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Seattle Monorail & California High Speed Rail Move Forward
bscottid writes "Woo-hoo! The monorail passed in Seattle!. And, it was driven by an amazing grass-roots effort of people who saw a way to use technology to get us moving again here in The Emerald City. Everyone mark your calendars, because in 2007 you're invited up here to take a quick, scenic ride around the beautiful city of Seattle! (Begin Simpsons references now)" It's also worth pointing out that in the recent california election, a pair of bills were passed which put aside approximately $10b for the construction of California's high speed rail project.
For really cool monorail tech, check out the Urbanaut. Its inventor is the designer of Seattle's original monorail. Why we in Seattle aren't going with his ideas for this new one, I don't know.
I'm not sure if this new plan extends into Oregon,
Oregon isn't in the recommended routes yet.
But, if we get something going from LA -> Sacramento, I'm hoping that it will present enough of an incentive to go to the larger Oregonian cities on the way to Seattle.
"Can of worms? The can is open... the worms are everywhere."
Hey, monorails are great, technology, ra, but we got lanley'd so bad. It passed by 800 votes. That's a slim majority for 45% of eligible voters
Yeah, but this was the third time a monorail initiative was on the ballot, and it's passed all three times.
That says something...
"Can of worms? The can is open... the worms are everywhere."
... Operated remotely via cameras, and the stations are quite nice, at least in the summertime.. I got from downtown to Commercial Dr (to find some used cds and wander around ;) quickly and easily on it.. I think it's technically just an elevated train and not a monorail proper, but it looks all futuristic..
I wonder how much it cost?
The current Seattle monorail system is profitable.
Of course it costs a dollar or so and takes you a distance you can comfortably walk (basically from the Space Needle to Nordstrom's headquarters, a distance of maybe a half mile), and is a tourist attraction to boot. We locals occasionally refer to it as the "Train To Nowhere" (after a cabaret skit in which it was featured). (To be fair, they have a deal where you can park at the Seattle Center parking center and commute into downtown on the monorail, thereby avoiding downtown traffic. I'm sure it makes a fair amount of money this way.)
Whether anyone uses it will depend on whether it ends up going where people want to go at an attractive price.
Someone you trust is one of us.
One look at the "Recommended Routes to be Studied in the Environmental Process" one will notice that they include the BAY AREA... Possible Route Map
people into California and maybe you would have a point. Actually it would be like stuffing 140 million people into a narrow 10 mile band near the pacific coast. (most of japan is mountainous)
As it stands, California, a state that is 10s of billions in the whole already will now start a project similar in stupidity and pork as the THE BIG DIG in boston. Projects that the everyone in the usa will be paying for.
I live in West Seattle, and my first reaction to this story was to respond like you did. But I didn't have to because you put the facts so well. Way to go. So let me paint a more subjective picture.
In the 14 years I've lived in West Seattle the traffic has at least tripled. Not just commute traffic -- people do a lot more in their lives than just go to and from work. I'm talking about shopping, going out to eat, etc. within the immediate area. The monorail isn't going to do squat for that. In fact, it will probably bring in more people and make the situation worse. As much as I hate the traffic on the West Seattle bridge, at least it probably discourages some people from moving over here.
This is an area people don't tend to move out of. It has a large number of people who have lived here since WWII and before, have raised their families here and have mostly taken good care of their homes. Those folks are dying off now, and their houses are being bought by people who either subdivide the lots with two skinny townhouse-like structures or put up 4-story apartments and business buildings, depending on whether there is a view. Property prices (and taxes) have therefore soared in the last 10 years. Our house value has quadrupled, which I suppose would be fine if we were real estate speculators, but we just want to live here. A district of longtime homeowners is turning into a district of renters, which we all know will eventually drive the quality of the area down.
The City of Seattle bureaucrats see this as "revitalizing" the area. I see it as "devitalizing". What they get is more tax money, from the residents but more importantly from the businesses, which pay both property tax and business tax. What we residents get is more crime, more graffiti (not the cool artsy kind, the dumbass tag kind), more losers walking around with an attitude, and more cars driven by hurried, over-extended people talking on cellphones, drinking lattes and putting on makeup.
A little rant about Seattle politics...
Schlach mentioned above that the monorail passed by only 800 votes. Seattle is developing a history of big projects that pass by a narrow margin. The new monorail is the most recent. Seahawks Stadium was another one, but at least it too actually passed. The Mariners baseball stadium was defeated by us mere voters, but the state legislature responded by obligingly writing a law authorizing any county with a million or more residents to issue bonds to build athletic complexes. There's only one such county in the state, guess which one. To avoid future complications they even gave the law a 2-year expiration date. The stadium the county commissioners authorized cost 3 times as much as the one the voters rejected.
Makes me proud to live in a democracy.
I've heard many arguments that the distances needed to be covered did not lend itself to high speed trains.
Well it depends on what you are planning. The monorail in Sydney, Australia was sold as the mass transportation of the future here. They tried to take the concept from Japan. Which is somehwat ironic, as its mainly used for transporting the Japanese tourists in Sydney.
Mass transport it isn't, so check your schematics before you praise it as the solution to urban transit.
Michael
There is no cryptographic solution to the problem where the intended receiver and the attacker are the same entity.
As anyone can see by following the link, California does not yet have funding for the bullet train system. What's been approved is to put a bond measure on the Nov. 2004 ballot.
Just remember Seattle is know for its exceedingly poor city planning. For example,
1. Seattle used to have a trolley system, not unlike the street cars in san francisco. After a moment of genius urban planning it was removed. Click here for pictures.
2. Seattle couldn't agree on how to build a subway system, so they built a bus *tunnel* through downtown. Just to make it seem like they could intelligently plan for the future, they added tracks for a street car like metro system. They are still unused. (Last year they decided not to make the tunnel exclusive to light rail)
3. Seattle used to have another hill near downtown. They didn't like it so in 1897 they actually leveled half of it. It wasn't until the 1930's that they actually decided to remove it all. Here is an informative link with pictures.
4. Seattle's history of poor public planning also took place downtown. After fires and horrible sewage problems, they decided to put the sewage at street level and move the entire street up on story! For an entire neighborhood!
So Seattle, the town that actually raised its street level, lowered its hills, removed its light rail system only to have it cost in the *billions* to replace it, and when they try to replace it, it is only a bunch of unused tracks, is now spending 1.4 billion on a monorail. No one rides the monorail now, and they think that making it longer is going to change that? Hmm, did anyone tell them monorails are ugly?
-Sean
-Sean