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Someone didn't get their naptime today....

The info from the monorail FEIS site (based on measurements of the Walt Disney World monorail) indicates that the monorail (at 40 mph) is a bit quieter than "rail transit" (at 50 mph) - the specifics aren't very clear and I don't know if they're comparing apples to apples (the technical appendix doesn't seem to clear things up). On the other hand, FTA says that monorails are about the same, or a bit louder than LRT - this info is based on a survey of several systems (and peer reviewed).

Best case: it's a wash. Worse case? Well compare the existing monorail to the Portland Max and decide for yourself.

The El isn't light rail - the El bears about as much relationship to modern light rail as the '64 impala does to the Prius.

living in seattle, a simple 14 mile monorail system the public has all but demanded for the past five(+) years might be ready by 2009.

seeing as any major undertaking, such as the design and implementation of a self-driving car system would take the coordination of many major companies as well as local and federal governments, i'm quite positive that we'll still have our collective foot on the accelerator come 2014.

unless our 44th president decides that we should focus on efficently and easily getting 20 miles down the road, rather than worrying about how to get to mars.

take the Monorail to the Pacific Science Center next to the Space Needle that a certain hot Jessica Albo and strange Dr. Evil used to hang out at, and watch The Matrix sequels in ultra-high definition!

Life is sweet!

Excuse me? I live in Seattle. 130 miles away is the Vancouver BC SkyTrain, which is not quite monorail technology but it's 95% elevated and has been moving people efficiently for a couple decades ... and they're building a second line now. Oh, and you get a wonderful view from it. The Seattle Green Line will not go "from an antique shopping district (not very big) to the beach (not very big)". The northern portion goes through one of Seattle's main residential areas (which was originally a Norwegian fishing town and thus has some kitschy shops as well as the largest number of working-class bars in the city). The southern portion goes to the middle of a very hilly area underserved by transit. It's "near" a beach only on the map: it would take most of an hour and a couple hills to walk from the mono to the beach.

"That" beach is Alki. There's also Golden Gardens, also an hour's hilly walk from the opposite end of the mono. There's also Magnuson Park (Soundgarden), Matthew's Beach, Madison Park, Seward Park, the bluffs at Discovery Park (although there you're on a cliff high above the beach), etc. And across the Sound are plenty of islands with lots of beaches. The thing that sucks is most of the beaches are rocky except where they've trucked in sand. To get to the big sandy beaches like in California you have to go 90 miles west to the coast.

Phase 1 of the Green Line will be accessible to a fifth of the city's residents. Besides work commutes, it will access the football stadium, baseball stadium and Seattle Center, which are the three biggest evening/weekend traffic jams. Proposed future extensions would go to Northgate Mall, the Vashon ferry and the NE residential area, twice as fast as the current bus routes.

The proposed citywide map (5 lines) is here. That would be accessibe to something like 90% of the city's residents.

The monorail was approved by the voters three times, in spite of a city council that tried to bury it twice in favor of light rail.

What's wrong with light rail in Seattle? (1) The Rainier Valley portion (the dotted line on the previous map) will travel on surface streets with traffic crossings at a measly 35 MPH max -- hello, Portland MAX and San Jose LR, (2) the underground (northern) portions proved too costly so they were cut--even though Capitol Hill and the U-district would have provided most of the ridership, (3) it doesn't go to Northgate Mall (a northern transit center), which would have allowed dozens of suburban routes to terminate there rather than continuing downtown, instead it will *increase* traffic downtown because trains will displace buses in the downtown tunnel, (4) most people in the areas affected want it underground, which it won't be, (5) many Rainier Valley residents said they prefer no light rail to the current proposal ("just skip us for now and come back when you can do it right") but instead they will be the *first* to get it, (6) the only reason it goes into the Rainier Valley at all rather than along the freeway is to serve the "poorest, most multi-ethnic" neighborhood in town, even though the public-housing project it goes near is being gentrified as we speak and won't have many "poor, multi-ethnic" residents when the line finally starts running.

Not everybody likes overhead trains, whether light or mono. But at least monorail equalizes the burden because *everybody* has overhead trains. The original Sound Transit proposal (now truncated) puts the northern (rich) portion underground and the southern (poor) portion on the surface. The reason is not discrimination but topographical: the northern portion has to go under hills and a canal. The southern portion transverses a flat valley. But still, the Valley residents don't see why they should be disrupted more than the rest of the city.

Many citizens tried to get Sound Transit to consider monorail for their line but they flatly refused because it's not "proven technology in the US". No matter that it could be done sooner, would cost less (because of less need to acquire private land), and would blunt much of the neighborhood opposition. People in Rainier are not saying "we don't like ugly overhead trains" -- there's not much of a "view" down there anyway. They are saying, "we don't want our kids killed by (almost silent) surface trains". Because when a kid's ball runs away, the kid goes after it, oncoming train or no.

Excuse me? I live in Seattle. 130 miles away is the Vancouver BC SkyTrain, which is not quite monorail technology but it's 95% elevated and has been moving people efficiently for a couple decades ... and they're building a second line now. Oh, and you get a wonderful view from it. The Seattle Green Line will not go "from an antique shopping district (not very big) to the beach (not very big)". The northern portion goes through one of Seattle's main residential areas (which was originally a Norwegian fishing town and thus has some kitschy shops as well as the largest number of working-class bars in the city). The southern portion goes to the middle of a very hilly area underserved by transit. It's "near" a beach only on the map: it would take most of an hour and a couple hills to walk from the mono to the beach.

"That" beach is Alki. There's also Golden Gardens, also an hour's hilly walk from the opposite end of the mono. There's also Magnuson Park (Soundgarden), Matthew's Beach, Madison Park, Seward Park, the bluffs at Discovery Park (although there you're on a cliff high above the beach), etc. And across the Sound are plenty of islands with lots of beaches. The thing that sucks is most of the beaches are rocky except where they've trucked in sand. To get to the big sandy beaches like in California you have to go 90 miles west to the coast.

Phase 1 of the Green Line will be accessible to a fifth of the city's residents. Besides work commutes, it will access the football stadium, baseball stadium and Seattle Center, which are the three biggest evening/weekend traffic jams. Proposed future extensions would go to Northgate Mall, the Vashon ferry and the NE residential area, twice as fast as the current bus routes.

The proposed citywide map (5 lines) is here. That would be accessibe to something like 90% of the city's residents.

The monorail was approved by the voters three times, in spite of a city council that tried to bury it twice in favor of light rail.

What's wrong with light rail in Seattle? (1) The Rainier Valley portion (the dotted line on the previous map) will travel on surface streets with traffic crossings at a measly 35 MPH max -- hello, Portland MAX and San Jose LR, (2) the underground (northern) portions proved too costly so they were cut--even though Capitol Hill and the U-district would have provided most of the ridership, (3) it doesn't go to Northgate Mall (a northern transit center), which would have allowed dozens of suburban routes to terminate there rather than continuing downtown, instead it will *increase* traffic downtown because trains will displace buses in the downtown tunnel, (4) most people in the areas affected want it underground, which it won't be, (5) many Rainier Valley residents said they prefer no light rail to the current proposal ("just skip us for now and come back when you can do it right") but instead they will be the *first* to get it, (6) the only reason it goes into the Rainier Valley at all rather than along the freeway is to serve the "poorest, most multi-ethnic" neighborhood in town, even though the public-housing project it goes near is being gentrified as we speak and won't have many "poor, multi-ethnic" residents when the line finally starts running.

Not everybody likes overhead trains, whether light or mono. But at least monorail equalizes the burden because *everybody* has overhead trains. The original Sound Transit proposal (now truncated) puts the northern (rich) portion underground and the southern (poor) portion on the surface. The reason is not discrimination but topographical: the northern portion has to go under hills and a canal. The southern portion transverses a flat valley. But still, the Valley residents don't see why they should be disrupted more than the rest of the city.

Many citizens tried to get Sound Transit to consider monorail for their line but they flatly refused because it's not "proven technology in the US". No matter that it could be done sooner, would cost less (because of less need to acquire private land), and would blunt much of the neighborhood opposition. People in Rainier are not saying "we don't like ugly overhead trains" -- there's not much of a "view" down there anyway. They are saying, "we don't want our kids killed by (almost silent) surface trains". Because when a kid's ball runs away, the kid goes after it, oncoming train or no.

Your numbers are way off. According to the plan, the Seattle monorail will carry 72,000 people per day. That works out to 21,100,000 people per year. If you carry that ridership out over 30 years, you end up with $2.69 per rider.

There's still more absentees to be counted. The counts from the next batch will come out on Thursday at 4pm, and then they'll be done counting on Tuesday at 5pm.

For more information about the Seattle Monorail Project, see:

Elevated Transportation Company
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Monorail YES!

I've already chewed off my nails and pulled out my hair...the anticipation is killing me...

• PROPOSED MONORAIL AUTHORITY
  Precincts Counted: 100.00%
  YES: 82256
  NO: 81674

Actually, the Seattle Monorail Project that is in the EIS phase for the build vote in November is looking at having Segway rentals at the monorail stations.

But most people want to carry bicycles on board with them, from current feedback.

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Your last sentence is the flaw in your argument. Engineers dont decide on the rail count, the politicans do. That's why Seattle's regional transit agency, Sound Transit, decided on a light rail system. The only problem with that is that is that Seattle A) Has lots of hills and B) Has no unused railroad lines to commandeer

Actually, it's not Seattle's regional transit agency - Sound Transit is a three-county state appointed agency, and Seattle has very little say in what it does or what taxes the state imposed on us for it.

Seattle's transit system is the ETC, part of the City of Seattle, not the multi-county Sound Transit regional transportation agency.

What may be confusing you is the busses in Seattle are run by King County, which includes the dark land where bill g resides, across Lake Washington in Bellevue, Redmond, and Issaquah, all places that are definitely not Seattle. You have to cross the world's largest floating bridges to get there.

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n seattle's case, people who live in town are unlikely to use the transit system for the reasons you describe. People who live OUT of town can simply park and ride, which will reduce the traffic PLENTY.

No, you can't. The monorail being built is not the regional light rail system built for the suburbs. The monorail is designed not to have parking garages and is for local transportation, going from Ballard (15th and 85th) to West Seattle (middle) thru downtown.

It won't be very useful for non-Seattlites. But since all the taxes to build it are Seattle taxes only, it shouldn't matter to those in the suburbs.

You can always build your own.

The only use I can see is you can park at the stadium parking lots to go to Seattle Center on the monorail or park at Seattle Center to go to the football and baseball stadiums on the monorail.

Other than that, it's really not designed to be useful for non-Seattlites.

Of course, this assumes that seattle is going to do things right and run nice long spur lines out to parking lots which are stationed along the freeway. They'll probably screw it up. Oh well, at least it can reduce the lunchtime traffic.

No spur lines. Check out Seattle's ETC for more maps and details of the current environmental impact statement (now in draft comment phase).

Actually, Sound Transit, the multi-county organization with a board appointed by the state are the ones that are building the light rail.

Seattle has a separate project, the Elevated Transportation Company, which was created by city initiatives and a couple of lawsuits, and which last night held the Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) hearings for it's Phase I.

I understand the confusion. Sound Transit is building a 14 mile long light rail system for regional needs, while the City of Seattle's ETC is building a separate (but connected) 14 mile long monorail system for local needs paid by local Seattle taxes. And the mayor of Seattle is on the board of Sound Transit and supports both projects, while most Seattle citizens love the monorail but hate light rail.

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Sound. Monorails are tons quieter than conventional trains. The current monorail in Seattle is quieter than the traffic on the street below it, which is very impressive considering it travels 3 times as fast. On the new monorail expansion, a train at full speed is supposed to be quieter than an idling city bus. Conventional trains tend to be awfully noisy (think of Elwood's apartment in The Blues Brothers). Thus, more people will want to live/work near it, and will want to ride it.

Also, the ride tends to be much smoother than typical rail systems, they are much more stable and can corner more tightly at faster speeds; it is practically impossible to derail a monorail. The Seattle Monorail Project has an awful lot of additional information.

I must point out that you've confusing several separate rail projects that are concurrently happening in Seattle.

There was a vote for a 40-mile monorail system in Nov 1997. It passed with a 53% vote, but allocated no money. The intention was that the private sector would step forward to finance it. The city scoffed. And as a result, so did the private sector. The city council only gave $200,000 to fund a one-year study. They stretched the funds over two years before the initiative was dissolved by the city council.

Citizens returned in 2000 with I-53, gathering 20,000 signatures in just 2 months! (About 1000 of those signatures were gathered by yours truly.) The initiative made it on the Nov 2000 ballot and passed by 56% with 148,000 votes--more than any other elected official in Seattle's history. I-53 reserved $6 million and two years to plan a monorail system.

This plan is now being drafted, and includes 14 miles from Ballard to Downtown to West Seattle. The plan will be on the ballot in Nov 2002. The plan is described at http://www.elevated.org. Campaign info can be found at http://www.riseaboveitall.org.

(On a separate note, the trains that have been delivered are for Sound Transit's "Sounder" commuter rail project. The excess trains have since been leased out at-cost to other transit agencies around the country. These trains are not monorails, and are govered by a completely separate agency. Sound Transit is also the organization responsible for the light rail plan.)

The Seattle Monorail Project aims to put a monorail in downtown Seattle. It's set to be put to a vote in November, I think.

Seattle suffers from the same problem: too many damn cars. With the 2nd worst rush hour traffic in the US (behind LA) I hope they can pull it off. There have been fights with light rail folks, but I think monorail is a much better option. Keep it above grade so there is little disruption of traffic. Many claim that monorail is Mickey Mouse transit. (no thanks to certain Simpson's parodies). Keep in mind that millions use monorail daily for transportation in Japan. When the people from Seattle went over to look at Japan's system they were blown away by its efficiency and capacity. After spending time abroad, I've become very disappointed with the mass transit systems in the US (or lack there of).

We love our cars way too much.

By definition, operational profit does not include capital costs. For more information on this, see the paper on O&M costs.

how about just getting more buses?

We have lots of busses. But busses get stuck in traffic. They aren't frequent (especially during off-hours). And they're expensive to operate.

Our busses are currently subsidized by 3:1--that is, for every $1.50 fare, the taxpayers are footing another $4.50. The monorail, while having a high capital cost, will likely not require an operational subsidy. This is already the case for several auitomated elevated systems, such as Seattle's 40-year old monorail (which was built in 10 months and paid for its construction in 8 months, and is manually operated today at a profit, or the Tokyo Monorail or Vancouver Skytrain (both of which are automated.)

And you bet it's a whole lot cheaper to build a monorail guideway than to build 56 lane miles of roadway (14 miles of two lanes each direction), especially in an urban environment like Seattle.

This issue has been simmering in Seattle for 40 years. In the last 4 years, it's come to a boil. This November, the voters will get to choose.

We're working on plans to build an expanded monorail system in Seattle. True, compared to Kim's backyard monorail, it's a little longer (14 miles) and a little pricier ($970M-$1.7B), but it'll haul about 60,000 people per day, and likely turn an operational profit. And it's probably the only transit system in the country created by a citizens' initiative...yes, that's right, no monorail salesman or catchy jingle needed--just a good grassroots campaign! For more info, visit The Elevated Transportation Company. The plan goes to the voters November 2002.

For info on the campaign (which I'm helping out with--yes, this is a shameless plug), visit Rise Above It All