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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."
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.
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.
Um, Seattle is pretty much carrying the rest of the state in terms of tax burden to services provided. In much of the US, it's the town that carries the rural, not the other way around.
Not that the monorail was a good idea.
I wouldn't subscribe to the idea that the oil companies sabotaged the Seattle monorail. That's tin-foil-hat land.
However, historically it was the Detroit auto industry which did sabotage many light-rail and metro systems throughout the US, in cities which were growing in the early 20th century, such as Atlanta and Los Angeles. How did they do it?
By donating buses whenever a municipality began planning rail, and thus encouraging those cities to pave more roads (and create a market for cars.)
Evil? Not per se. Blindly self-interested with bad long-term consequences, such as sprawl? I think so.
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!
No it's not. Its very uncommon for a city to be a profit to a state. Once a town gets so big (becoming a city) and starts needing things like freeways, on/off ramps, mass transit and so forth, it becomes a money pit to the state. Rural areas are dirt cheap to keep going. Thus why they pay more to the state then they ever get back.
Cities just aren't cost effective.
This is a big problem in california where there is so many huge cities (60 over 100,000 people) and not a much rural population.
Far as this, well a mono-rail screams money pit. But thats not to say mass transit is bad. If a mass transit system is done right it will be a boon to the area. Since construction of freeways and other roadways can be scaled back. Even when running in debt, a proper mass transit system is much cheaper then continually building more freeways, high way, and repairing them, expanding them.
Unfortunently most good forms of mass transit (trains, subways, trolleys, pedestrian/biker only pathways) get way under funded and under designed so they don't cover enough area to be worthwhile. I always love how city boards cut such projects back so hard, so then the rail system becomes a 3 mile stretch to no where, and then people attack mass transit for being a waste.
"Um, Seattle is pretty much carrying the rest of the state in terms of tax burden to services provided. In much of the US, it's the town that carries the rural, not the other way around."
This is a fiction that a lot of Seattlelites like to believe. If you actually look at the distribution of tax intake around Washington state, you'll find it's the suburbs that are bearing the brunt of the tax burden. While our state's businesses like to complain about needing tax relief, their tax load is quite light when compared to that of the state's individual taxpayers.
I for one am glad to see the monorail die. We don't need a bunch of half-*ssed transit systems - we need one overarching system that actually meets the Puget Sound region's needs (note: not just Seattle's).
#DeleteChrome