Reading Heidi's terrific piece in today's paper about the plan (and the upcoming vote) on expanding light rail throughout the city and nearby suburbs, particularly reading about the huge price tag, reminded me of something King County Executive Dow Constantine said to Eli on Blabbermouth last week.

Eli asked Dow if he was in favor of building a tunnel through downtown Seattle—yet another tunnel through downtown Seattle—for the Ballard to West Seattle line. While Bertha has been a disaster, Sound Transit's smaller-scale tunnel to Capitol Hill and the U-District came in under budget and ahead of schedule. Eli doesn't mention the alternatives to building a new light rail tunnel through downtown Seattle—surface rail, a la the light rail trains through downtown Portland, or elevated tracks, a la Chicago's elevated trains—but Dow touched on both in his response:

"I think we've essentially concluded, people have concluded, that, one, you have to have more capacity through the bottle neck of downtown Seattle, if you're going to be adding rail lines anywhere, whether it's Tacoma or whether it's West Seattle and Ballard. And two, that if you're doing that, a tunnel is really the only way to go. There's just too much going on out in the streets of Seattle to take up another one of them with rail and it's bad to put elevated rail down the middle of one of those downtown streets, just from an urban environment perspective."

Okay...

There was a plan, once upon a time, to build an elevated rapid transit system here in Seattle—to expand the monorail—and voters supported putting elevated monorail tracks down the middle of streets downtown and all over the city. Seattle voters backed an expanded, city-wide elevated monorail system at the ballot box four times before Greg Nickels, the mayor at the time, forced a fifth vote after projected revenues fell short. That fifth vote proved to be the charm: understandably nervous voters killed the plan. Sound Transit also has a revenues-falling-short crisis but panicky voters weren't given an opportunity to kill that project, a bit of political hypocrisy for which we can all be thankful. You can read a pretty good summary of the doomed monorail project at this Wiki page.

I'm not really interested in re-litigating the effort to expand the Monorail. But I gotta say this: opponents of the monorail dismissed it as a toy train and invoked the monorail at Disney World to disparage the plan. The Disney World monorail is 14.7 miles long and carries 150,000 riders per day. The line we're planning to build between West Seattle and Ballard will be roughly 11 miles long and will carry 133,000 riders per day—and the longer, more heavily-used Disney World monorail was a fuck of a lot cheaper and faster to build than the Ballard-to-West-Seattle light rail line we're hopefully going to approve. (Bonus fun fact: the beams for the monorail line at Disney World? Made right here in Washington state.)

Opponents of the expanded monorail also hammered away at the "blight" of elevated transit. Noisy trains, rushing overheard, obliterating our precious views, blah de blah blah derp.

Anyway...

If elevated trains are a blight, from "an urban environment perspective," why aren't we tearing out the Seattle Monorail? Why do new condo and apartment towers keep going up along 5th Avenue, the route the Monorail takes from Seattle Center to Westlake? Because elevated trains aren't a blight, from an urban environment perspective. They are a familiar part of the urban environment—they're a beloved part of many urban environments. Property values rise the closer you get to the elevated trains tracks in Chicago and Berlin, to take two examples at random (cough, cough), because people want to live close to rapid transit. And elevated trains don't obliterate views in those cities; elevated trains are an iconic element of the views in those cities—they also provide daily commuters with amazing views of their cities—and elevated transit coulda, woulda, and shoulda happened here.

And building elevated trains above city streets is a lot cheaper, and a fuck of a lot faster, than building tunnels. (The light rail line connect Ballard and West Seattle to downtown Seattle isn't scheduled to be completed until the year 2038—it takes longer to build tunnels than it does to build elevated tracks.) So if the $50 billion dollar price tag and/or the timeframe sink ST3, we might be looking again at the cheaper, faster alternative to tunnels: elevated transit. It's an alternative Sound Transit is familiar with: the one line they've already built has elevated segments. (Ever gotten off the train at Rainier Beach, Dow? Or the airport?)

So, yeah, we're not going to build a new monorail lines through downtown Seattle and out into the neighborhoods—that dream is dead—but if ST3 fails... we may yet "rise about it all."

UPDATE: Ha ha, the Simpsons' monorail video—someone tossed that old chestnut up in comments because, you know, the writers at the Simpsons are the best judges when it comes to urban transit options.

But I wasn't suggesting we revive Ye Olde Monoraile Planne if ST3 fails at the ballot box due to costs/timelines. I am suggesting we might wind up looking at the cheaper/faster elevated option for the Ballard-to-West-Seattle light line if ST3 fails—or looking at more elevated light rail, since Sound Transit has built elevated segments along the one line light rail we've already got.

Seattle voters approved elevated transit at the ballot box four times, despite being told by opponents that elevated transit was an eyesore and a blight—excuse me, despite being lied to about elevated transit being an eyesore and a blight. Seeing as there's a chance we might have to go with elevated light rail through downtown Seattle in the end, albeit a small chance, our electeds shouldn't be running around calling elevated light rail a blight or tagging it as anti-urban from an environmental perspective (whatever that's supposed to mean).

Because elevated through downtown—light rail, not monorail—could wind up being Plan B.

UPDATE 2: Elevated train, rolling through Berlin—oh, just look at the devastating blight!

UPDATE 3: