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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.
oh wait, that was the supertrain.
I've heard many arguments that the distances needed to be covered did not lend itself to high speed trains. Especially in California where frequent earthquakes occur, wouldn't it be better to simply work on a new air-based transportation?
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'cause Amtrak sucks. From where I am (Chico, CA), to go to Portland OR using Amtrak, it takes 14 hours and costs $100. In comparison, it takes 12 hours and costs $59 by Greyhound.
I'm not sure if this new plan extends into Oregon, but still, when a bus is faster than a train, you know something's not right (of course, this is in comparison to other areas like Japan and Europe where there's a fairly developed network of high speed trains).
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How likely is a monorail to be profitable? Here in Sydney we've had a monorail running through the CBD for well over a decade. It's overpriced and nobody uses it but tourists. There's been talk for a long time about dismantling it, since it's not making any money.
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but I live in Seattle, and I voted against it.
(a) The company is estimating $100 million per mile (light rail would be ~ $14 million / mile)
(b) it's connecting Ballard and West Seattle (like needing a Western Passage so building one from Lake Erie to Superior, ie it goes nowhere)
(c) the company building it is estimating that 80%
of the ridership will be taken off of buses,rather than roads.
(d) WA doesn't have an income tax, so the brunt of payment is falling on non-new car owning citizens (new cars aren't taxed), and disproportionately on the poor.
(e) even if everything was perfect, it would still only connect ballard and west seattle. so what? we're gonna build a light rail system *too* in order to actually get to the frickin' airport?
(f) Why the hell didn't they try to get federal funding? We have the dubious distinction of being the first huge construction project in history without feds backing us, and we didn't even ask for money from them. WTF? I don't think that's a record I want my city to hold...
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 for $2 billion in costs, without a federal dime or a state income tax.
I'm all for high speed rail in CA. They've been talking for years about linking Anaheim to Las Vegas, etc. And the Amtrak Metrolinks between LA and its suburbs have been extremely popular. They started up after the Northridge earthquake in '92 destroyed many of the freeways. Once people started using taking the train, they were hooked.
But looking at this plan, the obvious, important routes seem to be missing -- particularly LA/OC to the Bay Area. *A lot* of people make this trip every day by plane. High speed rail would do wonders for our airport congestion, and air quality (next to cars, planes going into and out of LAX are the biggest source of smog).
And who goes to Bakersfield, anyway? Sounds to me like a big land owner with some pull in Sacramento is behind this. Fresno would be the logical choice for service in that region -- after all, it's the next biggest metropolis behind the "big three," and probably the fastest growing.
Hate to be the bearer of bad-news, but they aren't "pollution-free transit." They need electricity from somewhere to power the electric motors, whether it be oil/coal/nuclear. The only solution might be geo-thermal/solar/wind/wave ... but they don't provide a signifigant portion of the world's power yet. There is a threshold of ridership, beyond which they become more environmentally friendly than a car, but we are a long way from "pollution-free" forms of transportation.
... you are just moving the pollution to some other poor-bastards neighborhood, while you get all the really good parking spots at the mall.
I know this comes as a great suprise to all of you driving those stupid little Neighborhood Electric Vehichle
Sig Nazi- "No Sig for you, come back 1 year."
On the one hand, this is an absolutely wonderful idea whose time, I have felt for quite some time, has long since come. On the other hand, I remember a bit of my history, and I am a bit afraid that Big Oil and/or the big car companies might throw a spanner into this plan.
If you'll remember, in the past, this nation had a lot more trolley, El, and miscellaneous sorts of commuter train tech infrastructure than it does now. In a sort of ghastly partnership, the big automotive interests convinced local governments to rip out the trolley tracks, the El lines, and the like-- and replace them with (what else) buses. And roads-- more roads for more cars.
Only in the most heavily populated areas, where trains are almost a necessity, do commuter trains still exist. I live just to the West of New York City (in the Newark/Jersey City area), and HERE we DO have commuter trains-- just here in the NYC area, we have the subway, the PATH, the Hudson-Bergen Light Rail, the Long-Island Railroad, Metro-North, NJ Transit trains, and regular Amtrak service to nearby cities in Connecticut.
But I recognize that my beloved NYC metro area is the exception-- not the rule.
What happens when Ford (or another giant car company-- or an oil company) waves a cool million bucks under the Seattle politicians' collective noses?
Honey, I shrunk the Cygwin
Corona to Irvine and back on the 91 whether you use the toll road or not is a crappy route for sure. I personally love the Metrolink. Having gotten caught on the preiously mentioned toll road driving just a little too fast forced me to take the train for a while. I found it to be a very good experience. My stress level dropped greatly, and got to work on time much more often. If they spent some of that $10b on extending the hours of Metrolink and bringing down the high cost of riding, it would be perfect.
Well, this system combines the advantages of trains with the flexibility of cars.
Seems to be a great idea to me - I'm not related to the inventor, "Jensen" is just a very common name in Denmark.
-- From Denmark
(Mods: the parent is not insightful). Out here in the west, we do not have the density that the east coast has. Most places use busses for mass transit. They are in the same rat maze that your car is in, therefore, they have no advantage. Many ppl will not bother with them. This effect was seen here in denver, co. Each time an LTR segment was built the local republican would fight it and say that it could not be succsussful therefore we should build lanes of traffic or turn the HOV lanes into toll roads. So far, every segment of LTR has been deluged with all sort of ppl. When I have to go into denver, esp in the evening, I take the LTR. It beats driving with a bumch of drunks on the road.
The problem with LTR is that it is also in traffic, has crashes, and can not be automated. Monorail can be automated, never crashes, and literally rides above it all at a cost cheaper than an elevated LTR (Chicago's L) an a fraction of the cost of the east coast subways (which I paid for with my tax money).
go monorail.
Most progressive legislation like this is doomed to fail in California. I envision a situation similar to an insurance bill that failed to pass two years ago.
In 2004 proponents of the bill will spend a hundred million dollars on getting the bills passed. There will be suprisingly little opposition to the bill, and perhaps support from unlilkly sources such as oil companies, because they want to look like the good guys. The bills will pass by a very narrow margin, because most people hate to pass bills that spend money. The next several years will be spent in commities (chaired and staffed by "transportion experts aka auto and oil execs") at great expence and on studies.
In 2006 lobbying firms from companies who faked support for the bills will put nearly identical bills on the ballot. They will then spend 10 million dollars on a campain to defeat the bill and nullify the previous one. Since the bill has already passed once, there will be no great large support for re-passage of the bills and they will get crushed in the election.
This exact same thing happened in 2000 when insurance lobbyists defeated thier own insurance bill which was identical to one passed by Califorina legisature to curtail abuse by the insurance compainies. They only needed to spend a few bucks (~10 mil) on some commercials talking about ambulance chasers and insurance fraud to get a landlide victory and a windfall for the insurace companies.
I moved from LA to Tokyo and, in my opinion, a good public transportation system ROCKS! I havent even been in a car in almost a year. Geography aside, if LA (or the entire SoCal area) had something that was 1)safe 2)convenient and 3)reliable, I think it might work. But it'll never happen *sigh*
Good old left coast. So I take it you'd like a multimillion dollar boondoggle to go along with union control of pacific coast shipping, a corrupt governor, and a loony-left house minority leader? The west coast is going to become a drag on the progress of the rest of country. "Drag?" Yes. Pun intended.
IIRC from the time I lived near Seattle (in the 80s):
There has been a big change in people's lifestyles in the Seattle area. At one time there was only one big employer -- Boeing -- who had major facilities to the north and to the south of the city. If somebody's Boeing job changed to another location they moved to be near work. An economic downturn & a slump in the housing market made it difficult to sell your home at a reasonable price, so people commutted through the city instead of moving closer to work. People who worked in the city tended to live there.
The change was rapid. Miles travelled throug the city soared dramatically, way out of proportion to the poulation increase. If I remember correctly, a period of 15% population growth saw traffic through the city more than double. I think the local government was caught offguard, had to take action rapidly, so added highways and an excellent bus system.
This was followed by an influx of computer companies -- like Microsoft. This brought a large population increase, primarily from the high tech areas of Silicon Valley. these folks had a different attitude about driving & building. They built homes in areas that were once thought unbuildable -- cliffs & bluffs -- changing the traffic patterns through the city yet again, and increasing the miles driven through the city all out of proportion to the population increases.
Again, a rapid and unanticipated increase in population and a cultural change in the population that increased use of cars. Bus service was expanded, more HOV lanes ...
"Glory is fleeting, but obscurity is forever." --Napoleon Bonaparte
In Europe, the primary goal of the rail system is moving people. In the US, the primary goal is moving freight.
Amtrak does not own the railbeds - the various freight companies (like Burlington Northern/Santa Fe) do. This has several negative effects on Amtrak:
In addition, the first time a high-speed train Darwin'ed a moron trying to beat it across the tracks, and derailed and killed a bunch of passengers, Amtrak would be sued into obilivion. You would need to have over/underpasses at every road intersection, as well as fences along the rail to prevent stupid people from walking along the rails ("Look! I am gunna put a penny on the tracks. This will be co-" <Brraaaak! Ding Ding Ding... >)
Now, were the US to invest enough money to build a seperate, passenger only rail system, then it MIGHT become reasonable to take the train - a train that averaged 150 MPH would be able to make the run from Kansas to California in 12 hours, rather than 26. Given the delays involved in flying, this becomes competitive, especially if they set up the Autotrain cars so that I can have my car when I get where I am going. It would still be faster to fly from New York to LA, but from the middle of the US out it would become reasonable to take the train, unless you are on a high-priority business trip.
Now, how to achive this spending of money without it becoming Pure Pork? If I had a certain answer I wouldn't be typing on Slashdot, but what I would recommend is a modification of what worked in the past: a Rural Rail act, similar to the Rural Electrification Act of yore. Make Amtrak a private company, have the government loan them the money to build/improve the rails, and make them pay it back. If they fail to pay it back, forclose on the lines.
If you look at the history of the REA, it made the government far more than it cost - most of the REA loan recipents paid their loans off in full. In addition, the improvement in the infrastructure of the country ALSO paid for the system.
I'd love to see the rails improve - the train is MUCH nicer for a 6'4" person like me than a plane, seeing the scenary along the way is great, having a 110VAC outlet in your sleeper car is great for mobile hacking, and trains can stop more places than a plane can. But until it either costs less than a plane or takes about the same time as a plane, it is a luxury, not a viable competitor.
(however, I do recommend taking either the Southwest Chief or the California Zypher at least once - get a sleeper car, and treat the trip as the vacation.)
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I moved from Seattle 14 years ago among other things because traffic was getting so bad ... to New York, but hey if I'm going to suffer the pains of a major city, may as well have the rewards of one. Folks who don't know Seattle don't realize that rail will succeed there for the exact same reason the current most successful use of it is Portland, OR: folks in that corner of the country are very environmentally correct (especially the loggers who improve the forests by removing the large combustable objects!). Not to mention the retro-techno-wiz factor in monorail - lots of fans of that out there too.
But what's just plain wrong about the plan is that they're putting the first line not where the population density of transit riders is, but where the rich are (or where the real estate speculators believe more rich can be lured), nearer the water. It will be useless for instance to the U of W with 40,000 mostly-transit-riding students who lean strongly green, and is closer to downtown than Ballard. The line should go there first. "But they're already on transit, why give them more service?" Right, ignore your best customers.
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
Well yes. That's because the word "public" has been a misnomer for "government" for most of the disastrous 20th century, and now remains a misnomer in the 21st. Government transportation systems will always be a mistake, and here are the reasons why:
It's about time we got government out of the transportation business. Look at how the Internet took off when the ARPA and DARPA controls were removed and the free market took over. The same would happen if government transportation controls were removed.
The IPCC has purposely engineered a massive scientific fraud.
Seattle monorail, on the other hand, doesn't go from anywhere to anywhere. It's cute, but, as I understand the proposed alignment, it doesn't really serve anyone's needs! It's just going to be a living monorail joke. This doesn't just suck for the people of Seattle - it will be used by morons to argue against investment in public transit in general and against innovative transit technology in specific. I was involved in the development of a prototype Personal Rapid Transit system that would have well served the needs of more dense inner-ring suburbs, but the political will wasn't there from the state government to fund construction. When Seatle builds the extension and there are very few riders, it will be used to bash all sorts of actually good systems.
I'm a daily commuter on the Orange County to LA Metrolink rail service, and without it I wouldn't even consider working in downtown. It's a 50~60 mile ride, with 10 stops 2 minute stops, lasting 90 minutes. During which, I get to relax and read the paper. Once in LA, the majority of us hop on the subway to get to our destinations, the rest take the city busses.
Ever looked into traveling to San Francisco from LA? Yeah, you could fly, take a bus, or drive, but if you want to take a train, Amtrak goes once a day and takes all day. If a HSR system can compete with the airlines, that would be great.
Say it can't be done? There was a recent program on TLC the other night. France has a high speed rail that gets people around faster than planes. Also, the train can take passengers into downtown, while passengers have to disembark planes many miles from the civic center.
The fewer roads trains have to cross, the safer and faster they can be. With our suburban sprawl, bridges have to be built over or under roadways. This all adds to the cost of laying track, as well as aquiring land to lay it, locomotives and rolling stock.
No form of transport in the US is unsubsidized. Airports are owned by governments, roadways are owned by governments. They all receive money from tax revenue.