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

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.

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