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Wednesday, May 3, 2006

I’m Not Actually Obsessed w/ the Monorail Anymore, but…

Posted by on May 3 at 12:27 PM

We’re running a letter in today’s paper that trashes an article that Dan wrote in last week’s news section.

I’ve posted the letter below. Basically, the letter takes Savage to task for trashing Ron Sims’s new bus plan. Sims want to raise the sales tax one tenth of one percent (dinging tax payers for about $50 million in the first year). The money would fund frequent bus runs between downtown Seattle and West Seattle and Ballard/Aurora.

I don’t know why Savage didn’t feel compelled to respond. But he should have.

The angry letter blasts the monorail and “the amount of money that was going to be wasted” by comparing it Sims’s convenient bus plan.

But wait a minute: Frequent rides between downtown and West Seattle and Ballard? Isn’t that the monorail line? Yes. And go figure, Sims’s own ridership numbers for his bus plan predict 21 million rides annually—the same as the monorail’s predictions.

So, let’s compare the cost. The dreaded monorail got killed because it turned out that to pay it off, we were going to have to spend $11 billion over 45-50 years. That was just tooooo expensive for people to fathom. But let’s look at Sims’s plan factored out to serve us over the next 50 years (gotta keep replacing those buses to make it comparable to the long-term life of the monorail.) The $50 million a year, considering the government’s own 5.1% forecasts for sales tax revenue increases, will grow to over $10 billion.

So, while the angry letter below seems to make a good point that a citywide bus system serves more people than the ill-fated monorail Green Line would have, he ignores the fact that Sims’s new bus line itself, the plan Savage was attacking, has the same ridership numbers as the monorail and costs about as much as the monorail.

And keep in mind, there’s a key difference between investing in buses and monorail. Spending so much money on buses promotes our status quo “roads-only” infrastructure, while spending the same amount of money on elevated rapid transit creates a brand new car free infrastructure.

Point being: Ask New Yorkers or Chicagoans: 75 years ago, would you’ve rather had city planners invest in traditional roads or in rapid transit?

GET ON THE BUS
EDITOR: Aw, Dan hates buses ["Bus Load,” Dan Savage, April 27]. They're stinky. They get bogged down in traffic. Undesirable people ride them. They're just so... common. It's true, they're not glamorous like the Disneyland monorail, but guess what? They actually work. They go where you need to go, when you need to go there. Did the monorail ever promise that?
A bus transit system is flexible, scalable, and way more reliable than a silly monorail. For the amount of money that was going to be wasted on the Green Line (never mind the rest of the system), bus service in Seattle could be free, frequent, and comprehensive. All the money goes into moving people, not into expensive infrastructure like real estate, track, and stations.
I live in Ballard, half a mile from the proposed monorail line. The closest station would have been more than a mile away. The closest bus stop is, oh, 40 feet from my front door. The bus gets me downtown at least 10 minutes faster (yes, during rush hour) and closer to my destination than the monorail's projected service would have, not even considering the one-mile walk or ride to the monorail station. Why on earth would I ever ride the monorail? Because it's cute, shiny, and oh so trendy, with no "street lunatics” to spoil the quiet, odor-free ambiance of my ride?
Get over it. Rapid transit is a good idea, absolutely. The monorail was a bad idea that never should have gotten as far as it did.
Alan


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I really wish people could get their minds around the concept of constant dollars. The monorail wasn't going to cost $11 billion dollars anymore than $3 is going to buy you a gallon of gas in 2060. Inflation: it's not just a good idea, it's the law.

Unless the economy utterly collapses, of course.

Expensive, long term investment in valuable infrastructure is a GOOD THING. Lots of major projects take decades to pay off. It's called INVESTMENT. Invest in smart things, like transit, and you win; invest in ephemeral junk like sports stadiums and you lose. In the long term. How much do we still owe on the Kingdome?

Is it me or is the author's anti-monorail argument based almost exclusively on the fact that the bus is more convenient to HIS house rather than the global view of what's better for the city?

Typical Seattle. Afraid of change and unable to make/stick with a decision.

FNARF,
You're right about constant dollars, and that people refused to get that the $11B figure wasn't worth as much as $11b is worth right now.

However, the $10 B on Sims's bus plan is apples to apples on the $11 B on the monorail.

Although I disagree with the letter writer on the monorail, I was also very disappointed in Dan's article last week. Yes, I voted for the Monorail every single time, and I begged all my car-driving friends (who couldn't give a shit because they will NEVER switch to public transportation whether it's on the ground, below the ground, or above the ground) to do the same. I'm pissed that the Monorail isn't going to happen. But my reality is that I ride the bus for transportation, and my biggest complaint about public transit these days isn't that the buses move slowly, or that traffic is bad, or even that there's some stinky drug addict sitting next to me and an even more annoying hipster chick yapping into her cell phone in front of me. It's that the buses don't come often enough. I live on a major bus route connecting my neighborhood to the one in which I work, and if I manage to miss the bus during the day, I'm stuck waiting another 20 minutes. That wait is what makes the idea of buying a car and driving every day attractive. So while I can agree with Dan that Seattle kinda blew it on the Monorail (and the Monorail folks kinda blew it themselves by having such piss-poor leadership), my concern is how to improve what we have. And adding buses to routes would be a huge improvement.

Hey Josh, New York city planners (rather, Robert Moses) invested heavily in traditional roads. I can't imagine what an impossible hell Brooklyn would be without the BQE and Belt Parkway, or Queens and Long Island without the LIE, or Manhattan without the FDR and West Side Highway. There'd probably be a lot more potato fields in the Hamptons, though.

I don't think it is apples to apples, Josh. I think it's worse than that. The monorail investment would have necessatated paying off the financial instruments for 50 years, but the bus plan requires more than that. They're not going to buy 50 years worth of buses and keep them in a garage; they're going to keep buying buses, which are going to keep getting more and more expensive over time. I suppose it comes down to whether you think the rate of increase in the cost of buses is going to outstrip the rate of inflation, or more precisely the rate of increase in the cost of servicing the bonds. I think it will, thus I think the buses cost more in the long run. I could be wrong.

There's also the cost of DRIVERS to consider. There's a permanent shortage of qualified drivers, which means their pay is going to have to go way up to attract a lot more of them.

Genevieve is correct in identifying the frequency of buses as a pertinent issue. The "ten-minute" barrier, being the point at which the frequency of buses exceeds the average delay in buses, thus obviating the need for printed schedules, is a commonplace. And even the greatest train system is no better than the bus if they only come every 45 minutes. And all those empty buses running up and down the routes are not going to bode well for future transit improvements.

Genevieve,

Yeah, I disagreed with Dan's article on those grounds too.

I think adding more buses, while not sexy or satisfying for folks who have been hollering for speedy mass transit, is a good thing.

However, I ran Dan's article in the news section because I think the piece does capture a legit response to Sims's plan—and also, helps start a debate about Sims's plan. (The plan seemed to be getting a free ride in the rest of the local media.)

Anyway, while I do agree that Dan's editorial wasn't 100% on, I do think the letter's shots at the monorail needed to be corrected.

Sounds like you're still obsessed with the Monorail.

Ha! You got me there Napoleon XIII.

That's soooo six months ago.

Bus are a good idea. Why? With shipping and handling, and time to train a driver or two, the blasted thing can pick me up in about six months.

Elevated/rail based transit. Nice. I will think about that when I am riding to SEA-TAC in THREE fucking YEARS. Which will be the same thing I thought the first time I went into Westlake Bus Tunnel and caught my first bus, in 19 fucking 88.

Point is: rails in the Jet-City (Seattle, for you neebies) are nice to think about. You think about how nice they are in a city you can get to and ride one in. The Jet-City is road based, and a bus goes on the road, and I have to get to work, tomorrow, the next day, for oh, 40 or 50 more years. And the less time construction will rip up the roads in the next, oh, 40 or 50 years, the better.

Don't like them apples? Move. This is America and no one is forcing you to live in Seattle. If they are, call the authorities.

"But wait a minute: Frequent rides between downtown and West Seattle and Ballard? Isn’t that the monorail line? Yes. And go figure, Sims’s own ridership numbers for his bus plan predict 21 million rides annually—the same as the monorail’s predictions."

Not exactly. The monorail would have allowed one to not only travel from west seattle and ballard to downtown, but to and through the seattle center. The monorail would have potentially saved lower queen anne from a lot of car traffic during festivals like bumbershoot and folklife and commuters the expense of paid parking. I attempted public transportation once going from west seattle to the center using the bus and the presently broken down monorail at the westlake mall. My commute was close to an hour and forty five minutes each way. If Sims's bus service proposal provided for buses with longer routes as well as quicker arrival times, it might be an acceptable substitute for the monorail.

Um... Josh... it's not an apples to apples comparison. You say that the Sims plan would raise $50 million a year to "fund frequent bus runs between downtown Seattle and West Seattle and Ballard/Aurora." But in fact, the plan does much, much more than that, including:

• More trips to booming suburbs such as Sammamish, Kent and Covington.

• Route expansions in the neighborhoods surrounding Seattle-Tacoma International Airport.

• Trips every 15 minutes between business districts on the Eastside.

• Feeder buses in Beacon Hill and Rainier Valley to reach the Sound Transit light-rail stations there, which open in 2009.

• More east-west trips among Queen Anne, South Lake Union and Capitol Hill.

• More Access vehicles for the disabled.

• Electronic message boards at the busiest stops, to announce when the next bus is coming.

I don't believe the monorail was going to address any of these other areas.

Um, your math's missing several important items, Josh.

The $11 billion green line would've only covered a few neighborhoods. To expand it to cover more of the reigon would've cost many, many billions more. Also, the $11 billion doesn't include operation and maintenance costs: somebody's gotta run the monorail and keep it running.

So in effect, the bus plan is still many, many billions cheaper and serves the entire city, rather than a small swath of it.

FEIT Wrote:
"The angry letter blasts the monorail and “the amount of money that was going to be wasted” by comparing it Sims’s convenient bus plan."

Alan, the letter writer, specifically cites "A bus transit system", however is this the same as Sim's plan? I didn't get that impression from text of the letter as produced on this thread.

It appears Alan simply came to the conclusion the bus is better than the proposed Green Line, and I would suggest, from the context of his writing, this idea was formulated long before Sims floated his plan. I don't really see Alan's disagreement warranting or worth a great deal of concern and discussion.

---Jensen

ALERT ALERT ALERT

And all this for a house hold estimate cost which wil be $25.00 per YEAR. If you but a lot of stuff- I buy cheap and used. For me, I bet it is $10.00 per year. Minimalist. Conservationsist. Entranced by the Goodwill Experience..

For approx 2.00 a month, who will vote against it?

You would have to be an utter fool.

We must insist on another electric trolly line or two and all energy state of the art buses....
Sims is brilliant on this one.... perfect timeing, among the angst ridden post mono you know what blues.

Thanks, Erica. Facts are after all facts.

If fuels keeps on going up, bus riders will multiply as well. BETTER schedules will help loads.

Among my circle of ten friends and co workers I own the only car. And I use it rarely. They all LOVE this proposal.

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