need done (replacing the seawall) and makes a long-term investment downtown instead of a short-term band-aid (rebuilding the piece of crap or putting the traffic at street level).

but, that's for another discussion!

not to rain on your nobel prize parade, but STLink is elevated in parts of SODO already.

you can see it if you drive along airport way. it's elevated as it comes out of beacon hill

(yet another reason to support light rail/ST)

I was being facetious. One rail, a mono-rail? get it? hello? *tap tap tap* is this thing on?

end scene. i'm an idiot.

regarding all of the above comments on the monorail, it's clear that some of the ideas and assumptions are mis-informed.

1. We do need grade-separated transit intra-city transit works best if it is not affected by traffic lights, fender-benders, emergency vehicles, etc.

2. Monorail is still 1/3 the cost of tunneling. I'm not really attacking ST or the Viaduct tunnel...just pointing out the cost difference to those advocating additional tunnels with the thought that it would be comparably priced.

3. Sure it's a little weird to have both light rail and monorail, but that doesn't mean that we shouldn't do it. Plenty of cities (like the aforementioned Paris and Barcelona) all over the word use multiple types of rapid transit, and are able to integrate the systems.

4. It's true that regional traffic is a problem, and that light rail is a good solution for that problem. However, it's not the only problem. There are plenty of people who live and work within the city of Seattle, and are just as frustrated with the status quo. I like to think of our transit as having three levels: a. regional (ie connecting Tacoma, Seattle, Bellevue), b. intra-city (ie connecting Ballard and Queen Anne to downtown), c. and really local. Ideally, we use light rail (which has the greatest potential capacity, but also is expensive and requires major reworking of roads) to serve the regional needs, Monorail to link the different neighborhoods of the city, and buses to serve the local needs. I realize we're far from that point, but I think it's a workable goal. Check out http://www.transitoverroads.org/lit.html - it shows the system we could have in a few years.

5. Finally (sorry to be so long-winded), if we don't build the planned Monorail, it will be years before we get transit to serve the east-west corridor. I know that it doesn't serve the entire city, but it does serve a good portion of the city. More importantly, we have to all wake up and realize that the Viaduct will be out of commission for a while (no matter what happens), and that if we don't have something to help mitigate that disruption, the affects will really be felt throughout Seattle.

I'm done ranting! If you've stuck around this long, thanks for reading.

for those of us that are going to vote against the monorail, how are our ideas, expressed in this post, misinformed? we might disagree, but none of our comments are factually incorrect. i'm going to vote against the monorail for the following reasons:

• it's too expensive
• it won't get federal matching funds
• it won't get enough people off the road
• it's a much more intrusive structure than we were promised

these are all opinons that i hold, but i don't feel i'm misinformed.

i'd like to see the city figure out ways to work with STLight Rail to build something that could work with what is already being built to solve the Ballard to West Seattle problem.

For all you die hard supporters, There is a march in support of the Monorail on the 29th

I want mass transit that goes more places, faster, at any time of the day or night. Personal Rapid Transit is almost here--and it's other countries that are taking the risks.

Heathrow Airport to build starter PRT system:

announcement
article

Dubai is expected to issue a tender for a PRT system contract next month.
article

In the most recent P-I Saturday Spin, Horsey wrote:

"Dr. James Bowen, a neurology professor at the University of Washington, offered what I think is the best Big Idea. He noted that, with people working in such scattered places at varying hours over a wide region, a transportation system aimed at getting a lot of people together on the same conveyance going to the same place is bound to be inadequate.

"Only a completely new transportation system, designed to provide point-to-point service for single commuters, will unclog our roads and increase our productivity," he said. "I propose a system of electric vehicles small enough to accommodate only a single passenger with minimum baggage."

I say let's go for it!"

Source

Unbeknownst to him, Prof. Bowen is describing Personal Rapid Transit (coming soon to London, and hopefully elsewhere--see Oct. 28 post).