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."

Comments

It's actually a little more complicated than that

[neile]

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.

Re:Not suprising

[tigersaw]

Actually, there is in fact great interest for building rail transit in Seattle, the Monorail was just doomed from the start by poor management and poor planning. However, the Sound Transit Light Rail is chugging along just fine, and with any luck will complete its own line and supercede that which the monorail would have occupied in the near(ish) future.

Re:Monorail fixation

[Martin Blank]

They're supposed to be:

• Quieter -- They use non-metallic wheels, often on a non-metallic surface, though I don't know if this applies to high-speed monorails.
  
• Aesthetically pleasing -- Since they are usually on raised structures, they use less surface space, don't interfere as much with foot or vehicle traffic, and the rails and their supports can be made to look nice.
  
• Safer -- They're relatively hard to derail, and since the rails don't usually run at ground level, there are fewer things to hit.
  
• Less expensive in the long run -- Not sure how this works out, since I've not seen the economics of monorails.

I can see the point of the proponents, but US transportation management does not have a good record of building expensive things now and having them operate less expensively later.

Christ on a stick!

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm in Seattle. We voted *yes* on this baby FOUR TIMES.

We also voted no on a new stadium, twice. ..we got the stadium, but not the monorail.

Re:Monorail...

[canadian_right]

You are wrong. Urban areas subsidize rual areas.

Cities, due to their density have much lower tranportation costs. It is much cheaper, per person, to get water and gas services to a single apartment building than 100 rural farms, or even 100 suburban homes. Virtually anything done in a city is cheaper per person than it is in rural areas.

Urban taxes pay for the network of roads and highways that make suburbs possible. Urban taxes pay the farm subsidizes. Urban taxes pay for public transit outside of cities. Urban taxes pay for rural schools and hospitals.

http://www.ewg.org/reports/gastaxlosers/analysis.p hp
http://www.ers.usda.gov/Briefing/Infrastructure/ov erview.htm
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/artic le/2005/07/05/AR2005070500594.html
http://www.techliberation.com/archives/015244.php
http://www.blueoregon.com/2005/03/joined_at_the_h. html

Re:Monorail fixation

[Orion_]

[most of long anti-light rail diatribe deleted]

I seem to recall that building monorail is 1/10 the cost per mile. ... I think the overall budget for the 14 mile light rail project is something like $2.4 Billion. The city officials love it.... You couldn't kill the light rail project any more than you could kill the "big dig" in Boston... It's all about pork.... That's exactly why I like the monorail and hate the light rail. Light rail is going to be 10 times more expensive and doesn't even span a major traffic route! Nothing's getting solved here in Seattle by building it and nobody's going to use it.

Monorail: $11.4 billion / 14 miles (SMP's June financing plan, see this Seattle P-I article)
Light rail: $2.4 billion / 14 miles (your figures, corroborated by Sound Transit)

So ... how, exactly, is light rail 10 times more expensive per mile?

And how does the light rail line, which runs along I-5, not "span a major traffic route"? Do you really think that nobody in Rainier Valley or Tukwila needs to commute to downtown Seattle, or that nobody needs to get to or from the airports?

And those four times we voted for the monorail? That was before anybody knew that the monorail officials were planning on paying for the line by selling 50-year junk bonds.

The 'El' is not light rail!

[Reverberant]

All I can say is you know nothing about how loud steel wheels on steel rails are.

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.