Monorail Madness

SEATTLE, October 8, 2004. Visions of a slick, elevated train gliding over streets choked with traffic wooed a  razor-thin majority of city voters to pass the Seattle Monorail initiative two years ago. Now the $1.6 billion project is on a collision course with another ballot measure that would kill it -- the latest snag in the city’s dreams of getting wheels off roads and people into anything that moves on rails.

”It's just a pet project being rammed down our throats by a  few interested people,'' said Liv Finne, co-chairwoman of the Monorail Recall campaign, an effort bankrolled largely by a commercial property developer who owns buildings along the proposed route. Critics of the plan to build 14 miles of elevated track through the heart of Seattle balk at the accompanying tax hike and say the project is better suited to an amusement park than a city trying to ease gridlock. The measure on the November ballot would ban the monorail from being built on city streets.

But supporters of the project say it will be a pollution-free alternative that allows people to bypass stoplights and traffic jams. “It's the idea of having in essence an elevated  subway, something that lets you see and get the view and the excitement of  travel ... without getting stuck in traffic,'' said Peter Sherwin,  co-chairman of the campaign to defeat the November ballot  measure.

Seattle already has a monorail, which has glided a single mile over city streets since the 1962 World's Fair. That line runs between the Space Needle and downtown and is more tourist attraction than mass transit. As population boomed in the 1990s, voters in the region approved Sound Transit, which promised a network of express buses, heavy-rail commuter trains and light-rail transit aimed at easing some of the worst traffic choke-points. But financial problems forced the agency to scale back the light-rail line, galvanizing critics who said taxpayers weren't getting what they were promised. The agency hopes to have the line running by 2009.

In 2002, voters in Seattle approved the monorail expansion. The line will course through some of the city's most liberal, transit-happy neighborhoods, a different set of areas than the choke-points targeted by Sound Transit. Anne Levinson, the Seattle Monorail Project's deputy director, concedes the region has a host of transportation needs -- perhaps more pressing than building a monorail above streets that usually are less jammed than the highways outside the city. “But there's no sense waiting for other problems to be solved first,” she said. “We could sit around and wait for decades and say something else is higher priority, and nothing would get done,'' Levinson said.

Although some transit advocates worry there are only so many train systems voters will agree to pay for, the monorail and light-rail movements have evolved toward each other. “Sound Transit is a regional system. The monorail is a local system. ... Our riders will use a monorail system. And their riders will ride Sound Transit,'' said Lee Somerstein, a Sound Transit spokesman. Like Sound Transit, the Seattle Monorail Project has run into financial troubles. The first chunk of revenue from a 1.4 percent tax on vehicles registered in the city came up short, forcing scale-backs that included limiting some parts of the line to a single track. “They have been shrinking this system markedly,'' Finne said. “There will be choke points.'' Monorail officials insist having a single track on the outer two miles of each end of the line won't slow the trains. (Yeah, right!) Instead, the trains will be able to pull off onto side tracks, allowing the trains to pass each other, officials said.

In November, voters will decide on a monorail measure that already has been the subject of legal wrangling. Last month, a state appeals court panel overturned a ruling that the monorail is an “essential public facility'' already approved by voters and thus not subject to recall campaigns. The state Supreme Court refused to hear the case, saying there wasn't time to review the matter thoroughly before the election. “It's frustrating from a legal standpoint -- frustrating and confusing to voters, because it's something that's  been ruled illegal by one court so far, but it's going on the ballot,''  said Natasha Jones, a spokeswoman for the Seattle Monorail  Project.

Comment: The Chicago area Regional Transit Authority considered a “Personal Rapid Transit” (PRT) monorail system for the Woodfield area of Schaumburg and for Rosemont. The PRT’s were going to be 4-man “pods;” you get in, push some buttons and are whisked off to your destination. Fortunately for the tax payers, we’ve since heard nothing more of this foolishness.

Posted: 10/10/04