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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.
The monorail is the last thing Seattle should be worrying about. I live there and trust me, the highway system needs attention and FAST. Traffic is terible, and the Metro bus system got funding cut. Yes, I'm glad the monorail is going ahaid but due to the consept of a monorail only few people are going to be able to regularly use it. Work on our roads and mass transit first thank you very much.
-Cyc
/.'s 10 Millionth
[Anonymous Coward] I hear those things are awfully loud.
[Article] It glides as softly as a cloud
[Enginerd] Is there a chance the track could bend?
[Article] Not on your life, my Slashdot friend
[Frequent poster] Why Seattle, those braindead slobs?
[Article] There were only so many Starbucks jobs
[Oil Companies] Were you sent here by the devil?
[Article] No, good sir, I'm on the level
[Cowboy Neal] I feel attracted to a man.
[Article] Go outside and get a tan!
I swear it's Seattle's only choice
Throw up your hands and raise your voice!
Monorail!
What's it called?
Monorail!
Once again!
Monorail!
[Poster] But our educational system's all cracked and broken
[re;] Sorry, man, the mob has spoken
[All] Monorail! Monorail!
Monorail!
Monorail!
[Homer] Mono- d'oh!
This terrible parody brought to you by a bored college student.
My Karma is so good, I'm the Dalai Lama...or something.
Now where did I hear that name before...?
'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).
---
Open Source Shirts
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.
OLPC Australia
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.
The Monorail, which from the very start was a viable and practical proposal to help deal with Seattle's critical-mass transportation problem, has been largely ignored by politicians for reasons unknown. The Monorail focus has been on solving transportation problems, and thus far seems to have been devoid of any lobbying or tampering by outfits that just want a contract. Every initiative, every election, was a result of a grassroots effort to make it happen. That it has made it as far as it has is a testament to the regular people that have labored so hard on it.
It ain't over yet though. You can bet that the rail forces will be back to create pain for the Monorail wherever they can. Stay tuned for the Sound Transit versus the Monorail shenanigans in Seattle over the next few years.
So those in Seattle owning a $25,000 car get to pay $350 per car per year to pay for one line of the monorail. If you have two $25K cars you get to pay $3,500 over 5 years waiting for this thing to open.
That's a lot of jack just to make it easier to get to the ball game.
I wonder how they are going to pay for the other 4 lines?
Passed by 800 votes, heh.
Huge tax increase to pay for it, 1.75 billion for FOURTEEN MILES OF FRIGGIN TRACK
Whoopitidy do da.
Need help treating your acne? Come here!
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.
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
Fellow citizen of seattle:
The metro bus system sucks. (every bus system sucks, except for the Peter Pan from DC to NYC to Boston.) Living in Seattle, I used to take that pile of crap that is Sound Transit all the time. One problem is the "ride free zone" downtown. The idea is great--speed buses through the busy downtown corridor by not having to wait for people to pay. The effect has been to turn the bus system into a rolling homeless shelter. Also, there are way too many bus stops. Walk a block, people. We don't need a bus stop on EVERY BLOCK you could skip a block and the bus would get you there much faster. (Try riding the 71/72/73 downtown from the U-district some morning and you will see what I'm talking about.)
Ultimately, the reason buses suck is because they don't have a right-of-way. They get stuck in traffic jams just like all those freakin' Subaru Foresters and Outbacks do.
The problem with building more roads is that it will lead to more sprawl, and then you're back to square one.
Before I was in Seattle, I lived in Washington DC. They have a subway system and it works great. I took it whenever I could. Actually, the metro is about 25 years old now and unfortunately it's pretty much at max capacity. But if you want to see the example of why NOT to just build more roads, look at Northern Virginia. Roads/interchanges the size of the I-5/I-405 split in Tukwila are EVERYWHERE. And it can still take 45 minutes to go ten miles during rush hour. Becuase developers are still building subdivisions like crazy out there, so the roads fill up.
People who think Seattle has a bad traffic problem clearly haven't seen traffic in a place like DC. We still kinda have nice fresh air out here; doubling the number of roads (hence cars) will break that. Also, the way people drive in Seattle, you could get another 10% usage out of the roads by simply getting people to drive AT the speed limit, not BELOW it, on the major interstates. Frankly, I don't think Seattle drivers have the bandwidth to handle a 16-lane collector-distributor system like where I-270 meets the DC beltway.
Also, I encourage everyone to do what I did: Move to the city and work in the city. You get a few hours of your day back, and you're not supporting Evil (be it oil-funded terrorists or oil-funded economic destruction off the coast of Spain or oil-funded politicians in the Oval Office) as much. Or, if you work on the East Side, live there too. If you're not willilng to do that, stop bitching about traffic. No job is holding a gun to your head.
Just my two cents. And please don't take this as a personal attack; I'm just like that.
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
There are very few successful transit systems in the US. They just turn into big leeches on tax payers wallets.
And I suppose you think the roads are free?
I use mass transit 'out west' all the time (I used to commute daily on BART). It works great. It's faster then driving. I get to read my book. And it requires less federal subsidies then the roads.
I'd love to have a train that goes down to LA.
"Can of worms? The can is open... the worms are everywhere."
(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.
(b) And downtown.
(c) People like their cars, so I have to believe almost any new mass transit system here will get most of its riders from buses, not from cars, initially. My hope is that this is just the first phase of many, and that ultimately a larger system (and one not subject to traffic jams because it doesn't run at grade level) *would* ultimately get people out of their cars.
(d) I don't follow. The monorail tax is based on the current value of your car, so if you're driving an old clunker you pay very little, and if you're driving a new SUV/Lexus/whatever you'll pay quite a bit more.
(e) Light rail won't go to the airport either (at least not in the first phase), you know.
(f) Heaven forbid cities and regions should take the initiative and spend the money to try to fix problems themselves instead of relying on the generosity of the Feds (or more precisely, the other 250 million-plus U.S. citizens who DON'T live in or near Seattle).
So it passed by 800 votes. Last time I checked, the state constitution didn't say anything about initiatives being any less valid because they got voted in with a slim majority. If I-776 (reducing license tabs, etc.) had only passed by an 800-vote majority, would you be as eager to decry it?
As for the fact that only 45% of people voted, as far as I'm concerned, the other 55% have no right to complain about the results.
"Biped! Good cranial development. Evidently considerable human ancestry."
"It was too obvious even to the corrupt, however, that the rail system absolutely couldn't be done for any reasonable amount of money, and it's been in a perpetual state of falling over dead and being resurrected for the past 8 years or so."
You're being disingenuous. Sound Transit has had lots of trouble in Seattle for the same reason that any major public construction initiative has trouble in Seattle: the town is too politically correct for it's own good. Whereas many (most) other cities of Seattle's population have city managers with the power/authority to make decisions based upon engineering and technical criteria without putting issues to a vote, Seattle is hamstrung with a ridiculously political design/build process. Furthermore, the number of NIMBYs, owl-lovers and salmon saviors here attack any project that even looks sidelong at a stream or a standing puddle. It's a nightmare proposition for actually getting things done. The only reason the monorail people haven't hit this particular wall yet is because their line is only about five percent planned. And any engineer worth his sliderule will tell you that the true costs of a project don't become apparent until around the 30% mark.
You're right about one thing, though: Monorail has always been a populist initiative here in Seattle. Unfortunately, that doesn't make it a smart initiative. No matter how many intelligent, well-spoken engineers have pointed out the technical deficiencies of monorail for the Seattle landscape (and there have been many over the years), the populist beatniks have continued to mindlessly beat on the monorail drum. There's a reason that the Seattle Monorail has been called a technical solution waiting for a problem.
It's really sad, actually. Seattle is almost the textbook definition of the word "tragedy": a city with unbelievable potential, that is comepletely and utterly hamstrung by its political characteristics.
Let's try not to let fact interfere with our speculation here, OK?
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.
In the US, land is cheap (land outside of major developed areas, that is.) Laws and taxes are such that building housing developments, and selling the idea of owning your own home is quite profitable, environmental impact be damned. As a result, sprawling residential developments spring up all over the place, overloading existing infrastructure (power, roads, telecommunications, sewer, water, hospital/school/police/fire.)
As more and more people move out into the boonies (and enduring 1-2hr commute times to and back from work), they demand improvements, like highway widening, more roads, etc. The growing tax base, and larger residential population now justify development of commercial properties, such as shopping malls - and guess who owns the land? Yep, the original developers, or attached arms thereof. Soon the area incorporates, and the politicans of that burblet start clamoring for state and federal funds to fix the mess that the developers created.
In the meantime, everyone who lives between the newly spawned burblet and where most of the residents work has to share increased commute times due to vehicle congestion, and greater pollution. Mass transit using buses fails miserably in this kind of situation, as buses have to share the roads with the worsening traffic, trapping mass transit riders in a commuter's nightmare. Solutions using rail, be it subway, commuter light rail, or a monorail/peoplemover, where the mass transit solution has right of way, are far superior, as you can cut commute times in half and thereby offer a reasonable and useful alternative to driving your own car.
Realistically though, unless all the burblets are in a straight line, leading to the commercial/industrial section of the city (hehe, simcity - a great urban planning tool), retrofitting any area with rail transit is an expensive and questionable pursuit. The key thing is right of way - and high density development around that right of way. Current development is low density, and unless you want to force people to rezone the properties along the proposed rail line, there won't be enough people riding mass transit to make it viable for the short to mid-term. In the long term, the idea is that having a rail line will convince people to re-orient their lives around it - but without a critical mass of transit options (a train that goes 3 miles is not useful), nobody's gonna ride it.
Even though this bond won't be voted on until Nov 2004 in California, it's about time we work on some decent public transit in this state. Outside of BART and maybe Caltrain, public transportation is horrible out here. Los Angeles is the second biggest city in the country, and it is quite possibly the worst public transit system (or lack thereof) I have ever seen for a big city.
New York has their subway, Boston has the T, and Chicago has the L. I haven't tried Chicago, but in Boston and New York their systems work great. You don't need a car because you can hop on a train and get pretty much anywhere you need to go with no more than a couple blocks of walking.
But unlike these cities, out here we have hardly anything at best. BART is great to get around in the East Bay and to get you to San Francisco, but once you are in the city you are walking pretty much anywhere. Caltrains is a decent option for people in the south bay who want to go to the city, but it is pretty slow and only goes to 4th street, once again leaving you a hefty walk if you are going anywhere other than Pac Bell Park.
However, as bad as it is up north, down south it is an utter joke. The pathetic excuse for a subway system in Los Angeles serves so little of the city that it's practically useless. Other than that, you have an unreliable bus system that couldn't follow a time schedule to save someone's life. I don't know about anything in San Diego, but as far as I know they don't have anything special.
While it won't be put into place for a long time even if the bond gets passed, I'm hoping this is a step in the right direction. Even though this system is state-wide rather than city-wide, I have a feeling that if we can get a really successful model to follow, cities will jump on the bandwagon and start making changes for the better.
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