i disagree.

the monorail would have impaired our ability to build an actual mass transit system that will actually get people out of their cars.

i believe, that if the monorail stayed alive, people in Seattle (and therefor, King County) would have had less support for the upcoming Sound Transit 2 package. sound transit 2 (which is still being formed and YOU can help the direction it will go) will do much more for getting rid of our traffic problem than the monorail could in it's current, limp, interbay to west seattle form.

so where is the MVET money going to go? ST2? fuck that. We'll never see that fulfilled. Again, they should have gotten one more chance. Seattle screwed itself proper.

The problem is with the majority voting on what special interests want (otherwise known as the west coast state initiative process). This is the only part of the country where this happens...and there is good reason why most other states don't have this process.

Initiatives were first conceived as a way to keep railroad tycoons (special interest groups of their times) from completely owning the state and local government. Law of unintended consequences stepped in and today’s initiative process is all about special interest groups getting their way. There is no room for compromise and negotiation when faced with an initiative asking for a far too simplistic yes or no vote.

It’s really time to get either tank the initiative process or make it exceptionally difficult to get an initiative on a ballot. This is supposed to be a representative government. If you don't like what your rep's are doing, vote them out.

Vancouver is likely successful because they never put their mass transit system to a vote: http://seattle.metblogs.com/archives/2005/11/monorail_a_fail.phtml

We need mass transit. Despite what the tin-hat wearing, "our election was stolen again" republicans are saying (they're even starting iniative i-23 now...case in point why iniatives suck), simply adding more roads is not going to help.

I'm positive sound transit light rail will be successful. It's my hope that they will extend (probably by monorail since no one will go for elevated light rail through downtown) to other neighborhoods once people understand what mass transit is all about. And I hope it is never put for a vote...it just gets done.

MVET will be in place for 2 more years to PAY OFF the debt that the monorail left us with. after that, who knows. i have a feeling seattle will be down with putting it towards some sort of mass transit item. it'll be up to them.

how do you mean ST2 will never be fulfilled? do you know what it is?

"Big business blocking progress" is responsible for the monorail's failure? What a load of BS! Was big business's support of the gas tax also "blocking progress"? Please stop to consider how spewing entirely random anti-business rhetoric makes you look to the vast majority of reasonable people for whom ideas like "return on investment" aren't evil incarnate.

The monorail failed because it was a financial train wreck, and the voters recognized that. In a town that is usually willing to say yes to any levy for human services, public transit, or education without so much a glance at the balance sheet, the no vote on the monorail shows just how big a financial train wreck it was.

None of the proposed ST2 projects that I could find really deal with mass transit connecting Seattle neighborhoods. There are a few Sounder Commuter station additions/extensions. There's an extension from UW to Northgate (duh) and to First Hill (duh again). Most of it is focused on getting people to/from/within the burbs.

While this is probably not a bad thing, it does concern me a bit. Without a kick-ass mass transit system within Seattle AND affordable housing connected to said system, Seattle might begin to loose its attractiveness as a city. Why bother living in the Seattle when the suburbs and accompanying sprawl are suddenly an easy commute? I understand this is oversimplified, but I think it is a valid concern.

If ST continues to expand light rail service outward, we’re going to be the only part of the country (world?) with a regional kick-ass mass transit system and only a token light rail within one corridor of the city. (Mind you, I’m not saying what they’re putting in now is bad, just that it’s barely a start.)

ST2 candidate list here: http://www.soundtransit.org/projects/longrange/projectlist.asp

I think Che420 meant the idea of the MVET for the monorail getting transfered to pay for ST2 or any other mass transit project is very unlikely. I would say it is going to be unlikely for a long time that we'll be able to mount a project like this. Rob hit it on the mark saying that if people had a problem with the aesthetics of a monorail going through downtown we sure won't be getting elevated light rail anywhere near the core of our city.

I tried to look on the bright side. I thought I might change my mind and agree that maybe the monorail's downfall will translate into a good focus on light rail becoming our urban mass transit. But the more I look at where Sound Transit is going the more it pisses me off. Until we do more to encourage people to live in the city, Seattle will continue to teter towards becoming the Los Angeles of the North. Clearly, the mayor and the city council have a long term vision in mind for the city but the tide of pressure to build outward is stronger than any of them are willing to go against. The current light rail project is more about making life easy for those who chose to live in Tukwila, and eventually Northgate. It is not about changing our car culture in any meaningful way. If the ultimate goal is to connect Northgate mall to Southcenter you know it isn't about creating a dense pedestrian oriented city. Quite frankly, the awsome transit should be in the core as a way to combat further growth outward and the stations should be nodes of future urban growth. People commuting in should be jealous of how well you can get around in the city. This would also be doing those people in Tukwila a favor by stopping Seattle real estate prices and growth from spreading all over King county. It already seems hopeless to me as we have failed for thirty or forty years now to capitalize on propsed mass transit projects at our fingertips.

My only hope is that maybe there will be a change of focus in this whole light rail world and they will build the green line and one of the other proposed monorail lines with whatever mode of rapid transit they prefer. Will that happen? Not likely with Mayor Nickels and the city council who beat the crap out of the monorail instead of trying to find a workable alternative and now find themselves lost as to what to do with the debt,land and MVET. Political capital for mass rapid transit is dwindling and if you don't think this is a victory for the suburban developers and car culture economic beneficiaries you're sadly mistaken.

You're all forgetting that the monorail literally provided no additional net gain for transit. By the monorail's own study, the vast majority of riders were going to come off buses and onto the monorail. The project couldn't get federal matching funding because of this.

Ballard to West Seattle just isn't where we need to focus. And I LIVE in Ballard and work in Georgetown.

I was originally a monorail supporter. Big time. But it wasn't because Ballard to West Seattle was my main concern. It was because I wanted to build it and then expand. If the monorail would have stayed alive, the cost was so OUTRAGEOUSLY expensive that no politcal will would exsist to expand it.

We saved political capital to build an actual working mass transit system by killing the monorail. We stopped a bad idea and will live to be able to build one that works for the entire city. We saved people's good opinion about working mass transit and working big public projects.

Also, look at ST Light Rail. I literally goes through the most densely populated area in the city. ST Light Rail is not built for the suburbs. It is built for inner city travel. What part of town (minus Ballard/Fremont/Queen Anne/West Seattle) does it not serve? (Note: I was not in favor of killing the First Hill Station, etiher. But, ST2 has some provisions to fix that)

http://www.soundtransit.org/projects/svc/link/

I would much rather Seattle build light rail that works with ST to serve the west cooridor. Light Rail is much more flexable than Monorail technology could ever dream to be.

Run Light rail from Crown Hill down 15th. Elevate it across the Ballard Bridge and run it to the Westlake station. Then, make the run from the SODO station out to West Seattle. You could eventually connect Crown Hill and Northgate and West Seattle to the Tukwila station.

Shit, I'm not a transportation planner, but it sounds better to me than what the ubsurd monorail plan ended up being.

I would disagree that MVET is going to go away. People in Seattle overwhelmingly support progressive taxes. They also want mass transit. I don't think it's a hard sell at all. In fact, I think we've shown people that good (and big) public projects can succeed in our city and the political will exsists to stop something that is obviously out of control.

Further, I would argue that the actual problem is not so much inner city travel.

Look at the biggest backups in traffic. The 520 and 90 Bridges, the Convention Center and the Mercer exit on I-5, Northgate where the express lane ends. I drive inner city every day from Ballard to West Seattle on 99. I literally take 10 minutes to get to work at 9am and 15 minutes to return at 5pm.

Maybe we're looking at the problem from two different perspectives:

1. Easing Traffic for the greater Seattle Region
2. Building a density sponge

I would argue that part one is the most important and popular need. It's the main push behind ST and behind the monorail.

Part two is not only something that Light Rail can do, if expanded to serve where the monorail is buried, but it is also something that things like getting more people to live downtown can do as well and maybe even better.

(Last Note: The Mayor and most of City Council had knee burns from their monorail love for the first 3 years. They only turned on it when the public did, after the hairbrained finance scheme came out)

I should just toss in that I don't believe that taking away bus ridership and putting those people on mass transit is necessarily a bad thing.

Buses have been setup in a non-mass transit town to serve our needs as best they can. Once you introduce mass transit you won't need the bus capacity (or gas) along that route that you once had (buses get stuck in traffic, very annoying to me during seattle center events, games, etc...and yes, it's all about me).

I fully agree that the monorail finance plan did not allow for any expansion in the near future, which would be the whole point of any intra-city mass transit...therefore making the whole thing a bad idea (i voted to keep it anyway).

And it doesn't have to be monorail...just has to be something on some kind of track. Hell, not even elevated. Shut down third and make it rail and pedestrian only for all i care... I'm just thinking of the asthetics of getting mass transit through the neighborhoods make elevated rail difficult in some areas. Also, it should really connect to existing ST light rail stations and the commuter rail stations.

(mass transit gets me all worked up...here i am replying to my own post)...

There should really just be one agency coordinating all this. Sound Transit seems to finally have things under control and moving in the right direction...give them a mandate to go forth and study mass transit in seattle. In theory, they can leverage economies of scale to get better deals on construction and equipment purchases then a seperate agency could.

Do we really care about the eastside traffic problems? Sustainable building says we need to urge density...not sprawl. By making intra-seattle living and travel a breeze and having affordable housing (as i stated earlier) people might see bad traffic on i-90 as incentive to live within city limits...thus making a blue city even more powerful and limiting outward sprawl, at least a little bit.

I see where you're coming from now grant... you're right on for fixing regional traffic problems. I guess I don't really care about people outside of seattle sitting in traffic ;)

i'm all for encouraging density. it should be way up there in terms of priorities. light rail can do this to. the people at 2045Seattle.org say Conlin is already talking about it:

http://2045seattle.org/?p=109#comment-268

but, we can't deny the fact that the eastside already exsists and needs to.

i don't want to expand light rail out to Fall City or something. but, mercer island and bellevue still exsist and we need to get people out of their cars on 520 and 90 and onto the rails!

I should also point out that it takes you 10 minutes to get down 99 in your car. Your CAR! What about people who can't afford cars? What about people who can't be bothered to drive their mini unless there's a snowboard on the roof and the bonnet is pointed towards the mountains (that would be me)?

Grant...you're right...I've been in denial! Still am, really :)

hey, i've been there, too.

...,said this thread.

Concerning the East Side light rail connection, nothing I've read regarding the 520 bridge replacement planning includes plans for light rail. Does anyone know differently? I just re-checked WDOT's site (albeit quickly), and did not see anything suggesting otherwise under either the bridge page or the LINK page. I do know as of a few months ago, the last time I bothered to look into this, there was no talk on the matter, at least officially. Were this still the case, I find this a problematic issue. Can someone offer up something definitive to the end?

On a second point, I very much agree with Rob concerning the shift of people from buses to rail in Ballard and West Seattle. Some may consider this no net gain, but I disagree. It's getting people off the roads in two areas of the city lacking good arterials, and doing so more efficiently. In my view that is a net gain. My perspective comes from experience: prior to Seattle, I lived in Chicago. That town has it all: Light rail, heavy rail, electric heavy rail, and buses. In such a densely populated city, buses are a great way to get to the El or the Metro lines. They are a relative nightmare for any other purpose. Given in-city traffic congestion (it also is short on good arterials, coincidentally), getting above street level and moving more people faster, and doing so with fewer buses on the road, is of great benefit. Whatever your thoughts on the monorail, there is a potential for benefit by getting people off buses in Ballard and West Seattle.

Now before anyone gets all uppity, please note I'm not pointing fingers here, I'm just saying.

just kidding. anyways, i agree that getting people off of buses from West Seattle to Ballard is what the end goal should be. however, i would rather that rapid transit in the greater seattle area focuses on more dense regions first and on getting the largest amount of people off of the roads that we can.

as far as light rail to the east side, i'm not sure i'm i'm reading this ST Long Range Plan thing right, but it seems as if they're planning to expand light rail to the east side if you look under the East King County HCT list (High Compacity Transit). Either they'll be building light rail, or bus systems which can be easily converted to light rail.

Those are the top 80 projects under consideration... down from 500 on their original list. I couldn't find anything that says how many projects (or budget size) the final list can/will have. I'd guess only a handful of those 80.

More info is supposed to be available for public view in early 2006. Should be interesting to see what they come up with.