With the miricle of the transporter I just stood on the transporter pod, my body was broken down to the molecular level and I was instantly transported to work where the transporter put my molucules back together. Total time: 3 seconds from Paris to Seattle.
Because of course the monorail would have been completed on time and under budget, unlike that Sound Transit monstrosity. The difference? Joel Horn's magical monorail fairy dust.
Who gives a shit how long it takes them. If their commute is too long, they should move closer to where they work. How many hundreds of millions would have been wasted on this train to nowhere? How many affordable housing units close to jobs and recreation would those same funds subsidize?
Posted by
I walked to work |
December 17, 2007 7:57 AM
Josh. The joke's on you. If you guys at the Stranger had done one iota of oversight of this government agency, maybe something would have been built. But instead you became like Dana Perino and became a spokesmodel for the monorail. Now all we have are vacant storefronts for the $200 million that was spent on the land that was stolen from the property owners. And refrigerator magnets. Anyone wanna buy some?
Next time you adopt a cause Josh, doing oversight is more likely to achieve your goal than not doing oversight.
Posted by
Richard Borkowski |
December 17, 2007 8:35 AM
Do you really think it would have opened on time? The monorail wasn't going to be immune to the neighborhood whining and lawsuits and general Seattle paralyzation that has plagued lightrail for the last 11 years. The instant it had to make hard decisions and not just present a magical alternative to Sound Transit, it would have been mired in the same dreary planning nightmare.
the monorail, or some other rapid transit should have happened decades ago. Self-servitude reigns supreme today more than ever and mass (community) transportation will forever be unnecessary to those in power. The geography of seattle only adds to this self-serving isolationism. Without a sense of community, we will never have mass transit.
Posted by
Haters Hater |
December 17, 2007 8:55 AM
I'm still pissed about the monorail not getting built. I'm impotent with rage. So, I wrote a book for National Novel Writing Month partially about an alternate future where the monorail is built. It was the only balm I could find.
Any other option, such as ball-bearings in the SLUT tracks, just smack of Edward Abbey inspired idiotic desperation.
I am in mourning today for the future we all fucked ourselves out of.
Mr. Borkowski nailed it. If the Stranger took its job (and itself) halfway seriously, instead of being just a mindless cheerleader for the first 90% of the monorail's "life," the outcome could've been different.
Posted by
Perfect Voter |
December 17, 2007 8:57 AM
Unions killed the monorail. Despite popular vote time and time again the council worked to sabotage the thing any chance they got. Their is no monorail union and the transit union is HUGH. Monorail would have taken away jobs. Bus drivers make $25 to $30 an hour and it's big business. However, light rail does have union. Had they built it we would have to have dealt with mysterious damages, fires, etc. Sort of what happened to the current monrail up until the idea of the monorail was finally dropped.
I'm thrilled the monorail didn't work out. I could have had some silly train that would have gotten me downtown quickly and pleasantly. BORING! Now our neighborhood has . . . a T-MOBILE STORE!!! Yeah!!! Because every neighborhood needs a goddamn T-Mobile Store!!!! I just hope that in the interest of competition and capitalism, an AT&T Wireless store opens up in one of the other razed storefronts on the block.
I live on Alki so would not have used the Monorial anyway. It took me 20 or 25 minutes on Bus # 37 to get from Alki Point to 4th & James. In addition I got to spend most of the commute looking at the the Sound and then taking a tour through the Duwamish Manufacturing & Industrial Center.
Also, I am not rich. There is lot's of more afforable housing on Alki.
It was Seattle's last chance at a rapid mass transit system, at least in our lifetimes. Now we're gonna spend just this side of forever sitting in grid-locked traffic.
Sad.
Posted by
Original Andrew |
December 17, 2007 9:13 AM
The bottom line is that we now can look forward to a city of buses and streetcars. Ironically on the way back from a great day of riding the PO Ferry to Port Townsend from Pier 50 I passed the Out Of Service trollies on Westlake, both of them. Nothing in the news but then the monorail never made the news when it broke down.
Larkin - Grant had little to do with the ETC or SMP particularly n the later years. The board did short the route. That was what the last vote was. The state gave only three options cars, property and a tiny car rental tax.
Richard - the SMP paid about $60 million for the property and the final taxpayer loss was about $110 million. The properties were acquired in the same way that ST or any agency acquires property.
In ST SPEAK since the project had planned to spend much more money by now and since the board has reset the opening date to never - THE MONORAL PROJECT IS UNDER BUDGET AND INFINITELY AHEAD OF SCHEDULE.
You know, if our government is slowly moving towards tyranny, as I'm assured by some pundits it is, couldn't we at least enjoy some of the potential benefits of tyranny? Like the capacity to build public infrastructure without worrying about any pesky public dissent?
I will say that if transit supporters would like x monorail people to be supporters or stay neutral on future projects it is past time to stop beating up the project and the people involved. Most of us worked for years to build what we thought (and many still think) was a better value better service system for the dense part of the region. We failed. So it goes.
There's plenty of blame to spread around for the failure of the monorail.
I have accepted part of that.
Joel and Tom have lots of blame.
But ultimately the City and the Mayor killed it when it could have been saved and built.
The City loaded up the monorail with additional monetary requirements knowing the tax base was less than predicted.
The leaders of the monorail, Tom and Joel, put out a bad finance plan. The contract with Fluor was about 20% over budget and that was not the critical problem. The technology was not the problem. The travel times were not the problem (it was about 15 minutes from the end of the line in WS or Ballard to downtown). The route was not the problem -- it served about half the city and linked with light rail. A good X formation from both of them allowing all four corners of Seattle service and access to rapid transit.
The finance plan was the problem.
The handling of the finance plan issue by most board members and the acting chair was a pr disaster. But despite that the finance plan was fixable and ultimately what was on the ballot was not the $11B bad finance plan which only lasted about ten days but a roughly $4-5 B finance plan (at the 5% MVET growth rate urged by the mayor's favorite economist) that was reasonable and frankly as good as that of light rail.
The majority of the politicians in the city, the mayor, council members, ST board members continually yelled about an $11 B finance plan after it was rejected and opposed what was on the ballot based on this false $11 billion figure -- like GWB shoting about WMD even after they were known to not be there.
If you compare the cost of new riders, new stations and miles per dollar, the monorail plan we put on the ballot with the revised finance plan was cheaper than the ST2 proposal on the ballot last fall.
Also critical positive features protecting us from risk and the upsurge in construction inflation were ignored -- like, we had a contract and we had the huge Fluor corporation taking most price increases.
And the finances could have been improved even more if the City had reasonably supported the monorail instead of imposing $100 million plus in extra burdens.
The same leaders, like the mayor, who said the monorail was a finance disaster a year later saw the price of the new Viaduct tunnel go up by a billion dollars and that was no problem at all. But finding a couple of hundred million to improve monorail finances and make it work as the mayor had promised, was viewed as an outrage.
WE still need new capacity n-s over the Ship Canal, and we still need real transit in the "surface transit" option.
Sadly City leaders could not even integrate monorail thinking into the Viaduct thinking which seemed to only take place a year later.
There was also no integration in the thinking about monorail and light rail.
What could be better for light rail than bringing another 72,000 riders a day to walking distance of four light rail stations?
The monorail was transferable to light rail at four stations thus when the monorail was killed off, all the light rail riders lost access to all the monorail Green Line destinations (e.g., SEattle Center; U District to Ballard would have been just 20 minutes via Westlake). All the monorail neighborhoods lost access to the entire light rail line (W. Seattle to Roosevelt, or to the airport, transfer at King St.).
The Seattle area lost the heart of a good full coverage in city rapid transit system.
For God's sake it is as if the owners of the no. 1 line in NYC had deliberately tried to kill off the F train line. (Note to readers: the W 4th station is a populat Greenwish village station with a 1-F transfer linking Manhattan and Brooklyn).
The result today: the entire Green Line corridor is to be left out of light rail expansion. It seems for ST Fife and Mill Creek are more important to hook up thought they are much less dense and are much farther away.
This is very bad transit planning and very bad politics.
Why would half of Seattle vote for light rail at the 66% level needed, if they are left out?
There is also a lot of posturing that still goes on about the monorail.
IT was known way before 2005 that the project likely was in dire straights.
When I ran for the board in 2003 everyone knew the revenues were 30% short and the question in all corners was "how are you going to do it? What if it's not what we voted for? What if you have to cut the line?"
I said (a) we would wait and see until the contracts were negotiated, (B) if it was not what we voted for I would work to kill it, and (c) if we needed to shorten the line to make the finances work with a 30% shortfall, I would help put that to a vote.
That is what happened.
I, and the monorail project, kept the promise to not build it shorter without a vote. In this sense the monorail is the most accountable project because other projects have large overruns, great scope reductions, and huge delays, without any vote.
But it would have been better if the local politicans had taken the time to study the revised finance plan before irresponsibly rejecting it.
Instead of helping the project they were instrumental in killing it. And blaming a $11 B finance plan that was avoidable and was in fact avoided is a lame excuse that for most opponents simply masked their long standing opposition to any Green Line, no matter what the finance situation was.
WE can draw at least four lessons.
1. Keep asking questions and make agencies disclose all the bad news so it can be dealt with and not obscured or left in doubt.
All transit projects now have to talk about 30 and 50 year cost figures.
So when folks want to know the useful life of the I 90 bridge or the total 50 year cost of light rail, ST needs to give clear answers. Not muddled answers or arbitrary 20 year cut offs.
2. Call people when they distort, lie and put out baloney.
Many leaders put out real gbaloney about an $11 b monorail right up to the vote. When it was a false number.
3. WE CLEARLY need better integration of all projects instead of inter-agency competition and jealousy.
Creating divisions within the pro rapid transit coalition is a recipe for disaster. So is disjointed planning on a piecemeal basis with different agencies in charge of different modes.
[Hey does that BRT line in WS even link up to that improved mini ferry from WS to downtown?]
4. You need elected people on boards and more accountability.
Otherwise leaders get out of touch with people's concerns and don't address them but then when the transportation project loses big time at the polls -- absolutely nothing happens to the politicians who made the big mistake.
We still need rapid transit solutions for the problems the monorail would have addressed.
-More n-s capacity over the ship canal, out of traffic and not in cars;
--a transit component for the Surface/transit option
--a rail system that does not leave out half of Seattle. So it has to be a rail tunnel, or aerial tramways, or some kind of super BRT system that actually works and can carry about 100,000 trips a day and takes you downtown in 15-20 minutes [BRT advocates, go fot it, give us the details and the costs etc.], or an elevated train like Skytrain or the monorail.
So ...lookin backwards it certainly would have been better to vote yes and also keep improving the project finances and even inject another $300 million into the revised monorail plan. But that would have required a desire to serve the public when oplitical hay could easily be made over attacking the monorail.
The folks who wanted to kill the monorail and who rejoice in its demise today said they had better transit solutions for this corridor -- but now they've had two more years, and still have no plans.
Since the failure of the Green Line at the polls, we've seen two huge transportation proposals go down in flames.
Lots of things aren't working and there is plenty blame to spread around.
Ifyou are focused on solutions, you are still forced to the conclusion the best solution is a rapid rail line on the west side of Seattle. And you are forced to conclude now it will cost more.
Look at urbanrail.net, there are few cities, if any, that leave out half the central city when buildling regional transit.
Fife is in the plan, but not Seattle center and West Seattle and Ballard?
It took about 8 minutes to get from Ballard to the cafe, and then about 2 minutes to get to my office when I was done with coffee and knitting and Krugman and the Slog.
Parking would suck if there weren't so much room for my motorcycle around the bicycle racks.
Still, I would have loved the monorail, even if I couldn't have used it.
For the record, there are no plans to link the RapidRide system with the Water Taxi other than to transfer to the little shuttle bus which serves the Water Taxi. The Water Taxi seems destined to serve Alki-area residents and the RapidRide seems destined to serve Alaska & Morgan Junction residents with the possibility of including Fauntleroy Ferry Dock and maybe Westwood patrons. Oh, and since the RapidRide willl be coming online about the time the Viaduct is closed for the south-end work, it's entirely probable that the RapidRide trip from Alaska Junction to downtown will actually take 10 minutes longer than the current 54 or 55 (which uses the Viaduct and takes about 12 minutes).
RapidRide is the branding, not necessarily a description of the service. Stay tuned as KCMetro is working all these issues. They (KCM) at least are working hand-in-glove with SDOT on the West Seattle route.
Posted by
chas Redmond |
December 17, 2007 10:21 AM
And, unless and until Sound Transit includes a West Side route which can be implemented in roughly 10 years, I would doubt more than 25 percent of West Side residents (Ballard, West Seattle, SODO, Georgetown/South Park, rest of NW Seattle) will be voting positively on any ST2.1 plan.
I doubt that the ST leadership has grokked this yet. Don't expect any subsequent north, east or south extensions of Link to be passed by many Seattle residents. Include a set of links to the NW and SW and it "might" pass. I'm still stunned by the costs per passenger and per mile for what we're getting.
Lack of leadership is a vast understatement.
Posted by
chas Redmond |
December 17, 2007 10:25 AM
ST needs to take that west corridor study and do it NOW. Find the money from somewhere, but don't leave Ballard, Fremont, West Seattle, etc. out in the cold just because that was SMP's turf back in 2003.
It took me twenty minutes on the 11 to get form Capitol Hill to West Seattle, not bad I'd say. Although it would have been way more futuristic on a monorail.
@28 Are you speaking of the Robot Unions? Because the Monorail trains were to be driverless.
That's my point! That is the main reason Monorail died despite positive public opinion in election after election. Not enough cashola would be spread around to all the interested parties including light rail construction companies. The money runs deep into the pockets of Seattle politicians including some of the dumb fuck anti-monorail activists on here. For those that killed monorail hope you all got your share of cash from the transit mafia.
20 minutes on the 120, beefed up this year by the passage of Transit Now, from Delridge instead of the 17 promised by the monorail station I would have had in my neighborhood.
Of course, when we had flooding from the recent storm, it took 90 minutes to get into Downtown. A monorail would still have taken 17.
The city has permitted several hundred new apartments and townhouses in our neighborhood with no increase in street capacity, though, so the buses will slow down in traffic. And a monorail would have still take 17 minutes.
A monorail could have brought folks to art performances at Youngstown, music at Skylark, burgers and shakes at Luna Park, or jobs at Nucor.
Instead we get nothing, while West Seattleites are shocked, SHOCKED, at the development coming to our neighborhood and wondering where all the increased traffic is going to go. And I just shake my head, Josh...
- The building trades unions were heavily involved in getting the construction of the Green Line done under union contracts, which would have meant hundreds of living-wage jobs for the duration of the project.
- The King County Labor Council consistently endorsed the various Monorail proposals, as well as numerous members of the Monorail board.
- While the Green Line would have eliminated some routes from Ballard/West Seattle to downtown, nearly all of the local routes in each neighborhood would have been unaffected, so the net loss of routes (and therefore driver requirements) would have been minimal.
Additionally those buses - AND their drivers - that would have been eliminated from downtown routes were to have been re-allocated to other routes throughout the region, so there would have been no net loss of Metro jobs.
In point of fact, West Seattle in particular would have actually seen a net INCREASE in bus hours, since Metro planned to rededicate most of the resources then allocated for downtown routes back into West Seattle, thus increasing service capacity, and frequency within the geographic area.
Next time, do try to get a few of the FACTS, before spewing off half-baked opinions...
Comte not very important but the drivers' union did work long and hard against the project because they opposed the automated aspect of the project. Metro did not guarantee service and in fact sent out a letter stating that they would have a hard time serving the stations.
24 minutes on the 21 Express from 35th and Roxbury which the monorail wouldn't have come even close to. Indeed, it probably would have required me to transfer to the monorail and pay extra since Metro would cut duplicative service.
Posted by
tiptoe tommy |
December 17, 2007 12:13 PM
For those of you that live in Ballard or West Seattle and work downtown, how long did it take you to get to work today?
Several people from Ballard and West Seattle have commented on this thread about their commute times, and still nobody that says the Monorail would have gotten them to work significantly faster.
But the Monorail was never about getting people to work faster, so this is not surprising.
psst. some inside info. there's a strong argument that the Building Trades held on too long to this dog and not only let a bullshit plan move forward - they pitbull'ed it past other board members. Ironically, in their avarice, they killed it.
Well, JMR, a monorail is ALWAYS faster than being stuck in traffic.
But you're right. The point was to get people to work faster in the future.
But why should we plan for the future in this region? Let's wait until everyone moves out to Issaquah and North Bend before we build a transportation solution out there. Let's wait until ferries get pulled out of service to Port Townsend before we build new ones. Let's wait until bridges get closed before we replace them.
That's the way to spend our tax dollars wisely, right?
A monorail is not faster than being stuck in traffic if it's seized to a concrete rail, 50 feet in the air, and burning. I've watched fire trucks clear terrified passengers off the damn things twice, now.
Even I, inveterate rail critic that I am, did not stoop to this to bash the monorail.
@59, Terrified or no, the passengers in both instances were not exactly facing a life-threatening situation. And, as you no doubt saw, passengers were evacuated with little incident.
That said, the trains are 40+ years old. And I would love to see any other system that carries 2+ million people a year with a comparable safety record.
Monorails don't hit pedestrians, and bicyclists aren't injured riding over monorail tracks, and monorails don't T-bone automobiles.
Old or not, the monorail has caught fire (once), and SFD has had to rescue passengers using the hook and ladder truck, and it has collided and jammed itself on the track (once, involving both trains).
Both instances left people stranded 50 feet in the air.
Then there are the miscellaneous iron parts and doo-dads that periodically fall off the undercarriage.
Fortunately, none has ever killed anyone below. Yet.
And yes, I understand that the new monorail would have been "new". So how long does "new" last? How accident resistant and flame retardant is "new" anyhow?
The point is: every mode of transportation brings its own sets of problems with it. The monorail's set of problems is that if it catches fire, collides with something, shorts out, etc..., the passengers are stranded.
Now that everyone's had a chance to rant, I'll say something wise and insightful, even if you may not be ready to hear it.
When Vancouver's SkyTrain light rail system was built, it took a while for it to be extended, and a number of the neighborhoods and nearby cities that are building extensions to it didn't like it at all.
Regardless of what we think of the Monorail or ST LINK, the reality is that as either system expands, the addition of multiple links makes the totality of the integrated system - rail (either kind), streetcar, bus, BRT, velociraptor helopeds, whatever ... much more useful.
Speaking of SkyTrain, here's the new elevated train in the city of Richmond, not unlike West Seattle, that will eventually connect the airport and neighborhood across a river and into Downtown:
and, @65, during that time I've personally witnessed more than 20 trucks, campers, vans, SUVs, and cars burn up, just on a two-mile stretch of I-5 ... so on that score the monorail still wins ...
I don't expect passengers to safely climb out of burning cars or buses. I expect them to be hysterical--BUT, I don't expect passengers to climb out of their burning SUVs at all. I expect them to stay inside. Bitches.
Put a pack of velociraptors on I-5 during rush hour and I can pretty much guarantee two possible outcomes:
1. EVERYONE will get to work in record time.
2. There will be some fat, happy velociraptors napping on the freeway, but in any case the number of commuters will have been significantly reduced, thus making an easier commute for the survivors.
My dad had a crappy old car that didn't have ABS brakes, seat belts, air bags, crush zones, unibody construction, collapsible steering wheel, ANY of that stuff. And the dashboard was sharp painted metal, and all sorts of hard pointy metal and plastic bits were sticking out everywhere. Therefore no one should drive cars, because they are too dangerous.
Nap, really a dumb argument - the new monorails are made of materials that don't burn like the plywood floors of the Alweg. The new system was to have escape walkways and the trains could be unloaded side to side or front to back. Are you as worried about being in a tunnel with a burning train? How about on an elevated with heavy or light rail? Compare the safety record of monorails with any other mode or technology then get back.
The Seattle Monorail Project suffered from problems similar to Sound Transit’s rail line. Objectively speaking, both were fuckups of the highest order. Why then did one get built and the other go kaput?
1. ST’s problems came first, so the monorail was held to a higher standard. This was reasonable and understood by everyone. Monorail supporters pledged to do better, and the SMP said they would do better. They didn’t.
2. ST survived because, once the shit hit the fan, they had solid support from elected officials to weather the storm. SMP didn’t. The difference was this: ST was created by these elected officials. If ST went down, they went down. This was not the case with any elected official with the SMP.
Would more critical press coverage had helped? Perhaps, but likely not. Nearly all big transportation projects go way over budget—it’s the nature of the beast. They stand or fall based on political back-up, and whether elected officials are willing to go to the mat for a project. Whether they do often depends on whether it was their idea or not, and whether they had buy-in or not from the beginning—and whether they control it in the here and now.
When ST blew up, Nickels and Sims were on the board: the shit was in their hands. When the SMP blew up, the shit was over there: someone else’s problem.
I'm all in favor of a six-lane surface street, *and* a new-seawall/waterfront tunnel built with foundations sturdy enough for a new viaduct formed on top of it.
Only this way can we meet any and all contingencies in our future transportation planning.
The monorail would have cost too much to serve too few and run too infrequently. As a result, it doesn't how much Queen Anneans and Ballarders and West Seattleites spent driving to work--most of them didn't drive downtown, anyway.
Everyone's missed the fact that the SMP had expansion plans on the boards, and that the monorail system would have eventually served every neighborhood in the city had the green line been successful.
Now we're never going to get that. ST up to UW and Northgate in 10 years, maybe. Everyone else can forget it, especially the entire Westside.
@71 - we need velociraptor helopeds to keep the dogs at bay. And those pesky people who want personal cars on stilts (or whatever they call those foolish things).
Plus, all our jet-propelled pogo sticks got recalled along with the jet packs ... something about global warming emissions I think.
Plus, someone has to eat all those people in burning cars on I-5, and I think velociraptors are the pro-enviro choice for that mission. So long as they're trained to only occasionally munch on people driving in the non-HOV lanes, it should work out fine ...
Thank god. That thing would be uglier than the viaduct, the kingdome, 75% of the seattle center, I5 and every other nasty concrete thing we've ever built in this city. Good riddance to a silly pipe dream dreamed up by people smoking way to much pot.
Light rail is where it is at baby.
Posted by
crk on bellevue ave |
December 17, 2007 9:05 PM
Being able to essentially INSTALL a grade separated rapid mass transit system w/in an existing built urban infrastructure w/such minimal expense and disruption to business and traffic flow(as the SMP plan was), would have created a huge threat to the petroleum based, credit/bank financed, military - industrial complex.
The Seattle Popular Monorail Project would have made it possible to choose not to drive a car in our increasingly gridlocked big little town. Wouldn't this have challenged the (automotive) American Dream?, the second biggest personal expense after home buying. Include such "big business/ big politics" line items as: car purchase itself, "financing", insurance, gas/oil, highways, etc. Especially since SPMP would have demonstrated how easily duplicable this could be in other cities after Seattle pioneered the R&D.
AND... Democracy in action: the people - on their own, not through "representation", - voted over and over again that this was such a good idea that they even eventually volunteered to pay for it themselves! Out of taxes on CARS no less!!
Locally, the monorail was murdered by the hired guns (namely his Idiocy, Mayor Nickels and His City Council) (not to mention the rest of the posse at the state level - US Transportation Chair Murray & Rep. Murray, Transportation Secty. McDonald, Gov. Gregoire et al) in the pocket of the likes of Paul Allen & his ilk in order to protect and preserve the anticipated values of their new developments in DT/SLU (Downtown / South Lake Union) IN COMPARISON to values of properties out in the neighborhoods where the people and the families currently live.
Thus; w/out being able to travel to and fro in a functional manner inside of the city from neighborhood to neighborhood and DT; neighborhood property is worth less and DT worth more, w/DT becoming the only viable place to be. SLU would have been much more of a longer term risk if West Seattle had a Rapid Mass Transit system allowing a reliable DT commute in the same 15 min. time it takes for the SLUTrolley to go a mile. With transit, WS would have become a functional part of the city, it would have become less of a suburban exile and would have been in competition with the "million dollar" condos in SLU. Think about how much $ is on the line under construction in DT/SLU. And BTW; labor reps buy/sell/trade w/said politicians also, even when it goes against their own better judgment it seems. Steve Williams - who put the fear in ya?
Here's to much happiness in the idyllic world of Mr. Roger's neighborhood (possibly to become the densest & most expensive spot in all of WA, AK, HI, OR, ID, MT, WY... did I mention the dakotas?), complete w/their own cutest little "ding ding" trolley; while the rest of us at least from West Seattle to Ballard can go to hell stuck in petro-traffic working to pay for the man's little land of make believe.
You'd think, if the people voted for it 4 times (the 4th being biggest), then wouldn't (or rather, shouldn't) the people higher up support them and help them achieve it? -.-
I had occasion to take the #125 downtown last Thursday, Friday and Saturday.
(one trip is described in comment #16 at http://elizatruitt.wordpress.com/2007/12/15/train-in-vain/#comment-232)
I take the bus once in a while in a vain attempt to atone for my usual 25 mile SOV commute in the other direction. The trips on the #125 took the expected time, 30 to 45 minutes to Downtown or Broadway. The bus cost about the same as the gas would have in my car. When my wife and I went downtown on the bus, it cost more than the gas would have. And then there's parking if I drive. But the REAL cost that keeps me from taking the bus more often is TIME. Not just the trip time, but wait time and transfer time too. And how dependable is the schedule and what are the conditions while waiting and to what extent do I have to carefully plan the trip out ahead of time. I really would prefer to take transit to my job in Auburn, but an hour and a half each way is just too much.
A well-designed transit system would address that time cost directly. People would move QUICKLY on and off FREQUENT vehicles and those vehicles would move QUICKLY, no matter what weather or traffic, across the most congested urban areas in a wide spread grid of lines. A finer grid of slower surface transit would connect to the wider, faster grid. Cities with transit like that still have traffic congestion. We have to get away from the idea of reducing traffic congestion, and instead concentrate on moving PEOPLE AROUND the traffic congestion.
Lessons from ETC/SMP/ST/R&T (IMHO):
1. "Overlay" transit districts work. The voters over a wider area prefer to pay less for a modest level of transit service. Voters in more congested areas seem to be willing to pay more for improved transit. Use precinct vote maps from previous votes to determine the boundaries for the next proposal. Retain the legal right to do so.
2. Do a better job of coordinating implementation of the next plan with existing transit bodies after voter approval.
3. Question all assumptions. Hire professional sceptics and engineers.
4. Build in scope flexibility so that all goals will continue to be addressed under changing conditions.
I don't know what you're getting aat but /I sure hate my life here in Futurewoprldws.
I live on First Hill but I did fly my jet pack up to Greenwood this afternoon.
With the miricle of the transporter I just stood on the transporter pod, my body was broken down to the molecular level and I was instantly transported to work where the transporter put my molucules back together. Total time: 3 seconds from Paris to Seattle.
Put THAT in your monorail pipe and smoke it!
What a waste of time THAT whole thing turned out to be.
I out-walked the SLUT today through South Lake Union... again.
I wonder what Seattle learned from that experience?
For those of you that live in Ballard or West Seattle and work downtown, how long did it take you to get to work today?
However long it took, it was probably much faster if you drove than it would have been on this monorail.
THE MOST FUCKED UP BOARD IN THE HISTORY OF AMERICAN CIVICS - THEIR LACK OF MOXIE COST US THE MONORAIL
TELL US GRANT, WHY YOU DID NOT REQUIRE ANSWERS FROM YOUR STAFF?
TELL US WHY WHEN IT BECAME APPARENT THAT CAR TAXES WERE NOT THE PERFECT SOLUTION YOU DID NOT GO FOR A BETTER BASE?
tell us why when the full line was too much you did not scale back and build?
WHAT A MESSED UP BOARD - AND NOW - THE HIPSTERS AND AMATEUR BOARD MEMBERS BLAME EVERYBODY ELSE - HOW VERY HANDY
REMEMBER THEY HAD BOUGHT THE STATIONS
WHAT A BUNCH OF STUPID FOOLS - THE PUBLIC VOTED YES FOUR TIMES - GOD, OH GOD, HOW DO YOU BLOW THAT SUPPORT
15 minutes by car from Lowman Beach to 3rd and Pine. As long as the viaduct lives, I'm fucking driving!
15 minutes by car from Lowman Beach to 3rd and Pine. As long as the viaduct lives, I'm fucking driving!
Thus, their desire to remove the viaduct. And when you choose a different road - they'll try to get rid of that one too.
Because of course the monorail would have been completed on time and under budget, unlike that Sound Transit monstrosity. The difference? Joel Horn's magical monorail fairy dust.
Who cares?
Who gives a shit how long it takes them. If their commute is too long, they should move closer to where they work. How many hundreds of millions would have been wasted on this train to nowhere? How many affordable housing units close to jobs and recreation would those same funds subsidize?
I wasn't aware anyone in West Seattle worked further than two miles from home.
And I wasn't aware anyone in Ballard worked at all. How could you live there and not be independently wealthy?
Josh. The joke's on you. If you guys at the Stranger had done one iota of oversight of this government agency, maybe something would have been built. But instead you became like Dana Perino and became a spokesmodel for the monorail. Now all we have are vacant storefronts for the $200 million that was spent on the land that was stolen from the property owners. And refrigerator magnets. Anyone wanna buy some?
Next time you adopt a cause Josh, doing oversight is more likely to achieve your goal than not doing oversight.
What a missed opportunity.
Do you really think it would have opened on time? The monorail wasn't going to be immune to the neighborhood whining and lawsuits and general Seattle paralyzation that has plagued lightrail for the last 11 years. The instant it had to make hard decisions and not just present a magical alternative to Sound Transit, it would have been mired in the same dreary planning nightmare.
It took me ten minutes from Capitol Hill to downtown.
Of course, the Monorail was never going to meet me on Capitol Hill in the first place.
the monorail, or some other rapid transit should have happened decades ago. Self-servitude reigns supreme today more than ever and mass (community) transportation will forever be unnecessary to those in power. The geography of seattle only adds to this self-serving isolationism. Without a sense of community, we will never have mass transit.
I'm still pissed about the monorail not getting built. I'm impotent with rage. So, I wrote a book for National Novel Writing Month partially about an alternate future where the monorail is built. It was the only balm I could find.
Any other option, such as ball-bearings in the SLUT tracks, just smack of Edward Abbey inspired idiotic desperation.
I am in mourning today for the future we all fucked ourselves out of.
Mr. Borkowski nailed it. If the Stranger took its job (and itself) halfway seriously, instead of being just a mindless cheerleader for the first 90% of the monorail's "life," the outcome could've been different.
Unions killed the monorail. Despite popular vote time and time again the council worked to sabotage the thing any chance they got. Their is no monorail union and the transit union is HUGH. Monorail would have taken away jobs. Bus drivers make $25 to $30 an hour and it's big business. However, light rail does have union. Had they built it we would have to have dealt with mysterious damages, fires, etc. Sort of what happened to the current monrail up until the idea of the monorail was finally dropped.
I'm thrilled the monorail didn't work out. I could have had some silly train that would have gotten me downtown quickly and pleasantly. BORING! Now our neighborhood has . . . a T-MOBILE STORE!!! Yeah!!! Because every neighborhood needs a goddamn T-Mobile Store!!!! I just hope that in the interest of competition and capitalism, an AT&T Wireless store opens up in one of the other razed storefronts on the block.
I live on Alki so would not have used the Monorial anyway. It took me 20 or 25 minutes on Bus # 37 to get from Alki Point to 4th & James. In addition I got to spend most of the commute looking at the the Sound and then taking a tour through the Duwamish Manufacturing & Industrial Center.
Also, I am not rich. There is lot's of more afforable housing on Alki.
It was Seattle's last chance at a rapid mass transit system, at least in our lifetimes. Now we're gonna spend just this side of forever sitting in grid-locked traffic.
Sad.
I can't wait to meet you guys at a Slog Thursday to see how collected and calm you guys really are, as opposed to here. :)
The bottom line is that we now can look forward to a city of buses and streetcars. Ironically on the way back from a great day of riding the PO Ferry to Port Townsend from Pier 50 I passed the Out Of Service trollies on Westlake, both of them. Nothing in the news but then the monorail never made the news when it broke down.
Larkin - Grant had little to do with the ETC or SMP particularly n the later years. The board did short the route. That was what the last vote was. The state gave only three options cars, property and a tiny car rental tax.
Richard - the SMP paid about $60 million for the property and the final taxpayer loss was about $110 million. The properties were acquired in the same way that ST or any agency acquires property.
In ST SPEAK since the project had planned to spend much more money by now and since the board has reset the opening date to never - THE MONORAL PROJECT IS UNDER BUDGET AND INFINITELY AHEAD OF SCHEDULE.
@22 -- Are you speaking of the Robot Unions? Because the Monorail trains were to be driverless.
You know, if our government is slowly moving towards tyranny, as I'm assured by some pundits it is, couldn't we at least enjoy some of the potential benefits of tyranny? Like the capacity to build public infrastructure without worrying about any pesky public dissent?
Sigh.
Just for the record this is a recap of the story the day after the last vote. It includes numbers for real estate buys.
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2002612604_monorail09m.html
I will say that if transit supporters would like x monorail people to be supporters or stay neutral on future projects it is past time to stop beating up the project and the people involved. Most of us worked for years to build what we thought (and many still think) was a better value better service system for the dense part of the region. We failed. So it goes.
I'm gonna reanimate the festering corpse of Robert Moses and we're finally gonna get some shit done.
This town needs an enema!
Work? I haven't even gotten out of bed yet.
the monorail was an idiotic idea from the start.
It took me the normal 45 minutes to ride my bike from West Seattle and put it on an Express bus to my job in Bellevue.
Only suckers and the unloved drive alone.
There's plenty of blame to spread around for the failure of the monorail.
I have accepted part of that.
Joel and Tom have lots of blame.
But ultimately the City and the Mayor killed it when it could have been saved and built.
The City loaded up the monorail with additional monetary requirements knowing the tax base was less than predicted.
The leaders of the monorail, Tom and Joel, put out a bad finance plan. The contract with Fluor was about 20% over budget and that was not the critical problem. The technology was not the problem. The travel times were not the problem (it was about 15 minutes from the end of the line in WS or Ballard to downtown). The route was not the problem -- it served about half the city and linked with light rail. A good X formation from both of them allowing all four corners of Seattle service and access to rapid transit.
The finance plan was the problem.
The handling of the finance plan issue by most board members and the acting chair was a pr disaster. But despite that the finance plan was fixable and ultimately what was on the ballot was not the $11B bad finance plan which only lasted about ten days but a roughly $4-5 B finance plan (at the 5% MVET growth rate urged by the mayor's favorite economist) that was reasonable and frankly as good as that of light rail.
The majority of the politicians in the city, the mayor, council members, ST board members continually yelled about an $11 B finance plan after it was rejected and opposed what was on the ballot based on this false $11 billion figure -- like GWB shoting about WMD even after they were known to not be there.
If you compare the cost of new riders, new stations and miles per dollar, the monorail plan we put on the ballot with the revised finance plan was cheaper than the ST2 proposal on the ballot last fall.
Also critical positive features protecting us from risk and the upsurge in construction inflation were ignored -- like, we had a contract and we had the huge Fluor corporation taking most price increases.
And the finances could have been improved even more if the City had reasonably supported the monorail instead of imposing $100 million plus in extra burdens.
The same leaders, like the mayor, who said the monorail was a finance disaster a year later saw the price of the new Viaduct tunnel go up by a billion dollars and that was no problem at all. But finding a couple of hundred million to improve monorail finances and make it work as the mayor had promised, was viewed as an outrage.
WE still need new capacity n-s over the Ship Canal, and we still need real transit in the "surface transit" option.
Sadly City leaders could not even integrate monorail thinking into the Viaduct thinking which seemed to only take place a year later.
There was also no integration in the thinking about monorail and light rail.
What could be better for light rail than bringing another 72,000 riders a day to walking distance of four light rail stations?
The monorail was transferable to light rail at four stations thus when the monorail was killed off, all the light rail riders lost access to all the monorail Green Line destinations (e.g., SEattle Center; U District to Ballard would have been just 20 minutes via Westlake). All the monorail neighborhoods lost access to the entire light rail line (W. Seattle to Roosevelt, or to the airport, transfer at King St.).
The Seattle area lost the heart of a good full coverage in city rapid transit system.
For God's sake it is as if the owners of the no. 1 line in NYC had deliberately tried to kill off the F train line. (Note to readers: the W 4th station is a populat Greenwish village station with a 1-F transfer linking Manhattan and Brooklyn).
The result today: the entire Green Line corridor is to be left out of light rail expansion. It seems for ST Fife and Mill Creek are more important to hook up thought they are much less dense and are much farther away.
This is very bad transit planning and very bad politics.
Why would half of Seattle vote for light rail at the 66% level needed, if they are left out?
There is also a lot of posturing that still goes on about the monorail.
IT was known way before 2005 that the project likely was in dire straights.
When I ran for the board in 2003 everyone knew the revenues were 30% short and the question in all corners was "how are you going to do it? What if it's not what we voted for? What if you have to cut the line?"
I said (a) we would wait and see until the contracts were negotiated, (B) if it was not what we voted for I would work to kill it, and (c) if we needed to shorten the line to make the finances work with a 30% shortfall, I would help put that to a vote.
That is what happened.
I, and the monorail project, kept the promise to not build it shorter without a vote. In this sense the monorail is the most accountable project because other projects have large overruns, great scope reductions, and huge delays, without any vote.
But it would have been better if the local politicans had taken the time to study the revised finance plan before irresponsibly rejecting it.
Instead of helping the project they were instrumental in killing it. And blaming a $11 B finance plan that was avoidable and was in fact avoided is a lame excuse that for most opponents simply masked their long standing opposition to any Green Line, no matter what the finance situation was.
WE can draw at least four lessons.
1. Keep asking questions and make agencies disclose all the bad news so it can be dealt with and not obscured or left in doubt.
All transit projects now have to talk about 30 and 50 year cost figures.
So when folks want to know the useful life of the I 90 bridge or the total 50 year cost of light rail, ST needs to give clear answers. Not muddled answers or arbitrary 20 year cut offs.
2. Call people when they distort, lie and put out baloney.
Many leaders put out real gbaloney about an $11 b monorail right up to the vote. When it was a false number.
3. WE CLEARLY need better integration of all projects instead of inter-agency competition and jealousy.
Creating divisions within the pro rapid transit coalition is a recipe for disaster. So is disjointed planning on a piecemeal basis with different agencies in charge of different modes.
[Hey does that BRT line in WS even link up to that improved mini ferry from WS to downtown?]
4. You need elected people on boards and more accountability.
Otherwise leaders get out of touch with people's concerns and don't address them but then when the transportation project loses big time at the polls -- absolutely nothing happens to the politicians who made the big mistake.
We still need rapid transit solutions for the problems the monorail would have addressed.
-More n-s capacity over the ship canal, out of traffic and not in cars;
--a transit component for the Surface/transit option
--a rail system that does not leave out half of Seattle. So it has to be a rail tunnel, or aerial tramways, or some kind of super BRT system that actually works and can carry about 100,000 trips a day and takes you downtown in 15-20 minutes [BRT advocates, go fot it, give us the details and the costs etc.], or an elevated train like Skytrain or the monorail.
So ...lookin backwards it certainly would have been better to vote yes and also keep improving the project finances and even inject another $300 million into the revised monorail plan. But that would have required a desire to serve the public when oplitical hay could easily be made over attacking the monorail.
The folks who wanted to kill the monorail and who rejoice in its demise today said they had better transit solutions for this corridor -- but now they've had two more years, and still have no plans.
Since the failure of the Green Line at the polls, we've seen two huge transportation proposals go down in flames.
Lots of things aren't working and there is plenty blame to spread around.
Ifyou are focused on solutions, you are still forced to the conclusion the best solution is a rapid rail line on the west side of Seattle. And you are forced to conclude now it will cost more.
Look at urbanrail.net, there are few cities, if any, that leave out half the central city when buildling regional transit.
Fife is in the plan, but not Seattle center and West Seattle and Ballard?
That's a hard sell.
Their is no monorail union and the transit union is HUGH.
Gesundheit!
I took the 28 express from Ballard to downtown. It took a half an hour.
It took about 8 minutes to get from Ballard to the cafe, and then about 2 minutes to get to my office when I was done with coffee and knitting and Krugman and the Slog.
Parking would suck if there weren't so much room for my motorcycle around the bicycle racks.
Still, I would have loved the monorail, even if I couldn't have used it.
For the record, there are no plans to link the RapidRide system with the Water Taxi other than to transfer to the little shuttle bus which serves the Water Taxi. The Water Taxi seems destined to serve Alki-area residents and the RapidRide seems destined to serve Alaska & Morgan Junction residents with the possibility of including Fauntleroy Ferry Dock and maybe Westwood patrons. Oh, and since the RapidRide willl be coming online about the time the Viaduct is closed for the south-end work, it's entirely probable that the RapidRide trip from Alaska Junction to downtown will actually take 10 minutes longer than the current 54 or 55 (which uses the Viaduct and takes about 12 minutes).
RapidRide is the branding, not necessarily a description of the service. Stay tuned as KCMetro is working all these issues. They (KCM) at least are working hand-in-glove with SDOT on the West Seattle route.
RapidRide is the branding, not necessarily a description of the service.
You could say that more generally about "mass transit" or "rapid transit".
And, unless and until Sound Transit includes a West Side route which can be implemented in roughly 10 years, I would doubt more than 25 percent of West Side residents (Ballard, West Seattle, SODO, Georgetown/South Park, rest of NW Seattle) will be voting positively on any ST2.1 plan.
I doubt that the ST leadership has grokked this yet. Don't expect any subsequent north, east or south extensions of Link to be passed by many Seattle residents. Include a set of links to the NW and SW and it "might" pass. I'm still stunned by the costs per passenger and per mile for what we're getting.
Lack of leadership is a vast understatement.
ST needs to take that west corridor study and do it NOW. Find the money from somewhere, but don't leave Ballard, Fremont, West Seattle, etc. out in the cold just because that was SMP's turf back in 2003.
It took me twenty minutes on the 11 to get form Capitol Hill to West Seattle, not bad I'd say. Although it would have been way more futuristic on a monorail.
@28 Are you speaking of the Robot Unions? Because the Monorail trains were to be driverless.
That's my point! That is the main reason Monorail died despite positive public opinion in election after election. Not enough cashola would be spread around to all the interested parties including light rail construction companies. The money runs deep into the pockets of Seattle politicians including some of the dumb fuck anti-monorail activists on here. For those that killed monorail hope you all got your share of cash from the transit mafia.
you fuckwits. West Seattle and Ballard weren't even going to be served until 2009.
Par for the course. Burn on the Stranger.
oh, for christ sake.
get the fuck over it, will you?
and besides ... do you HONESTLY think it would have opened on time?
oh, please.
With all the money I've saved on car-tabs, I can now afford the down payment on a second Humvee.
20 minutes on the 120, beefed up this year by the passage of Transit Now, from Delridge instead of the 17 promised by the monorail station I would have had in my neighborhood.
Of course, when we had flooding from the recent storm, it took 90 minutes to get into Downtown. A monorail would still have taken 17.
The city has permitted several hundred new apartments and townhouses in our neighborhood with no increase in street capacity, though, so the buses will slow down in traffic. And a monorail would have still take 17 minutes.
A monorail could have brought folks to art performances at Youngstown, music at Skylark, burgers and shakes at Luna Park, or jobs at Nucor.
Instead we get nothing, while West Seattleites are shocked, SHOCKED, at the development coming to our neighborhood and wondering where all the increased traffic is going to go. And I just shake my head, Josh...
langston is my hero of the day.
I way too upset about the pitbulls being shot by A SEATTLE POLICE OFFICER story yesterday to care!
I wanna know more about this Robot Union.
Is it just automated factory workers, or service industry robots, as well?
Touring @22:
That's complete B.S.
The unions were all in favor of the monorail:
- The building trades unions were heavily involved in getting the construction of the Green Line done under union contracts, which would have meant hundreds of living-wage jobs for the duration of the project.
- The King County Labor Council consistently endorsed the various Monorail proposals, as well as numerous members of the Monorail board.
- While the Green Line would have eliminated some routes from Ballard/West Seattle to downtown, nearly all of the local routes in each neighborhood would have been unaffected, so the net loss of routes (and therefore driver requirements) would have been minimal.
Additionally those buses - AND their drivers - that would have been eliminated from downtown routes were to have been re-allocated to other routes throughout the region, so there would have been no net loss of Metro jobs.
In point of fact, West Seattle in particular would have actually seen a net INCREASE in bus hours, since Metro planned to rededicate most of the resources then allocated for downtown routes back into West Seattle, thus increasing service capacity, and frequency within the geographic area.
Next time, do try to get a few of the FACTS, before spewing off half-baked opinions...
Comte not very important but the drivers' union did work long and hard against the project because they opposed the automated aspect of the project. Metro did not guarantee service and in fact sent out a letter stating that they would have a hard time serving the stations.
24 minutes on the 21 Express from 35th and Roxbury which the monorail wouldn't have come even close to. Indeed, it probably would have required me to transfer to the monorail and pay extra since Metro would cut duplicative service.
That's cute that you think the monorail would've opened on schedule and on budget.
For those of you that live in Ballard or West Seattle and work downtown, how long did it take you to get to work today?
Several people from Ballard and West Seattle have commented on this thread about their commute times, and still nobody that says the Monorail would have gotten them to work significantly faster.
But the Monorail was never about getting people to work faster, so this is not surprising.
psst. some inside info. there's a strong argument that the Building Trades held on too long to this dog and not only let a bullshit plan move forward - they pitbull'ed it past other board members. Ironically, in their avarice, they killed it.
@56,
Well, JMR, a monorail is ALWAYS faster than being stuck in traffic.
But you're right. The point was to get people to work faster in the future.
But why should we plan for the future in this region? Let's wait until everyone moves out to Issaquah and North Bend before we build a transportation solution out there. Let's wait until ferries get pulled out of service to Port Townsend before we build new ones. Let's wait until bridges get closed before we replace them.
That's the way to spend our tax dollars wisely, right?
A monorail is not faster than being stuck in traffic if it's seized to a concrete rail, 50 feet in the air, and burning.
I've watched fire trucks clear terrified passengers off the damn things twice, now.
you watched the video of the Memorial Day monorail fire twice??
I watched it at least 10 times.
A monorail is not faster than being stuck in traffic if it's seized to a concrete rail, 50 feet in the air, and burning. I've watched fire trucks clear terrified passengers off the damn things twice, now.
Even I, inveterate rail critic that I am, did not stoop to this to bash the monorail.
@59, Terrified or no, the passengers in both instances were not exactly facing a life-threatening situation. And, as you no doubt saw, passengers were evacuated with little incident.
That said, the trains are 40+ years old. And I would love to see any other system that carries 2+ million people a year with a comparable safety record.
Monorails don't hit pedestrians, and bicyclists aren't injured riding over monorail tracks, and monorails don't T-bone automobiles.
I don't think anyone really cares: monorail, light rail... just get some rapid transit built on this corridor.
Off to Elba with you, Nappy.
Old or not, the monorail has caught fire (once), and SFD has had to rescue passengers using the hook and ladder truck, and it has collided and jammed itself on the track (once, involving both trains).
Both instances left people stranded 50 feet in the air.
Then there are the miscellaneous iron parts and doo-dads that periodically fall off the undercarriage.
Fortunately, none has ever killed anyone below. Yet.
And yes, I understand that the new monorail would have been "new". So how long does "new" last? How accident resistant and flame retardant is "new" anyhow?
The point is: every mode of transportation brings its own sets of problems with it. The monorail's set of problems is that if it catches fire, collides with something, shorts out, etc..., the passengers are stranded.
In the air.
For quite some time.
Anyone wanna hear what I have to think about the viaduct?
Now that everyone's had a chance to rant, I'll say something wise and insightful, even if you may not be ready to hear it.
When Vancouver's SkyTrain light rail system was built, it took a while for it to be extended, and a number of the neighborhoods and nearby cities that are building extensions to it didn't like it at all.
Regardless of what we think of the Monorail or ST LINK, the reality is that as either system expands, the addition of multiple links makes the totality of the integrated system - rail (either kind), streetcar, bus, BRT, velociraptor helopeds, whatever ... much more useful.
All this will pass.
@66
Say it! SAY IT!!
Speaking of SkyTrain, here's the new elevated train in the city of Richmond, not unlike West Seattle, that will eventually connect the airport and neighborhood across a river and into Downtown:
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/british-columbia/story/2007/12/14/bc-canadaline2.html
and, @65, during that time I've personally witnessed more than 20 trucks, campers, vans, SUVs, and cars burn up, just on a two-mile stretch of I-5 ... so on that score the monorail still wins ...
Velociraptors are not the backbone of a sane transit program.
You expect the passengers to safely climb out of burning cars, buses, and SUVs.
But I expect you know that.
The point remains--something goes wrong, you get stranded in mid-air.
Since you can't simply shunt a non-functioning monorail off to the side, scheduled service is fooked as long as any glitch is unresolved.
I don't expect passengers to safely climb out of burning cars or buses. I expect them to be hysterical--BUT, I don't expect passengers to climb out of their burning SUVs at all. I expect them to stay inside. Bitches.
@71:
Are you kidding?
Put a pack of velociraptors on I-5 during rush hour and I can pretty much guarantee two possible outcomes:
1. EVERYONE will get to work in record time.
2. There will be some fat, happy velociraptors napping on the freeway, but in any case the number of commuters will have been significantly reduced, thus making an easier commute for the survivors.
My dad had a crappy old car that didn't have ABS brakes, seat belts, air bags, crush zones, unibody construction, collapsible steering wheel, ANY of that stuff. And the dashboard was sharp painted metal, and all sorts of hard pointy metal and plastic bits were sticking out everywhere. Therefore no one should drive cars, because they are too dangerous.
Then you should be happy with the velociraptor we almost gave you, Fnarf...
Nap, really a dumb argument - the new monorails are made of materials that don't burn like the plywood floors of the Alweg. The new system was to have escape walkways and the trains could be unloaded side to side or front to back. Are you as worried about being in a tunnel with a burning train? How about on an elevated with heavy or light rail? Compare the safety record of monorails with any other mode or technology then get back.
Then forget the burning part--the latest-technology SLUT went out of service after its first day because of an electrical short.
I presume that passengers stepped off of it and walked, or caught cabs to their destinations. I'm pretty sure that the SFD ladders weren't called in.
It's not unusual for things to go wrong--even with the latest technology.
This is all far afield of my original (and prime) complaint--that it was poorly-planned, mismanaged, and wasn't serving my neighborhood, anyhow.
The Seattle Monorail Project suffered from problems similar to Sound Transit’s rail line. Objectively speaking, both were fuckups of the highest order. Why then did one get built and the other go kaput?
1. ST’s problems came first, so the monorail was held to a higher standard. This was reasonable and understood by everyone. Monorail supporters pledged to do better, and the SMP said they would do better. They didn’t.
2. ST survived because, once the shit hit the fan, they had solid support from elected officials to weather the storm. SMP didn’t. The difference was this: ST was created by these elected officials. If ST went down, they went down. This was not the case with any elected official with the SMP.
Would more critical press coverage had helped? Perhaps, but likely not. Nearly all big transportation projects go way over budget—it’s the nature of the beast. They stand or fall based on political back-up, and whether elected officials are willing to go to the mat for a project. Whether they do often depends on whether it was their idea or not, and whether they had buy-in or not from the beginning—and whether they control it in the here and now.
When ST blew up, Nickels and Sims were on the board: the shit was in their hands. When the SMP blew up, the shit was over there: someone else’s problem.
@68:
I'm all in favor of a six-lane surface street, *and* a new-seawall/waterfront tunnel built with foundations sturdy enough for a new viaduct formed on top of it.
Only this way can we meet any and all contingencies in our future transportation planning.
25 minutes from West Seattle (lincoln park) to Magnolia (Interbay/ballard locks)in my ancient Volvo.
The monorail would have cost too much to serve too few and run too infrequently. As a result, it doesn't how much Queen Anneans and Ballarders and West Seattleites spent driving to work--most of them didn't drive downtown, anyway.
@ 83
Everyone's missed the fact that the SMP had expansion plans on the boards, and that the monorail system would have eventually served every neighborhood in the city had the green line been successful.
Now we're never going to get that. ST up to UW and Northgate in 10 years, maybe. Everyone else can forget it, especially the entire Westside.
I agree with Cale...we just need to get some transit serving the green line corridor (and all of the corridors envisioned in the ETCs full plan).
Local photographer has an interesting photo collection of the would-be station locations:
http://elizatruitt.wordpress.com/2007/12/15/train-in-vain/
@71 - we need velociraptor helopeds to keep the dogs at bay. And those pesky people who want personal cars on stilts (or whatever they call those foolish things).
Plus, all our jet-propelled pogo sticks got recalled along with the jet packs ... something about global warming emissions I think.
Plus, someone has to eat all those people in burning cars on I-5, and I think velociraptors are the pro-enviro choice for that mission. So long as they're trained to only occasionally munch on people driving in the non-HOV lanes, it should work out fine ...
Thank god. That thing would be uglier than the viaduct, the kingdome, 75% of the seattle center, I5 and every other nasty concrete thing we've ever built in this city. Good riddance to a silly pipe dream dreamed up by people smoking way to much pot.
Light rail is where it is at baby.
demise of our dream...
who dun it?
Being able to essentially INSTALL a grade separated rapid mass transit system w/in an existing built urban infrastructure w/such minimal expense and disruption to business and traffic flow(as the SMP plan was), would have created a huge threat to the petroleum based, credit/bank financed, military - industrial complex.
The Seattle Popular Monorail Project would have made it possible to choose not to drive a car in our increasingly gridlocked big little town. Wouldn't this have challenged the (automotive) American Dream?, the second biggest personal expense after home buying. Include such "big business/ big politics" line items as: car purchase itself, "financing", insurance, gas/oil, highways, etc. Especially since SPMP would have demonstrated how easily duplicable this could be in other cities after Seattle pioneered the R&D.
AND... Democracy in action: the people - on their own, not through "representation", - voted over and over again that this was such a good idea that they even eventually volunteered to pay for it themselves! Out of taxes on CARS no less!!
Locally, the monorail was murdered by the hired guns (namely his Idiocy, Mayor Nickels and His City Council) (not to mention the rest of the posse at the state level - US Transportation Chair Murray & Rep. Murray, Transportation Secty. McDonald, Gov. Gregoire et al) in the pocket of the likes of Paul Allen & his ilk in order to protect and preserve the anticipated values of their new developments in DT/SLU (Downtown / South Lake Union) IN COMPARISON to values of properties out in the neighborhoods where the people and the families currently live.
Thus; w/out being able to travel to and fro in a functional manner inside of the city from neighborhood to neighborhood and DT; neighborhood property is worth less and DT worth more, w/DT becoming the only viable place to be. SLU would have been much more of a longer term risk if West Seattle had a Rapid Mass Transit system allowing a reliable DT commute in the same 15 min. time it takes for the SLUTrolley to go a mile. With transit, WS would have become a functional part of the city, it would have become less of a suburban exile and would have been in competition with the "million dollar" condos in SLU. Think about how much $ is on the line under construction in DT/SLU. And BTW; labor reps buy/sell/trade w/said politicians also, even when it goes against their own better judgment it seems. Steve Williams - who put the fear in ya?
Here's to much happiness in the idyllic world of Mr. Roger's neighborhood (possibly to become the densest & most expensive spot in all of WA, AK, HI, OR, ID, MT, WY... did I mention the dakotas?), complete w/their own cutest little "ding ding" trolley; while the rest of us at least from West Seattle to Ballard can go to hell stuck in petro-traffic working to pay for the man's little land of make believe.
You'd think, if the people voted for it 4 times (the 4th being biggest), then wouldn't (or rather, shouldn't) the people higher up support them and help them achieve it? -.-
I had occasion to take the #125 downtown last Thursday, Friday and Saturday.
(one trip is described in comment #16 at http://elizatruitt.wordpress.com/2007/12/15/train-in-vain/#comment-232)
I take the bus once in a while in a vain attempt to atone for my usual 25 mile SOV commute in the other direction. The trips on the #125 took the expected time, 30 to 45 minutes to Downtown or Broadway. The bus cost about the same as the gas would have in my car. When my wife and I went downtown on the bus, it cost more than the gas would have. And then there's parking if I drive. But the REAL cost that keeps me from taking the bus more often is TIME. Not just the trip time, but wait time and transfer time too. And how dependable is the schedule and what are the conditions while waiting and to what extent do I have to carefully plan the trip out ahead of time. I really would prefer to take transit to my job in Auburn, but an hour and a half each way is just too much.
A well-designed transit system would address that time cost directly. People would move QUICKLY on and off FREQUENT vehicles and those vehicles would move QUICKLY, no matter what weather or traffic, across the most congested urban areas in a wide spread grid of lines. A finer grid of slower surface transit would connect to the wider, faster grid. Cities with transit like that still have traffic congestion. We have to get away from the idea of reducing traffic congestion, and instead concentrate on moving PEOPLE AROUND the traffic congestion.
Lessons from ETC/SMP/ST/R&T (IMHO):
1. "Overlay" transit districts work. The voters over a wider area prefer to pay less for a modest level of transit service. Voters in more congested areas seem to be willing to pay more for improved transit. Use precinct vote maps from previous votes to determine the boundaries for the next proposal. Retain the legal right to do so.
2. Do a better job of coordinating implementation of the next plan with existing transit bodies after voter approval.
3. Question all assumptions. Hire professional sceptics and engineers.
4. Build in scope flexibility so that all goals will continue to be addressed under changing conditions.
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