Slashdot Mirror
Seattle Axes Monorail Project
Sokie writes "This afternoon the Seattle City Council passed a resolution advocating the terminiation of the Seattle Monorail Project. This follows a recent recommendation by the mayor that the project be scrapped. Lacking city support, the project looks to be dead and the city council will request that the state legislature formally terminate the project during their next session. City councilman Richard Conlin noted that the $1 million per week tax collection required by the SMP would be enough to eliminate fares on the city's bus network."
Mono...D'oh!
Monorail... Monorail... Guess the good citizens of Seattle checked up on what happened to the monorail in Springfield and all those other poor towns.
Performing sanity checks on your own beliefs is vital in avoiding poisoned koolaid.
I told them already it's more of a Shelbyville idea!
Is there a chance the track could bend?
It sucks, but there is very little interest in these projects in the US. Our country is just not layed out in a way that makes various rail projects feasible.
Does anyone know if there was any pressure from the oil/petrol interests, overt or otherwise, to prevent this project from going forward?
Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
Heh. So now that we aren't doing the monorail project anymore, lets keep the monorail tax anyway. Were the busses in Seattle so unpopular/expensive that they need to be subsidized this way?
I see 4 out of the first 5 comments are Simpsons references, once again proving that nobody on Slashdot has a sense of humour to call their own.
What is with the fixation with monorails? why is one rail supposed to be so much better than two?
For some reason in the mid 50's monorails became equated with high tech, thus EPCOT and the Seattle monorail. All evidence suggests that there is nothing special about monorails. The fastest and most advanced in-use trains in Europe to this date still run on two rails.
Or is this just a case of "my monorail is bigger than yours"?
It's sad that they paid all that money in car tabs for nothing, and then still don't really have an adequate transportation plan.
Seattle didn't strike me as a place that needs a monorail, unless the outerlying 'burbs don't have a viable link with the other parts of the city?
New York would need one, if it weren't for the subway. I bet the council got the idea for a monorail from watching Batman Begins. They saw Gotham City had one, and wanted one too.
Sorry I don't have a Simpsons joke to share. So my work here is done.
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
I heard those things are awfully loud...
You're using her as bait, Master!
Once the city council backed the mayor to withdraw support, the monoral project was forced to put a measure on the upcoming November ballot so Seattle citizens can vote a fifth time on the monorail project. This time they're being offered the option of a 10-mile long route (as opposed to the original 14-mile route) that would (only) cost $5B. This whole mess started when it was discovered that the original route would wind up costing $11B to build.
The Seattle PI had a good article on the latest developments in the paper yesterday.
TFA:
Monorail board approves ballot measure
By Mike Lindblom
Seattle Times staff reporter
The Seattle Monorail Project board has just approved a Nov. 8 ballot measure to shorten the proposed line, and run it from the Alaska Junction in West Seattle to West Dravus Street in Interbay.
The decision to send a ballot measure to voters came hours after the Seattle City Council agreed to advocate for the termination of the financially troubled monorail plan. Last night, monorail board members rejected putting forward a ballot measure or any plan to shorten the line. Mayor Greg Nickels had pushed hard for both.
"It's time for the people to decide whether they want to save the people's train," said Kristina Hill, SMP board chair.
The City Council today, in supporting Nickels' denial of street-use permits for the project, expressed frustration and anger at SMP's handling of the situation and refusal to come up with a ballot measure last night. They said they would ask the Legislature, which created the monorail agency, to dissolve it.
The deadline to submit a ballot measure is 4:30 p.m. today.
The trim to the planned 14-mile line would cut about $250 million from the $1.64 billion construction contract -- if the contracting team sticks with the project.
Pat Flaherty, president of the Cascadia team, said today his team doesn't want to keep working on the Seattle monorail unless the City Council and Nickels reverse course and actively support the ballot measure.
Currently hooked on AMP
The taxation never drops because many people in your area must not have the balls to stand up and say, "Motherfuckers, I have had enough of this taxation!" Like your Founding Fathers showed time and time again, the only way for the citizenry to avoid the greed of government is to take a stand and demand that the taxation be reduced.
Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
1) The Seattle Monorail Project approved a measure to put a shortened monorail line out. I supposed that supports the word "axes".
2) The city council agreed to advocate terminating the project.
It's certainly not dead yet, but it's not looking good. It looks like the shortening was a last ditch effort to keep it alive.
It's really sad too. Seattle badly needs a train system. They have busses, but a good train would help a lot. For myself, that's one reason I prefer to go to Portland if I have the choice (about the same either way for me) despite having friends in Seattle.
-- Who is the bigger fool? The fool or the fool who follows him? --
The monorail was a bad idea. I am vigorously supportive of rapid transit. But in this case there are problems. The elevation would block views, it wouldn't be that fast, it was very expensive, and would implicitly divert funds from light rail (a better idea). seattle has a long history of bad urban planning I'm glad that light rail is going forward and this isn't.
-Sean (OutdoorDB) - The Outdoor Wiki
A hair brained idea that would have cost tax payers millions or even billions while providing little benefit got axed by the City Council. How unlike the City Council to think of the taxpayer!
But, here comes a slew so Slashdot flames for killing a "cool project" that the self appointed experts will now claim could have changed the world for the better, if only the government hadn't ruined everything!
STFU! Dorks!
I went so far as to hire my own team of crack Jewish humorists to create my own Simpson's-free material for Slashdot postings. The rest of you should be ashamed.
I live in Toronto Canada, but travel to the US alot on business and for pleasure.
As a Toronto resident I can get by without a car, just about anywhere in this city, even most of the outlying regions, can be reached quickly via rail (and sometimes a connecting bus), its not perfect, but most times my transit time is less than 30 minutes. When I visit New York City its even better, a GREAT public transit system.
Yet if I visit Jacksonville, Housten, Atlanta (hell just about anywhere in the south) I HAVE to rent a car, public transit is poor or non-existant. Yet they wonder why they have smog issues, and traffic congestion? Ever wonder what the south would be like if they had rail? They can't build subways (water table issue) but a monorail or just plain old above ground rail system would go a long way to improving their quality of life. Oil prices too high? Take the train, its cheaper.
... What about us braindead slobs? You'll be given kooshy jobs ...
Monorail! Monorail! Monorail!
But Main Street's still all cracked and broken!
Sorry mom the mob has spoken
Monorail! Monorail! Monorail!
Mono... D'oh!
Put your tin foil hat back on you damn dirty hippy.
I ask this only because 99.9% of all city governments have no grasp of these concepts and would gladly pass problems off to their furture generations in seeking the all mighty vote for next term.
"Slashdot, where telling the truth is overrated but lying is insightful."
Train projects (or monorail or subway, same thing) are not about the present, but the future. Once an urban environment is built up enough, it becomes prohibitively expensive to buy the land rights needed for such a project, and so the urban system is then stuck with whatever transportation grid it currently has, which is usually by road. The ability to scale up the number of people who drive along a stretch of road is quite limited, even if you allow room for roadway expansion (see Houston and LA); whereas it is easy to increase the number of people who commute over a given section of track by increasing the number of cars per train, increasing the frequency of trains, etc. So what this does in the long term is inhibit a city's growth.
Which might just be a good thing, depending on your point of view.
The name's Lanley.. Lyle Lanley..
From one of my previous comments:
Firefox Users: If the WMV doesn't work, try going tools, options, downloads, and on the bottom right click plugins, uncheck wmv, and if you don't want pdfs opening in firefox (meaning download first THEN open, I prefer this method, always faster and more stable) then uncheck pdf and anything else you don't want opening in firefox
There is another kind of evil which we must fear most, and that is the indifference of good men. -- Boondock Saints
Officials are also considering dismantling the city's controversial Escalator to Nowhere.
The project isn't exactly dead...but it is on the ropes.
A measure will be on the Nov8th ballot authorizing the project to build a slightly shorter line instead of the original 14mile plan. If the voters approve that measure, things start moving again (hopefully with strong support from the city government).
Note that the regional transit agency (SoundTransit) made a verbal promiss when we approved their tax. They ended up deciding to produce a much shorter line. Hopefully people will remember that.
Seattle has an excellent metro system that already serves downtown. I think it would be far cheaper and more effective to try to boost the ridership of the metro and encourage people to stop driving to downtown. The building a monorail almost sounded as if it should be done for the sake of building one. Yes, voters approved it 4 times... But I don't think many people realize how absurd it is that a project of this magnitude cannot come up with a proper estimate after all these years and studies.
The financing for the Seattle Monorail was interesting. That financing, the lack of transparency in the planning, and the sheer cost of doing it are what killed it. There were several transportation-related measures on the ballot that year, but to the surprise of everyone the monorail was the only one approved. The voters approved a certain tax level, but did not dis-allow or put any constraints on borrowing money. The monorail planners took advantage of this by stretching out the financing to an absurd number of years. The way the financing was done would have soaked up all future tax revenue and forstalled the financing of any other projects. Even the city council couldn't stomach only being able to do one project in the next 100 years.
For those not following along at home, this is at least the third time this has happened (if I'm remembering correctly). The city keeps passing ballot measures, and the city council keeps dissolving the project a year or two later. You'd think, after the third ballot passed, that the city council would understand that this is very much the will of the people. I guess not.
Reading the article, it sounds like more of the same old "it can't possible work here" syndrome that infects every Seattle public work. I've been out of Seattle for a couple years -- has the light rail laid one section of track, yet? Both the monorail and the light rail projects for the region have been in development hell for at least 10 years, with seemingly no progress made. The excuse I remember hearing most often was that the Puget sound region was so different from anywhere else in the world that light rail / monorail works.
Cthulhu loves you.
I thought they killed this idea back in Singles. Damn you Cameron Crowe!
Mono = One
Rail = Rail
am I the only one that finds it ironic that they plan on paying for the clean up of the hurricanes that affected oil production by eliminating the subsidy for Amtrak, one of the most energy efficient forms of transportation. A subsidy I might point out is dwarfed by the subsidies they've given and will give to the airlines, one of the most energy inefficient forms of transportation.
The project is complete lunacy since the stations have no provision for parking/park and ride, and the route follows an existing bus line and would not be any faster than that bus line. And it would cost more per ride.
I could support it if they actually tried something innovative, like the Skyweb Express, but as the project stands, it's just a solution looking for a problem.
I am part of the small minority of Seattlites whose home and work are in walking distance of the originally proposed line, and I can't see any reason to choose it, since it would cost me more to ride it than driving to work and paying for parking.
People is stupid, they want what is new. It doesn't matter if what you allready have is better.
We have had trains for more than a century, it's old, it surely isn't good, regardless of the fact that is the cheapest, cleanest, and more comfortable form of public transportation.
O, a Monorail?, that's good, it was about time we got ride of those stupid trains.
WTF am I doing replying to an AC at 5 A.M on a Friday night?
The first sentence of the article:
The Seattle Monorail Project board has just approved a Nov. 8 ballot measure to shorten the proposed line, and run it from the Alaska Junction in West Seattle to West Dravus Street in Interbay.
Another day another story posted with a summary that can only be described as completely wrong.
Reading the summary did make me laugh though, when I left Seattle for a real city (SF) back in 2001, the Monorail project had already been started up and construction had commenced. So if they pull out now, they could very well end up having a several hundred million dollar infrastructure sitting there to rot -- and rotting quite promenently as they situated it through very busy streets.
But it might be possible that by shortening the scope of work, the contractors would pull out. And then the Monorail project could very well be as good as dead.
Personally, while I thought the monorail project was cool, I never really understood why the hell they needed it. They already have a top-notch bus system and the idea of extending the 1962 Worlds Fair Monorail into a city wide service seems rather superflous.
People didn't like the World Trade Center towers either, nor did was the office space occupied for some time after it's completion. There are tons of public works projects that people start out not liking (most likely because of the initial cost, which comes from their taxes) but end up being very useful and well-liked.
In the South, public transit is closely linked with race. Segregated busses were symbolic of the Civil Rights movement in the 1950s: black people made up the majority of the ridership, and the majority of African Americans did not have cars. the only way that southern whites could be convinced to ride them is if they could be assured a "better" seat.
When the busses desegregated, whites said, "Screw it, I'll just drive."
Such overt racism is not practiced anymore, of course. And most black people have cars. But busses and subways where they exist (Atlanta, for one) still carry the stigma of being the less-desirable mode of transportation. The ridership today still consists of the poor (mostly black) and the homeless. Nobody who can afford a car will take public transit.
It's not limited to the south, or event to the US, either.
I've been on that monorail. It's cool.
Considering that Seattle has recently beat out Los Angeles for worst traffic congestion, you'd think they'd be more into mass transit.
Granted, monorails cost more money, but if that's too expensive do a conventional two-rail system.
Ignore Alien Orders
AirTrain JFK runs for 6 miles above the Van Wyck Expressway. It connects JFK Airport to Jamaica train station in Queens, connecting the airport to the subway and Long Island Rail Road. I always thought it was amusing that they were building this thing back in 2000 or so. It felt like Disney World with this monorail overhead. I didn't appreciate the traffic that the construction caused on the Van Wyck, one of the most congested highways in the city. I believe the original plan was to create a hybrid train vehicle that could run on both the LIRR rails and the monorail track but that never happened. Therefore it still requires a transfer to get to Manhattan. I haven't actually rode this AirTrain, but I have been on the one at Newark.
monorail is competing with Light Rail. There is one that was started in Seattle, but it has been a nightmare (it makes the monorail look absolutely positive). So what you have is have a business group (lrt manufact.) and unions (nomally, monorails uses far less than 1/2 of the labor of lrt) that are fighting monorail. That is why monorail is going up in other countries (india, china, japan), as well as private enterprises (Las Vegas) are pushing monorail. LRT actually cost a great deal more than monorail.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
They stand in line at themeparks to ride a short track that goes nowhere (just a short loop). Why not make it into one long ride that goes from the suburbs to the city?
I suggest you read Slashdot
AirTrain. G.A.P (2/3) 6 minutes to Atlantic Terminal (2 bucks). LIRR to Jamaica Station 19 minutes (3.50). AirTrain monorail to Terminal 10 minutes ( 5 bucks). $10.50. 35-40 minutes. Comparison: Town Car to JFK from Prospect Heights ($35 - $40) with no guarantee that it will be anything less than 35 minutes.
The monorail is a good idea for custom destinations like an airport where you have to build above ground level to connect to other public trans. Any other use seems to be nothing more that gee-whiz novelty stuff.
Comparing it to Windows will be a moot point, since El Dorado is going to have a 40% larger code base than XP.
The Las Vegas monorail is far behind its revenue goals. They need something like 40,000 passangers/day to break even. They're getting about 30,000 or so. Plus when they started, they pulled some funny business and have a "charity" tax status.
The Doormat
If you're not outraged, then you're not paying attention.
Like some cities on the West Coast, Seattle has hills and light rail doesnt work very well with hills. Light rail construction (which is not elevated) has been ongoing for years now, but most of the costs associated with it have to do with tunneling. Its a soft soil, so when you hit bodies of water, you have have to dig even deeper, which costs more money and takes longer to tunnel.
With Monorail, all you need to do is clear a path. Buy out business along the green line, no tunneling is involed. Plus im told that monorail can be converted to handle a maglev type of transportation. It was originally supposed to cost under 2 billion, but people didnt like the tax and decided to register their cars outside of KingCounty. This caused a severe drop in revene and prompted the monorail execs to resort to drastic funding (junk bonds, high intrest loans, etc) to the point where its going to cost over 10 billion.
We need the monorail (or some form of elevated transportation) because there isnt enough room to build more highways. The sucess of the monorail would have helped to extend it to other areas of King County such as Redmond or Tacoma. I used to temp at Microsoft, and getting to Redmond from Seattle wasnt really a problem, but getting home sure was a nightmare. Any minor problem, and your going to see backups.
King County citizens voted in favor for the monorail 5 times! And yet, its never gonna be built. Its beyond surreal.
I moved to Seattle a year ago from California. I was positively impressed by the bus transit system free in the downtown area. There is this tunnel thing that let me go from home to work in 5 minutes cutting all the touristic area and traffic. Neat. There is also this street car you can take from Pier 71 to the international district that goes by the waterfront. If you live on that path, it's like being a tourist everytime you commute to work. Swell. Now comes Fall 2005. They just shut down the tunnel to be retrofitted for 2 YEARS! WTF! Are they hiring part timers to do the job and working French hours on that project? I reregistered my car and payed a premium of +$430 for the monorail (3% of the deprecated value of the vehicule). Ouch! This tax was explained to me to be started to pay for the monorail project. My first reaction was : the rail must be made of platinum for that price. Then I became aware fo the monorail project and the big scam. 14 miles of line for $11B. A line that goes from two places that don't really require this common transportation (North-South). While the east bay and cheaper housing in the SE (Renton area) still has a huge problem at rush hour. So now they cancelled the monorail and they are keeping the tax to pay for free downtown bus access which is reduced to minimum thanks the the lightrail retrofit. The Seattle Art museum is building an extension near to the Street car depot and almost killed the Street car. So much for a museum that goes and remove folkore from the city. Thanks god lots of supporters of the street car gave donations to save it. But this is going to be shutdown until the museum is done building their sculture crap art park and they found out what to do with the depot. Probably a year or two. On top of this, add up that the monorail is stopping short of 900 yards from the airport. So you will need to lug your suitcases in a shuttle for that distance. WTF. Seattle had 2 architects who designed the city one for the north side, the other for the south. There is a building downtown that shows the disconnection between the two dudes. The building is at the corner of 5th and Stewart and it has a triangular facade. It looks to me coming from Europe that the whole USA have a triangular facade when it comes to common transportation.
I wonder if RTA will go the same way.
Another public transportation system here in USA that goes down the drain. Not surprisingly knowing how anti-public transportation this country is.
A quick look at any news channel over the past month or so, has shown the consequences of a virtually non-existant punblic transportation system. Katrina and Rita, need I say more?
And places that have public transportation, like where I live, it's so bad that I wouldn't want my worst enemy to cross the city using buses. But I guess people love to be robbed clean each time they drive their car. A sensible person would save tons of money each year by using an efficient public transportation system. Another issue with public transportation is, at least here, that they don't run when you need them. My last bus to downtown on a Saturday is like 7pm, last bus from downtown, around 8pm. 8pm on a saturday? No wonder people drink and drive. Use taxi to get home? if you can find one, I've waited up to 90 minutes to get a cab. This country is worse than a 3rd world country when it comes to public transportation, it's a 4th world country in this case. public transportation in USA == Disaster!
If you mod me down, I *will* introduce you to my sister!
Monorails are almost always elevated. That means that they do not run in the same space as cars. As such, they can be automated. That means on-time, and it means very low operation costs.
Of course, you can elevate a LRT or put it underground. In both cases, the installation costs are an easy 3-5 x the monorail costs as well as taking 5-10 the space.
In monorail, the train wraps the rail. That means that it can not jump it. In contrast, think about how many of trains that we hear have jumped the track. If you follow the news, it happens every month or so.
Monorail takes up less space in the air as the rail is about the width of a sidewalk. In contrast, the width of a suspended LRT track, is wider than a normal road. So imagine a 2 lane road suspended overhead. Load, noisey, and very expensive.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Traffic into Seattle sucks and they need the monorail, but it has turned into a pork barrel play-thing. They do not even have contractor chosen and it has been years since the whole thing started. Fire them all and run them out of town on a gridlocked bus.
On the other hand I went to Las Vegas this summer and their monorail rocks.
I'm really glad that they killed this
/.-ers are opposed to monorails. City's don't come up with these ideas without a reason. It's (even to us cellar-dwellars who never see a ray of sun on our skins) that there's a problem with transportation. I wonder then, what's the best alternative?
What is with the fixation with monorails?
Guess the good citizens of Seattle checked up on what happened to the monorail in Springfield and all those other poor towns.
I can see most
* Building metro's? They're really expensive, not all soil is suited for metro's and it means turns the city into a building-area for years and years...
* Building more roads? You're causing more exhaust-gasses and no matter how many roads you build, you'll always have traffic-jams...
* Double rails? It produces much more fricion in general (don't know the specifics of the Seattle-project) which causes more noise and needs more energy
* More public transportation busses? Almost the same disadvantages as building more roads.
* More trams? See under more roads...
Can we, as a bunch of creative technology-freaks, come up with a better solution for the traffic-problem or is the monorail in fact the best solution? I know WE don't mind remotely working from our basements but there's an world out there in which this isn't possible... People have to actually see and meet each other IRL...
Sound Transit isn't chugging along just fine. It has already been cut in length, and gone over budget. It still hasn't addressed several places where they might have to tunnel, wich will drive the budget even higher. It also runs at street level in places, and that will further compete with existing traffic for space.
Is that really 'just fine'?
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
Example- (Quoted from Wikipedia) The city of Rochester, New York once had an underground rapid transit system, called the Rochester Subway (AAR reporting mark RSB) from 1928-1956. Contemporary photos show, however, that like Boston's Green Line, it used single streetcar vehicles, and so using today's terms would likely be described as a light rail system.
In 1900 the Erie Canal was re-routed to by-pass downtown Rochester, and in 1919 the abandoned canal was bought to serve as the core of the subway. The subway was built below, and the subway's roof was turned into Broad Street.
There are proposals to build a new rapid transit system in Rochester, which would use some of the old tunnels.
The problem is my city, Rochester, is nowhere near big enough for another subway system. Unfortunately, plans are still moving forward because people think "We need this" but not "at what cost."
I am sick and tired of hearing right-wing hypocrites beating up on AMTRAK and saying dumb things like "for the cost of Amtrak, we could buy XX numbers of people cars."
Reality check #1: AMTRAK is subsidized, but they are also practically regulated out of existence:
http://www.ebbc.org/rail/fra.html
The RFA imposes *ridiculous* regulations that keep both Amtrak and freight train companies from being able to do anything intelligent or competitive with their infrastructure.
They are also, as far as I know, required by states and the feds to provide service on a lot of routes that are unprofitable because nobody uses them. Lots of people take trains from Boston to New York, so that route is profitable. I highly doubt many people are going to take trains from Ft. Wayne, Indiana to Houston, Texas. So the subsidies are partially so the politicians can crow about having universal rail service in America.
(p.s. if you are looking for your oil company conspiracy, you might want to check there... althogh I doubt it... never ascribe to malice what can be explained by incompetance/stupidity.)
Reality check #2: Cars are also a "socialist" form of transportation.
Let's see. Cars get:
- A huge mass of regulations on how you can build a car, how you can sell a car, how you can drive a car, and what you can do with it when it's dead.
- A huge, expensive registration and policing system dedicated *entirely* to the management of cars.
- Roads. Boston just spent *billions* on something called the Big Dig. Hint to all you right-wing clueless morons: that was *not* a public transit project. The public transit parts cost far less than burying the ****ing highways.
- Foreign policy actions and wars to secure a price-stabilized and readily available flow of oil.
In America, *all* forms of transportation are socialized, including cars. There is no free-wheeling free-enterprise form of transit in this country.
So what would it cost to own a goddamn car if you had to pay for the total cost of ownership, including paying to drive on the roads, paying the true cost of gasoline, and paying the cost of insurance without the massive government subsidized police and regulation program to ensure car safety? I bet cars would only be affordable by the upper middle class to the rich.
So yeah, go ahead and cut subsidies to AMTRAK. But if you do, be sure to also cut the massive book of stupid regulations that they are subject to so that they can actually run a profitable company.
I am so, so, so sick of hearing blockhead Rush Limbaugh talking points on transportation. I am going to seriously punch the next moron that says something about how we could buy XX cars for the cost of some public transit system.
Yes, I have an excellent idea that I have been attempting to promote for years. It would solve all of the city's transportation issues. It is, in a word: teleportation. :(
While it may be a bit more expensive than other options, it is faster, cleaner, and takes up much less room (about the size of a telephone-booth, usually) than buses, trains, etc. Truly the 'technology-freak' solution to the traffic problem...
Sadly, no one wants to back the project
Everything I need to know about copyrights I learned from Slashdot.
I'm in Seattle. We voted *yes* on this baby FOUR TIMES.
..we got the stadium, but not the monorail.
We also voted no on a new stadium, twice.
It's been pondered elsewhere why cities like Atlanta don't have better mass transit systems then they do. Some suggested higher water tables, others suggested race/cultural issues, but I'm going to suggest a third option.
The reason I suspect is that "old world" cities are far better suited for mass transit in the first place. Cities like New York, Boston and European cities were developed when transportation mostly consisted of walking. As a result, these cities tended to emphasize a "build up, not out" approach to development resulting in more compact cities realtive to their size.
Then came the concept of Suburbia....country living for everyone. Automobiles became affordable and cities started to sprawl. Now you have cities like Atlanta, LA, etc who occupy a far larger land area relative to their population then older cities. This means that building a mass transit network becomes far more expensive to build and maintain. It also means that unless it's a fairly comprehensive network (even more expensive) it's ridership will be relatively low.
This is best evidenced by the New York Metro Area. Mass Transit in manhattan is exceptional...you can get just about everywhere you want to go. Access in brooklyn and queens where building densities are lower isn't quite as good as manhattan, but is still pretty good. Transit access out on long island (which was developed with cars in mind) is good for going to and from Manhattan, but poor going everywhere else.
Now sure, there's no technological reason we couldn't build a comprehensive subway system out on Long Island, but low ridership compared to operating and construction costs would make it economicly unfeasable. All we can do is identify a few major routes along which rail lines would ease congestion on the highways. I imagine it's much the same for an Atlanta or LA.
-Chris
--an unbreakable toy is useful for breaking other toys--
Those reasons are so lame. There is no park and ride to save money to please people like yourself. Sure it would be no faster than the bus line but it could carry a lot more people than the bus line without clogging the streets - that's the idea of mass transit. And it costs more than driving to work because of hidden subsidies supporting the infrastructure for drivers (I5 and the viaduct are not free you know..).
I'm even angrier than you and would like to see heads roll - the city councils. For ignoring 4 (or is it 5) separate plebliscites on building a monorail and for trying to pull out after land rights have been bought and contracts set at the cost of nearly a third of the total price. *That* is lunacy.
Why can't we have some vision or at least some common sense. Ever been on the Skytrain in Vancouver, or the trolleys in Portland or lived in Toronto? The downtown cores there are beautiful and thriving places where people live and work. Instead we are going spend a monorails cost to tear down and rebuild that eyesore of a viaduct on the waterfront or spend two monorails worth of money for a two mile underground tunnel. And *my* non-car owner property taxes are paying for that...
I live in Chattanooga, a decent sized city in Tennessee, but no where near the size of Nashville or even Knoxville. I tried to find a job in Atlanta, mainly because I like large cities and I like mass transit.
Don't get me wrong, I love driving and own a 5spd and do most of my own car work, but sometimes it would be nice to be able to get drunk at a bar, stumble onto a train and get off only a block or two from your apartment.
Atlanta has a rail and subway system, Marta, but it doesn't really blanket the city all that well. I have a friend who lives down there and it's a 20 minute drive to work, even in the thick traffic, and 45 minute train ride with two transfers.
I really wish the rail era in this country didn't die the way it did. It would have been nice during the Interstate construction , if they had placed two high speed rail tracks in the median. I realize the Interstates were designed to move troops and also be used as a stage to land airplanes, but I think both could have still been accomplished with an integrated rail system.
I like the way Chicago's rail system is setup. Their rails run in the medians in the Interstate and they even have train stations in the medians with pedestrian bridges above them connecting them to the streets.
A good mass transit system (keyword good; well designed) with a fair ticket price or monthly passes is a really great way to help reduce pollution, unclog traffic ways and it lets you read a book or play with your laptop on the way to work. The trouble is we're a country conditioned to use cars and we like control, so many people will continue to drive those gas hogging SUVs with just themselves and five empty seats on the 20min drive to work every morning.
Sumit
...no one track mind. (*rimshot*).
Cake or Death? Cake Please!
Just make sure each teleportation booth has a No-Pest-Strip...
Cake or Death? Cake Please!
I thought Seattle already had a monorail. Didn't Frasier get trapped in it in the special episode they actually filmed in Seattle? Or was that some other non-monorail elevated railway system?
You must think in Russian.
A rail link from Bellevue to Seattle would be great, but not enough. We actually need one from Redmond through Bellevue, across the water to Seattle, plus some east-west runs further south and further north, plus some north-south runs (Boeing in Renton up to say Boeing in Everett). They also need to be integrated with the bus systems, so you get a transit pass to go from bus to train and back again. Now, whether the rail line is two-rail or monorail makes little difference to me. The Tokyo/Haneda run (I think that's the one) runs more traffic than the entire sound transit rail plan is supposed to handle, if I'm remembering my numbers correctly, and has been doing so for decades, I think, so monorail technology is certainly up to the job. The technology exists, though monorail opponents tend to lie about that a lot, for whatever reason.
The thing is, crossing that water I mentioned is the big problem here. We've got two main spans crossing Lake Washington - WA-520 and I-90. Now, I-90 isn't so bad, but it's pretty far south for the tech workers who are going to/from MS and related companies up in Redmond. WA-520 is the bridge they all use, and unfortunately, it's a 2-lane (each way) floating bridge that is in danger of failing during high winds, and needs to be replaced ASAP. That's one of the major transportation projects in the area. The other biggie is the Alaskan Way Viaduct, which is a double deck elevated span running along the Seattle waterfront. This thing is old, damaged, and SERIOUSLY in need of replacement, mainly due to damage done in the Nisqually Earthquake in 2001. Along with that project is the Seawall replacement. So, to replace the Viaduct, we'll need $4 billion+. I can't remember how much the 520 replacement project requires, but it's definitely in the multi-billion cagetory, as well. To have a rail system span Lake Washington will require the replacement of 520, most likely, and the 520 replacement isn't near the safety priority of replacing the viaduct.
Here's where it gets fun.
There is a voter initative coming up to squash the gas tax recently created (9.5 cents per gallon phased in over ten years, I _think_), that will come up with the major state-wide funding for these mega transportation projects. The people of this state are fucking ignorant when it comes to PAYING for things, so they'll probably vote for the initiative and kill transportation funding (AGAIN). That's the problem with Washington state - the voters are stupid as hell (just like every other state). They vote for things they want done, then vote AGAINST the funding for them, then piss and moan about it. Granted, the politicians HAVE done their very best to kill the monorail initiative from the very beginning (there's a reason it had to be done as a voter iniative in the first place - politicians never wanted the monorail expanded), and they did provide funding for stadiums we voted against twice. Still - residents here seem to vote against funding for transportation issues every chance they get.
As the saying goes, you get the government you deserve. *sigh*
I _really_ could use that flying car about now...
What I'd like to see:
- replace the viaduct with a tunnel (state legislative preferred option)
- create monorail line from Northgate (or Ballard if low funds) to Seatac airport, and elevate it over the viaduct path through the Seattle waterfront, creating a MAJOR tourist attraction. The view of Seattle and Elliott Bay from the Viaduct is the best view of Seattle (view of the skyline from West Seattle is the next best view, BTW). This has the advantage of ripping up only that one path along the waterfront, so rights of way costs and construction costs along that costly downdown section would be minimized). Views from waterfront buildings would be substantially reduced with just a monorail line there instead of a double deck freeway.
- integrate the ticketing system between bus, monorail, and sound transit (bus and light rail) so you can go from one to the others without having t
Not surprisingly knowing how anti-public transportation this country is.
Or, maybe, that public transportation is not in keeping with the American character?
Lemme put it this way: wherever there's mass transit in the US, people use it because they _have_ to (anoraks and greenies excepted, as usual). Public transport is either too expensive, smelly, inconvenient, or untimely (at least 2 of those in any particular system). If NYC's transit system is the most comprehensive, it's also the most unpleasant: no AC in the stations with train brakes and ACs dumping heat on the platform, where you end up standing for 10+ minutes between trains outside of "rush" hour. The constant smell of urine and feces, harassment by mentally-unstable indigents, the noise, it's all right out of the fucking nineteenth century!
So, you say, spend $10 billion to fix it. Never gonna happen. So even if gasoline gets to $5-6/gal, I'll be happily motorcycling into work in half the time except when it snows, when I'll be miserable waiting for the ferry, then waiting for the train (and sweating under a winter coat on a 95f platform), and trying desperately not to strangle some loud annoying person.
Hell, maybe I should just be unemployed this winter too.
Your theory about mass transit is nice... but the reality of a city spending planning to spend $5 billion on shuttling a few hundred people a few miles is ludacris.
Don't let that stop you from dreaming... just dream with your own damn money you sick freak.
The monorail hasn't begun construction - they have bought some land, but haven't even agreed on a construction contract. You are probably confusing the monorail with light rail, which has had great progress. They recently decided they were under budget and could get their stretch goals in the initial project, which included the last couple of miles to the airport.
The monorail is just too expensive for the investment.
2. Aren't mass transit systems in Europe commonly struck by worker strikes? (Struck by a strike. You like that?) That would lend a lot of weight to the "mass transportation won't allow them to go where they need to when they need to" argument.
3. I think the main thing here, though, is the idea that I dump money into my car, and know where it is going, and who's putting it there. I can monitor it myself and plan ahead for any problems. If my car breaks down, I already have backup plans in place (ride from a buddy, borrow my wife's car, etc.) but if there is a strike or a derailing or something like that, I don't know what you could do. Even 1 mile is a mighty long walk sometimes.
Item #1 is a serious question.
Item #2 is another serious question. I am not looking for an argument here, I want to know if this is as big an issue as I have heard it is in Europe, and if you have factored that in to your thinking.
Item #3, though is what I think lies at the heart of the situation. Even in LA, where traffic stinks mightily, people still drive everywhere. Disclaimer: I live in an area of about 100,000 people, unlikely to have to deal with this problem anytime soon. My short time in LA did not give me any experience with this issue, as the subway was finished about a month or so before I moved out, and everyone used cars anyway. I moved out of LA in 1996.
I cried real tears when Li Mu Bai died.
Oh God, no.... if dialing up your destination is anything like working the self-checkout line at the grocery store, there's no way I'm standing in line for one of those.
...unless, of course, you built in a default destination for anyone too incompetent to figure it out after a couple of tries. One where they can't make a return trip. }:-)
Did I say overlords? I meant protectors.
Law 1: Mass Transit is *always* good.
Law 2: Secular Progressive local government is *always* good.
Therefore,
If I have a secular progressive government, and I say I want to build mass transit, ANY level of waste, fraud, and abuse is tolerable. The results don't actually matter! I can keep wasting money and go get more every year, because I say the right keywords in my speeches.
"We need SOCIAL JUSTICE"
"We need to fight THE OIL MONOPOLY"
Now, open your wallets again, you stupid serfs!!
Why should the revenue generated by the monorail be used eliminate bus fares?
Once the project has paied for itself, fares should be reduced to a maintence and overhead only level. Or go into a fund to expand service. It should not become a pofit center for the city.
Of course this does't happen in reality.
If someone is passing you on the right, you are an asshole for driving in the wrong lane.
You say the point of mass transit is to carry more people without clogging the streets. You then suggest that a monorail would do that while a bus does not.
But later on you suggest the trolleys in Portland are a great example of mass transit.
How do you reconcile this? Trolleys close the roads worse than buses, whether using their own lane (which could be used for cars) or sharing a lane.
A monorail might carry more people, it depends on the schedules of the buses and cars It's sure not a given.
Personally, I think light rail (trolleys) are a great example of terrible mass transit. Since they go through regular car intersections, they suffer from congestion as bad as cars, and they stop all the time. The net result is a system of mass transit which is vastly inferior to a car. So that limits your ridership almost exclusively to people who cannot drive.
Subways, like Toronto's system are great. Properly installed, they sail by traffic and are actually more convenient and rapid than driving.
Additionally, why do you complain about hidden subsidies for cars as hiding the real costs of driving? It's not like fare show the real cost of mass transit either. Few mass transit systems are completely funded from the farebox.
Personally, I think that monotrails, especially the Disney-type are a dumb idea. Regular rails would be better. And if you don't like the noise of regular rails, use rubber tires like Montreal does. At least with all these systems you remain with largely proven and cheap to operate technology.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
For mass transit to work in the United States it needs to be affordable, comfortable, competitive in travel time, and include a network broad enough to supplant private auto transport.
As it stands I doubt the typical middle class commuter would pay a fare higher than their gas tab to ride the bus/monorail/whatever in tight quarters with others (savoring the body aromas, no doubt) and lengthening their commutes by a factor of 2 - not to mention they cannot travel to every destination they desire to go.
After all, why not use your car if you're already paying for depreciation, insurance, maintenance, & cetra? Driving a car has a high monthly overhead cost and a low marginal cost per mile driven, which encourages use of private transport.
There has been so much intentional mismanagement of funds leading up to the planning that there would have been no way for it to go ahead anyway. Think about it. No politican is going to do anything that would risk pissing off any of the "Big 3"
In those places whose layout make rail-type mass-transit practical, standard-guage rail gives enormously better price-performance than the alternatives.
The technology has been heavily debugged over 1 1/2 centuries. The important components are in mass production. (Even custom rolling stock - if built in the standard way - gets much of the cost and functionality benefit.)
Standard guage also lets the line use heavy rail rights-of-way opportunistically - with no or only minor upgrades if the stock is self-powered, relatively minor upgrades if trolley or third-rail power must be added. Old rights-of-way are the right width and can be reactivated or re-railed. City streets ditto: You can put standard guage down a freeway median, convert a lane or two of an existing street or closed-to-traffic pedestrian mall, or even run rails IN a street and share the lane with vehicular traffic. You can bring intercity passenger lines to the same stations and platforms as your intra-city mass transit. In an industrial area or over bridges you can also do shared projects with freight lines.
Each of these factors can produce savings in the tens-of-millions to multiple billions ranges, both for the mass transit projects and sometimes for heavy rail partners.
Contrast that to non-standard systems:
BART: Deliberately designed with a non-standard guage track (using concrete railbed so it can't be changed later) so it could never be shared with freight. Custom cars designed by aeronautical engineers - whose expertese with aerodynamics and structure relates more to free-space flight than rolling rapidly on a surface within inches of structures, and whose experience with ROLLING involves only rubber-shod landing gear used for only minutes per flight at any speed greater than a crawl. Result: Abysmal ride. Cars with a replacement cost of $6 million EACH, currently only available from a manufacturer in France. No opportunity to share right-of-way with anything: Expansion requires purchase (or siezure) of a string of contiguous lots through the San Francisco Bay Area - perhaps still the most expensive real estate in the US.
Amtrack made the aeronautical-engineer new-design mistake on one generation of their passenger rolling stock, with similar results.
People-mover: A rubber-tired horizontal elevator. A dreadfully expensive toy for inner city entertainment/business districts. Useful mainly for inter-terminal transport in airports. Like Bart, the right-of-way can't be shared with anything.
Monorails also can't share their trackage with other services, or recycle existing structures (other than the space over existing rights-of-way such as freeway medians - and even there the supporting structures consume ground space). So you have to build the entire line and pay for the whole thing out of the project - making the fees you must charge (or the taxes you must steal) prohibitively high. The main advantage over railroads is their relative quiet and their lack of interference with traffic at crossings.
(I could go on with bullet trains and other inter-urban items, and comparison with air and water transit. But this thread is about urban mass transit.) Main point is that, for urban mass transit, standard guage rail for the long hops is a better deal than monorail or the other alternatives.
With one exception: The private automobile is usually a far better price/performance tradeoff than even trains or busses - even if you don't count the costs of lost passenger time from waiting for scheduled runs or transfer connections, or taking a non-optimal route due to lack of availability of a direct run. Even in those cities where the transit system is pervasive enough that it beats cars for some trips, there are always plenty of others where a private car beats the pants off public transportation on a cost/ride basis. A car goes from where you are to where you want to be, with many convenient route options, at a very low cost per mile traveled (even counting the cost of
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Your numbers are kind of right, but kind of wrong. The actual construction costs of the original line were well under 3 billion, however it was to be financed over ~50 years, which brought the total, with interest, to 11 billion.
Legalize recreational marijuana. Seriously.
> The taxation never drops because many people in your area must not have the balls to stand up and say, "Motherfuckers, I have had enough of this taxation!" Like your Founding Fathers showed time and time again, the only way for the citizenry to avoid the greed of government is to take a stand and demand that the taxation be reduced.
Dress up like Arabs and throw the monorail cars into the bay?
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Sound Transit promised 20 miles of track for 1.5 billion. In the end, they are delivering 11 miles for 3 billion. Interestingly, the city council let them get by with all this crap. However, to say that Sound Transit is chugging along is also wrong. It is possible that they will be stopped esp when stations are talked about being 30 meters below ground which still have to be dug. Personally, I would rather be 30 feet above ground on a solid monorail, then 30 meters (yards), below the ground when a good size earthquake hits.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
> Once the city council backed the mayor to withdraw support, the monoral project was forced to put a measure on the upcoming November ballot so Seattle citizens can vote a fifth time on the monorail project.
It seems that SOP for light rail systems is to put it up for a vote every year until it finally gets approved. I've never figured out who's behind it, but no matter how badly it gets trounced, it's always back on the ballot next time.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
From Boeing's web site:
It takes about 60 gallons (227 l) of fuel per passenger to get from New York to London on board a 767-400ER. The same volume of gasoline would propel an economy car about half of that distance.
I was recently in Toronto and the public transit is among the best I've seen. I think a lot of this stems from unlike most American cities, Toronto didn't tear out its streetcar lines in the 50s. At the time General Motors was buying up all the streetcar lines. Streetcars were replaced with busses because General Motors only made busses. Busses are crap. They're smaller, very noisy, and wind up being much harder to navigate the system because there's no permanence to a route.
AccountKiller
You say that taxation never drops, and yet, the feds. have implemented numerous tax cuts (that is taxation dropped) over the last 5 years.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
This is best evidenced by the New York Metro Area. Mass Transit in manhattan is exceptional...you can get just about everywhere you want to go.
Are you serious!?
AFAIK, NYC has one of the world's worst mass transit systems for a city of its size, a problem that largely stems from the fact that a large number of people working in NYC commute from NJ and CT.
I live an hour by road from NYC, but 2 by rail. And let me say that the roads are not great by any measure. If it weren't for the private cab industry, NYC wouldn't work. The subway is a convoluted MESS, and getting anywhere beyond brooklyn or long island by mass transit is impossible.
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
It seems that SOP for light rail systems is to put it up for a vote every year until it finally gets approved. I've never figured out who's behind it, but no matter how badly it gets trounced, it's always back on the ballot next time.
That's not the case here. It's been approved every time. I'm even paying something like $200 extra every year for my car license tabs to fund it, because I live in the city.
"...always new atoms but always doing the same dance, remembering what the dance was yesterday." -Richard Feynman
People and populations shift over time. What might be a nice idea now, may be stupid in the future. Suppose the people all elect to move NORTH, the scenery is nicer and the land is cheaper(bogus example). What does the monorail AND light rail system do? IT DIES. Busses can drive anywhere the roads go for the most part. Use adaptible bus routes and the problem is lessened. This pre-supposes city government pulls it's collective head out of their asses. Yeah, not going to happen.
You really don't need to make people pay a net tax in order to fund public tranportation system. A public transportation is going to push up property values because of (for residents) the ease of getting where you want and (for businesses) the ease of customers getting to you. Thus, you can just tax the gain in value of the properties as a result of the public transportation system (which is generally referred to as a ground rent). This is much less punishing to citizens since property value stay the same (after taxes) and you only pay away the value that wouldn't be there if not for the public transportation system.
Rank my idea: http://www.sinceslicedbread.com/node/531
we're getting an aerial tram http://www.portlandtram.com/thedesign.htm oh and our light rail system works pretty durn good too.
In Vancouver, Skytrain is a success. Since the transportation expo of 1986, skytrain's ridership has increased many fold. They have connections to the Seabus to North Vancover across the Burrard Inlet. They added additional lines in 2001 running east to west from Vancouver to the east suburbs. Vancouver is extending the line north and south to the south suburbs just in time of the Winter Olympics of 2010.
All rail, monorail etc services share a fundamental problem which makes them largely useless to 90% of the population. They try to move groups of people from A -> B -> C -> D ..... -> Z. The automobile in comparison moves individuals directly from A -> Z.
c -transport-cant-work.html
The implications are quite significant for the difference in method. Group vehicles have to be large, heavy to carry lots of people, the infrastructure then has to be large, heavy and expensive per mile. Group vehicles have to stop at every station to let people on and off. Very slow average speed. Group vehicles almost never take you exactly where you want to go, you have to change to other modes of transport and make additional journeys which means additional waits, very poor journey performance. Group vehicles have to run to a schedule. Everyone wants to travel at different times and schedules mean additional waits.
The result is that group vehicles have dismal performance. Which people are unwilling to pay for because it's so poor. They then have to be massively subsidised through taxation. Their optimal journey is from A->B with no stops in between. i.e. long distance, they shouldn't really be used for short journeys at all, they are being misused if they are.
More details of why conventional mass transit can't work and what can:
http://mrprecision.blogspot.com/2005/05/why-publi
Deleted
Another reason why Chicago, New York, and Boston have such wide reaching transit systems, particularly NYC, is because the companies that built them (a) Didn't wait for decades to get public approval, and (b) Said companies, if confronted on the subject, would quickly grease the palms of the politicians in charge to ensure they could continue work uninterrupted.
Back when they were building the subways in Manhattan, the construction was literally tearing up all the streets, dynamite used in the tunnelling would occasionally explode and kill bystanders, and buildings would occasionally collapse. Hardly what the public would put up with nowadays, nor politicians looking for reelection, but the systems were *built*. In later decades, the companies that built those subway systems went bankrupt, and the city took over the transit systems. Major corporations may be all evil and bad and junk, but the ineptitude of government is criminal in scale.
As for Seattle, basically the last 10 years or so has been spent funnelling money into bean counters' pockets, who had the task of no more than writing study after study, without one penny being put into any form of construction.
If these guys were actually serious, they could have built a line stretching from Seattle to Tacoma, running above either the old Interurban line, or above/alongside the Burlington/Northern tracks (much like how MARTA in Atlanta operates). No additional noise pollution, no need for environmental impact studies (since nice clean electric transit doesn't produce any pollution on its own), no need to tear down houses or widen streets to make room. Simple as that.
In fact, more than likely they DIDN'T want a monorail, because someone would have to be accountable for all the money that was wasted on those studies.
Just because you can mod me down, doesn't mean you're right. Shoes for industry!
Praise whatever holy entity you believe in that the city finally listened to the state treasurer. I think this project killed itself with their budget plan back in June. Somehow, $11 billion for a 14 mile monorail that would carry something like 1000 passengers per day seemed fiscally irresponsible (http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/transportation/2295 04_monorail22.html). Seattle needs major transportation relief, but blowing that much in one place is absurd. The monorail has a funny way of not dying though, so I expect it to wind up on the ballot as an initiative. I don't quite see how the whole eastern vs western Washington thing crept in here, but there is quite enough bitterness and high-mindedness on both sides of that fence.
I've sold monorails to Brockway, Ogdenville, and North Haverbrook; and by-gum, it put them on the map...
<\redundant>
Christopher Harrison
Slashdot should just rename themselves "Slashdot - News for the American so-called "Nerd" - Stuff that matters (some of the time)"
You -do- realise that there's a world out there, right? What's described as "nerds" to you (the people of the US) is considered common intelligence in most other countries.
You people really need to get out and travel a bit.
So why do people try to build monorails? What is the goal? Is it just because they have a cool name? Or because they look futuristic? From what I can tell they have nothing but disadvantages over traditional trains. The tracks are much harder to manufacture and maintain, the turning radius is much more limited, they're slow...
I live in Las Vegas at the moment and they put up a monorail last year... nothing but headaches.
BART in the San Francisco area is pretty darn good. It reminds me of the trains in Europe -- both England and France have excellent rail systems. Fast, quiet, smooth and reasonably priced for the most part.
Anyways... I've never heard why people keep building monorails. Is there some theoretical advantage that has yet to be realized?
All I have to say is THANK GOD. I'm sick of the whole state's monetary resources being poured into Seattle.
My monorail taxes, for two cars of which neither cost more than $20,000, are close to $800 a year. That's over $2.00 A DAY in tax and it's pissed me off that I've had to pay such an extreme amount to provide a cheap service for a very narrow segment of people that require transportation around the Seattle area.
Then consider if I did use it but still needed 2 cars for job+family travel (not unusual) and I'd be paying at least double someone who rides but doesn't own any cars.
The reality is that the landscape of Seattle (hills, bays, lakes) and the adapted sprawl has created a scenario where many people require custom transportation routes, and until a Puget-Sound wide solution comes up that doesn't double my commute time, I'm going to remain pessimistic and voting against these doomed budget sinkholes.
Just to give an idea of how screwed up light rail can be and still happen:
- Light rail is planned to run from Tukwila (a few miles short of the
major airport) to Downtown Seattle. Tukwila is not exactly a major destination
in the area: It is probably best known for its many truck stops although
I am sure it has its charms. There is a major mall near there but the rails
stop before that too.
- Many years ago, some major streets in downtown Seattle were torn up to build a combination Bus and Light Rail tunnel. It was a mess but eventually, the bus tunnel has
proven a good thing in my opinion. Unfortuneatly they put in unusuable rails
so, as of yesterday, the tunnel is being torn up to put in usueable rails.
This is scheduled to take TWO YEARS.
- The only section of light rail I know of in use is in Tacoma. It took about as
long to build and use as a Seattle City Council Meeting on what brand of
coffee to serve in City Hall (OK, that is an exageration. It probably took a lot
less time than that [sic]).
Tacoma is not exactly my idea of a beacon of light (e.g. A
Police Chief shot his wife in front of his kids, a sheriff was once convicted
of being involved in firebombing one of my neighbors) but they do manage to do things.
The monorail has many problems, but, if nothing else, they haven't had time to screw up as bad (in my opinion).Did I mention the monorail was voted yes on FOUR times? Our stadiums were both voted down but somehow got built. This is one weird place.
Aeromóvel is a similar idea (eco-friendly elevated trains) that has been invented during the 80's in Brazil. There is a test track in Porto Alegre and a comercial implementation in an ecological park in Jakarta, Indonesia.
The main point in Aeromovel is rational use of vertical space: Digging the ground (subways) is too expensive for Brazilian reality and building trains along the streets creates "walls" in city's mobility. The Aeromovel then could be built over bus corridors (already existing in most of Porto Alegre's main avenues), thus avoiding competing with buses.
So now instead of a Mono-rail system you can get rid of the fares on the buses that will only last while gas prices are low and when gas is gone (20 years) so are the buses but the mono-rail would still be able to function that is if the area has sources of power other then coal (i.e. wind solar and nuclear). Well that is what I call planning. Exponetial growth in this capitalist system is based off the idea that we have unlimited resources.
You act like your idea is revolutionary, but it's the prevailing theory on /. any time USA vs. Europe/Asia comes up about anything.
I have a completely different theory... Cities were so overwhelmingly designed for cars, that there's no other way to get around. Roads have no bike lanes, few cross-walks, dangerously high speed-limits even in dense urban/residential areas, etc. I've been thinking about getting out of my car, lately, but I can't come up with any routes that don't force me to ride for miles down a busy street with a curb, where traffic is going 45MPH or more, and usually lacks street lights to add insult to injury (literally!).
"No room for a sidewalk, we need to squeeze another lane in there to relieve congestion!"
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
You'd think a monorail is a simple thing to build, until you live near one for awhile and realize that it's a massive undertaking. Building in the air is complicated by all the structures that are already up there.
Light rail is being paid for radically differently. The cost to build the monorail (exclusive of financing) isn't all that bad: IF you had the same financing THEN it would look better. Of course, we live in a world where light rail is getting breaks the monorail can only dream of....and highways get financing rail can only dream of. That monorail junk bond plan really was the pits though, yes.
Unless the airport you are going to is Boeing Field (which currently has exactly 0 major airlines) then, good luck carrying your bags from the (currently planned) light rail terminus to SeaTac airport. Personally I wouldn't want to carry my bags that many miles but then many people are in better shape than I.
BTW: My car tabs, just for the monorail, cost 20x more than the year before. I STILL want to see the darn thing get built.
Finally, I want to see light rail do OK. I am just bitter about not having both...or rather EITHER! Area light rail is extremely late, are we up to a decade late yet?
One overlooked problem with the private car is that you go on owning it while you're not using it. It consumes space and security while you're working, sleeping, or away on vacation. Consequently it's not being used to best efficiency.
And although the point-to-point argument is hard to beat, it's only valid for a specific range of distances. For me personally, that's 10-200 km. Less than that, and I'll walk or cycle. More than that, I'll take the train or fly. When I arrive at my destination it might be handy to have a car again - that's what rental cars are for. But while I'm away, why should I pay for parking my redundant 'home car'? Here in the UK at least, airports and inter-city rail stations are well served by public transport - and expensive car parks. The cost of parking at airports or rail stations makes it worthwhile to take a little extra trouble in order not to leave my car at the interchange.
Luckily I live within cycling distance of several major rail stations and one airport (London City). Well, not luckily really, I choose to live in central London, and public transport is one of the reasons I made that choice.
Tabs were 8x higher, not 20.
Campbell Scott still gets the girl (Kyra Sedgwick), and Kevin Bacon ...
Oh, wait. Kevin Bacon wasn't even in this movie. Damn.
http://imdb.com/title/tt0105415/
WARNING: Smartphones have side effects--most of them undocumented.
Um...yeah....notice how i said "Manhattan" and not "NYC"? Brooklyn, Queens, and New Jersey are :::not::: part of manhattan. Manhattan is the older world style city, where most of the rest of it was designed with autos in mind. I suspect you've missed the point completely.
-Chris
--an unbreakable toy is useful for breaking other toys--
The San Diego Trolley rocks and people actually ride it.
Fellowship 9/11
The light rail/monorail/bus system/etc arguments -- for individual communities -- go on forever, and I'm certainly not sure what the answers are for any given community. Likely this is a decision for those communities to make...
I lived and worked in the Zurich area of Switzerland for almost two years: a city which is rightly credited with having the best public transit system in the world, and I can certainly attest to it. My actual place of employment was changed from one town to another (well, more like suburbs, really) during this time, but it made no difference.
Here's the routine: I got up in the morning, prepared myself, and then walked outside to the tram (electric) stop right outside my apartment. Electric trams run on all routes about every 4 minutes during rush hours, and at least every 15 minutes at all other times, and were specifically designed so that any user could reach any area in the city by walking no more than the equivalent of about 4 blocks. Took the tram two stops to a subsidiary rail station, where I could catch a train to the main Zurich Hauptbahnhof train station: trains every 5 minutes -- just enough to buy a coffee and a newspaper if you wanted. Three minute train ride to main station, then no more than a 5-minute wait for a local train to my work location (let me off no longer than a three-minute walk). If you miss one connection, another is along in between five and ten minutes. In addition, anyone (foreigners included) can buy a 'Half-Price' card at any major rail station, entitling the holder to half-price fares for ALL rail and associated public transit systems in the entire country -- including the municipal tram and bus systems of all major cities. So, despite working more than 20 miles away from where I lived, I had a no-hassle, enjoyable, clean, safe and restful trip every day. I actually looked forward to the commute, it was such a pleasure. And although my 'terms of employment' entitled me to a car provided by my employer, there wasn't any point -- owning a car in a city and country of such wonderful 'public transportation' was actually a downside, whose difficulties far outweighed the benefits.
The downside of the electric tram system (aside from the fact that you can't very well turn back time and install one in the middle of streets not designed for it) is that you have to again get used to the overhead electrical wires that many have come to dislike for esthetic reasons.
I've consulted on rail transit & freight rail noise issues in 26 states, one U.S. territory, and 2 countries. My analyses have withstood scrutiny by college professors (including one nobel prize winner), other consultants, and many lawsuits. I've contributed to national rail noise standards and I've trained state officials in transit noise control on behalf of FTA. I've presented info on noise & vibration analysis at national conferences, and I have two transit noise-related papers that will be published in refereed acoustics journals over the next year.
In short, I know a lot about "how loud steel wheels on steel rails are."
For the 3rd time, the Chicago El is not light rail - the trains are longer, heavier, faster, and more frequent, all of which make them louder than typical light rail systems. I'm also willing to bet that the age and maintenance on the El is a significant contributer to its perceived loudness.
Since you live in Seattle, take a drive down to Portland and have a listen to the Portland Max LRT system. Hopefully you'll see what I'm talking about.
just disneyland alone has 2.5 miles that has ran since 1959. We are talking a train that runs every couple of minutes day in and day out. How many total miles has been traveled? a lot more than say Denver or Seattle or Houston. Yet, they have numerous accidents. Why? not due to distance, but due to mixing with traffic as well as sitting ON the rail. Most monorails (including all of disney's wrap the rail. It would literally have to have the rail dropped or hit a bomb to be derailed. EACH Disneyworld trains travel nearly 70K MILES each year. That means that each of these trains travel more than all of the denver RTD combined (up till the new extension, then it will take several of these trains to beat denver's total). And these are just 2 of disney's lines. It does not take into acocunt the lines that are opened in other countries which run far more miles.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Get the scientists working on the tube technology
Slashdot - where whining about luck is the new way to make the world you want.
First of all, did you remember to include the cost to the environment? Everything I've heard indicates that public transportation is a better choice environmentally, but I'm no expert... perhaps someone who is would care to comment?
Actually, government transportation is a net loss environmentally. Claims of environmental superiority for government transportation assume that it is always being used at capacity. In reality, the average government transportation vehicle uses less than half its capacity over its lifespan, and thus spends more than half its time burning fuel and polluting the air while driving its routes with most of its seats empty.
In addition, government transportation vehicles usually use diesel engines, which are more polluting in their mass-produced versions. Yes, I know that if you hand-tune a diesel for efficiency and emissions control, and use vegetable oil instead of petroleum for fuel, it can run cleaner than a gasoline engine, but how many government transportation vehicles have you seen that do that?
Even those vehicles which use electric power are responsible for the pollution produced by the power plants needed to provide their electricity - and since nuclear power has been effectively banned in the US for nearly 30 years, that means burning coal as the primary power source, with oil and natural gas as supplementary sources. Have you ever seen how dirty even a "clean" coal-burning power plant is?
Compare that to private vehicles, which have fuel economy and pollution controls mandated by government. They may not be the best economy and pollution control systems (anything government-specified never is), but they exist regardless. Private vehicles definitely come out ahead in fuel economy, clean air, and efficiency.
Gun control: The belief that a woman, raped and strangled with her panties, is morally superior to a dead rapist.
Light rail is being paid for radically differently. The cost to build the monorail (exclusive of financing) isn't all that bad: IF you had the same financing THEN it would look better. Of course, we live in a world where light rail is getting breaks the monorail can only dream of....and highways get financing rail can only dream of. That monorail junk bond plan really was the pits though, yes.
I said this in a previous post, but I think the monorail's inability to get favorable financing is due more to fiscal mismanagement than anything else. Seattle Monorail Project is getting much less revenue than anticipated, and it's not really enough to build the line they wanted to build. When something similar happened to Sound Transit, they stopped, figured out what they COULD do with the money they were getting, and did it. But that's not SMP's style. They'd rather stick their heads in the sand, blazing forth while pretending nothing is wrong. THAT is why they couldn't get good credit (IMHO).
I don't want to sound like a Sound Transit cheerleader -- they've had big problems of their own, and haven't come close to delivering on their original promises. But SMP makes ST look like geniuses of government management.
Unless the airport you are going to is Boeing Field (which currently has exactly 0 major airlines) then, good luck carrying your bags from the (currently planned) light rail terminus to SeaTac airport. Personally I wouldn't want to carry my bags that many miles but then many people are in better shape than I.
The currently planned light rail terminus is at SeaTac airport. The airport segment will open ~6 months after the rest of the line. (Or so Sound Transit says.)
BTW: My car tabs, just for the monorail, cost 20x more than the year before. I STILL want to see the darn thing get built.
Me too, don't get me wrong. What I really want is to see SMP disbanded and the project given to one of our other transit agencies. (Really people, did we need ANOTHER transit authority?) Metro and ST aren't perfect, but with either of them at least there'd be a good probability of the monorail actually getting built.
We can't let the sugar producers get wiped out.
Then they'll be a shortage of sugar.
And then less diabetes, which will hurt the doctors and if the doctors can't make enough to feed themselves and then we have no doctors and the next polio or West Nile or something will wipe us out.
Yes, I'm being sarcastic.
P.S. Actually it really would be bad if sugar got wiped out - then we'd have even more high fructose corn syrup in our food.
Just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it should!
I live in Sydney, close to the city's monorail. By coincidence, it runs right over our light rail system near my home.
The monorail is much noisier than the light rail. The monorail carries far fewer people than the light rail. The monorail costs more than the light rail. If the monorail fails for some reason, the only way out is to climb out the end of the car (assuming there isn't, say, a fire in the way), and walk along a narrow, elevated track, possibly in darkness, and possibly in the rain. On the other hand, if the light rail fails, all you have to do is get out through one of the many doors.
Only tourists use the Sydney monorail. As a form of public transport, it's fairly useless.
Why are the mayor and the City Council going to deny permits to use city streets??
If it was uneconomical, that alone would kill it.
Why make it illegal for it to run? - that would be unnecessary.
Denying permits is a vicious way for the city to kill a project it has no business killing.
If the money is there, the city should let it use the streets. If there is no money, no need to deny permits, it won't exist anyway.
The city ain't paying, they shouldn't have the right to say no.
It appears the city wanted to kill it itself, why I don't know.
Car lobby, oil companies, NIMBY neighbors perhaps.
Just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it should!
Is Slashdot stuck in some kind of timewarp? They keep posting stories about space elevators, monorails, and zeppelins. Don't they have a dupechecker? At least none of them are old enough to remember the L5 Society. Their bumper sticker mantra was "L5 in 95" (1995 that is). They were a bunch of Libertarians who believed in minimal government but they wanted a huge government project so they could all go live in space. Do they approve stories on a quota basis? The post the first ten stories regardless of it's substance.
When gasoline reaches $5 per gallon in the US then their will be some serious discussion about alternative forms of transport. Buy a good pair of walking shoes and wear sunscreen.
"You'll get nothing, and you'll like it!"
BLADDAMMM!!! ... What happened?? ... Well, it seems that City Council has axed the monorail project! ... Well dammit! Next time tell them not to do that over my back yard!
The Hacker's Guide To The Kernel: Don't panic()!
I'd be happy to explain how subsidies ensure cheap food to the majority of American consumers. 95% of all tax revenue is payed by the top 50% of all incomes, so subsidies are generally paid by the rich. Subsidies encourage farmers to plant MORE, because they are paid for each acre planted (ironically necessitating the program by which farmers are actually payed to let land fallow).
Farms therefore have incentive to overproduce, as evidenced by commodity prices (especially grains like corn, wheat, and soybeans) frequently selling below cost. Farmers narrow their losses, or even gain a profit, by producing more efficiently. So the motivation to be efficient is intact. Large farms get more subsidy and leverage economies of scale that allow them to produce more effieiently, thus the trend towards farm consolidation.
Because food prices are driven low by overproduction through subsidy, food is economically available to more people. The wealthy are gonna be able to afford food anyway. The "wealth redistribution" to which you refer is not so much from the government to the farmer as it is from the wealthy to the poor.
UI
Diagnosis: you are paranoid. As luck would have it, you're also being followed.
Quieter -- nope, I've seen several two "rail" systems that use rubber wheels and whatnot, like the Paris metro. Nearly silent.
Aesthetically pleasing -- They don't look that much nicer than the BART system in SF Bay area, and they don't look as nice to the surface dwellers as an underground system, though those are admittedly more expensive.
Safer -- nope, they can't derail when on a single track but actually are more likely to derail at switch points since monorail switches have to leave a bit of track hanging into empty air. Plus they are much harder to evacuate if something goes wrong.
Less expensive -- I know that the Las Vegas monorail track was incredibly expensive to produce as it consists of concrete forms in very precise curves and angles. It was hard to make, damages easily, and requires substantial maintenance.
I'm no monorail expert, but they seem to be finnicky things with little to recommend them. As an area of research, perhaps, but with all the great success of well designed rail system using other technologies, I don't see why they keep messing around with monorails on the large scale.
Cheers.
Will the last person leaving Seattle turn out the lights.
Boeing layoffs accounted for the slump in Seattle during the 70s.
And the summer construction is the reason behind I5 being reduced to 2 lanes. That is mostly over until next year. http://www.wsdot.wa.gov/construction/
That or admit you are on crack.
You realize there is no animal control (besides the shotgun) in rural areas?
Sewer and water are'nt government issues for rural people. Imagine this: You pay for your own septic system and well.
The sheriff is the only police you'll find and the fire department is typically volunteer.
Bottom line. You picked very poor examples. The only one that makes any sense is the roads issue.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
All of the arguments against the monorail line apply in spades to the cable cars in SF. (Note that SF is probably understood by 99% of /. readers ans accompanied by a mental image of said cable cars.) Interstingly, The City finds them to be an asset. The same aplies to Seattle. Yes, I am familiar with all of the battles over the cable cars, but that's over. Seattle has an image from the 1963 fair that includes the Space Needle and the monorail. If they ditch the monorail, they should scrap the Needle. Then they woudl be just like Tacoma.
Some mornings it's hardly worth chewing through the restraints to get out of bed.
First you said:
"...It was originally supposed to cost under 2 billion, but people didnt like the tax and decided to register their cars outside of KingCounty. This caused a severe drop in revene..."
And then
"King County citizens voted in favor for the monorail 5 times! And yet, its never gonna be built. Its beyond surreal."
It's not surreal. It normal. No one wants to pay for it but they continue to vote for it. The citizens want a free lunch, or in this case, a free ride. It's the NIMBY effect (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nimby) just applied to taxes.
Typical car: 25 mpg = 10.5 km/liter. This would translate into 2.8 MJ/km (Assuming 30 MJ/liter).
Typical electrical train for 500 passengers: 2.5 MW peak power during accelleration, 250 kW to keep it rolling at 140 km/h on flat terrain. Let's say 500 kW averaged and 100 km/h if there aren't too many stops. This translates into 36 kJ/km per passenger. If we calculate 50% occupancy and 40% efficiency of the power plant, it is still only 180 kJ/km/passenger, or 15 times more economic than a car. For this factor 15, the emission limits per unit of burnt fuel can be a bit higher, don't you think so?
Avantslash: low-bandwidth mobile slashdot.
"1. Will the cost of the new taxes really be higher than the cost of the gasoline?"
When I hear discussions of the cost-to-taxpayers for public transportation, I almost never hear the cost of tax-subsidies for personal cars. Roads are EXPENSIVE to build, and expensive to maintain. (And expensive to police, and expensive to provide medical infrastructure for all the accidents, and use LOTS of land.)
Exam 4/C again. Maybe I'll do better this time.
If people would learn from experience your optimism would be justified.
Exam 4/C again. Maybe I'll do better this time.
I would, but since my dollars are worthless, I have nothing to buy gold with.
If I could find someone that would give me gold for some of my dollars, then I would know that my dollars weren't worthless anymore, and would have no need to buy gold.
It's a vicious cycle, but someone has to spin it.
Exam 4/C again. Maybe I'll do better this time.
all still cracked and broken?
New York transit isn't great. It's comprehensive, and that's important. It makes it a useful system in a way that very few US transit systems are. But mere utility isn't the same as being good; we set our sites very low. But because we've gotten used to that, people think New York has great transit, because even having a choice not to have a car seems incredible.
No mass transit system is as fast as a car -- total door-to-door travel time -- unless the traffic is attrocious. Well, commuter rail might be an exception, because it's one of the most efficient forms of mass transit, but it's only so efficient because it's not at all comprehensive -- both the times it runs, and its destinations. Even faster, more modern trains are only nominally faster than cars, and the better and faster the system, the smaller the number of its destinations, causing a fractured travel experience of ever slower modes. And the fractured experience isn't just slow, it is distracting and alienating. You can bring 10 kids on one train or a bus, but you can't transfer (unless you don't mind losing a kid or two). You can carry your groceries home if you can do it on one bus, but that's about it. And that's not even taking into account the cost, which can often be quite extravagant -- it costs $10 in Chicago for a family of four to take the train or bus round trip.
Traditional mass transit is a nice option, but it only really succedes when cars fail; because they are too expensive, or traffic is too horrible, parking is not available, or you just are unable to drive. Any system that feeds off the disfunction of another -- that cannot stand on its own feet and compete favorably to a functioning competitor -- is a sad system. And that's what we have with traditional mass transit.
With that in mind, I'm not sure that Monorail is a good system. But I know LRT isn't, and Subways aren't, and buses aren't. I don't know that Monorail is significantly different from those, but at least it's an attempt instead of choosing a system proven to be a failure. (OK, they are choosing one of those too...)
Personally I have hope for PRT, which is less proven still, but at least attempts to solve the real problems that public transit faces, with a model that is closer to something that works (cars) while still having many of the benefits we look for in public transit.
Now, if Seattle were to follow the lead of these guys, they might be able to leapfrog cities like New York, without asking for an unrealistic change of geography or demographics.