I rode the light rail the weekend it opened and LOVED it. Had the monorail been built, then we Ballard folks could zip downtown on the Monorail and make a quick transfer to the Light Rail and go south. Also, it’s a huge pain taking the bus to the Sounders games, as the buses are snarled in traffic. I know I sound like sour grapes…but I’m still bitter about the Monorail being killed.

And lets be honest about the financing…the political powers that be made sure the financing would never work out. First, the state wouldn’t close the loophole that allowed 1/3 of Seattle drivers to register their cars outside the taxing district. Had Nichols and Sims (both of whom I’m otherwise big fans of) used their influence with Olympia to get this loophole closed, the SMB wouldn’t have had to shortened the line, or reduced the West Seattle crossing to a single track with switches. Mayor Nichols only had to bide his time before canceling the permit, and having the vote to kill the monorail. It’s the light rail in reverse. Light rail would have been killed years ago if it wasn’t for Mayor Nichols and Ron Sims unfailing support. If they had done the same for Monorail, which had the broad support of the public, it would have been a great compliment to our regional mass transit system.

I would LOVE to have the light rail come to Ballard. It’s just a shame that we’ll have to wait 25 years for mass transit to come to Ballard, that should have come here already. And whether or not it made money is of no difference to me. Public transportation isn’t about making a profit – it’s about facilitating the mass movement of people throughout the city, which benefits everybody, both economically and with a better quality of life.

I’ve never been a Light Rail vs Monorail guy. I think they’re both great technologies, and I would have voted for the green line just as enthusiastically if it had been light rail. But dammit, it seems to me that it was killed out of pure political spite, and it was just as viable a technology as light rail.

John

Don’t say “automatic interlocking will de-energize the power rails. Sometime something will go wrong and an in-service train will fly into the gap and plummet to the ground. The Disney monorails are all loops for this very reason. They only have switches at the maintenance facility and when a train passes through one of the three switches giving access to the maintenance facility via various routes, the operator has to manually override a mandatory stop command issued by the computer to the train. They can only go 5 miles an hour in override mode.

Such a restriction is necessary because of the possibility of entering the gap, but it would destroy headways.

No rail to West Seattle, of any technology; give it up. It’s not dense enough now, and it’s far too nice a place to densify sufficiently. The express buses that use SR99 are completely sufficient. RapidRide is going to improve that nicely.

Also, your auto commute is going to be improved by the replacement of the Spokane Street structure. Yes, it will be temporarily painful, but it will make a big difference.

P.S. Unless you want to Californicate Seattle, it’s not “the I-5″….. Just “I-5″ will do nicely, thank you. Up here in the laid back Northwest we don’t objectify our roads.

I supported a good monorail selection: Hitachi of course, but they may soon have competition with Scomi’s SUTRA.
I supported the original route: DT path could’ve improved, though.
I did not support: Epic-fail financial plan.
I did not support: All the flaming “this” vs “this” blah blah.

Although, I think we should note that alot of the supporters of the project were very passionate. Maybe if we elected better leadership from the start…

Many cities with light rail put it entirely on the surface with stations too close together, and they won’t hear of anything with more up-front costs. Portland, Sacramento, San Jose, Los Angeles, San Diego, Dallas, and Denver all come to mind. (Although some of these do have grade separation on portions of the line.) Luckily for us, Sound Transit was forward-sighted enough to make Link mostly grade-separated with stations 1+ miles apart. But their mistakes in the Rainier Valley and SODO are going to dog the system until they elevate or tunnel those sections someday. These mistakes would have never happened with monorail.

One problem with the monorail financing was that they weren’t going to honor transfers or passes from the rest of the system. Not many people would be willing to pay two full fares for one trip; even monorail supporters would end up taking a bus a lot of the time because of this.

4&5: Vegas and Seattle are both entirely inside a downtown core. I have no argument that Seattle’s monorail *did* cover its own O&M, but it does no longer. You can’t pick and choose the timeframe you want to address. Vegas no longer covers its own operating costs… ridership has been dropping.

6: just on your operating subsidy numbers, different routes get different amounts of money. Some routes in downtown actually cover their own operating costs.

7: example: http://higherfrequency.blogspot.com/2005/10/quick-note-about-monorail.html

9: Hitachi systems in Japan with single track segments run with no lower than ten minute headways.

The bottom line here is that the SMP is responsible for the lack of public confidence in transit, not anything nameless ‘officials’ did.

Re #3, you won’t get any complaints from me. Most supporters thought it was a stupid idea. And when one bidder asked if the requirement could be changed or they might not be able to bid, the City refused to back down, and they walked away leaving us with one bidder. That’s one stupid mistake that can’t be blamed on the agency.

Re #4 & 5, The Seattle Center monorail is normally able to make a profit and help subsidize the Seattle Center. You can’t complain that it didn’t make money while the system was shut down. And the Las Vegas Monorail covers ALL of its O&M costs from the farebox. The reason it is considered an economic “failure” is because it was supposed to make enough profit to cover the construction as well. Even we here in Seattle didn’t try to attempt that one.

Re #6, I don’t recall any mention of Light Rail’s subsidy for comparison. I don’t even know what ST is claiming will be the subsidy there. I do know that last time I checked, Metro subsidizes all buses within Seattle at 28%, but that number goes up to 40% system-wide.

Re #7, the agency did not bash light rail, and the supporter groups never did while I was a part of them. We maintained the line that both would benefit each other by completing the “X” through the City that has been proposed off and on by transit planners for 40+ years. I’m still waiting…

Re #9, Hitachi runs systems in Japan that have no travel time impact from switches.

Overall, Ben, I’m simply trying to point out some things about the technology in general and not our specific project here. There is plenty of blame to go all around.

However, the bottom line is that this Project was supported by voters multiple times and yet political leaders publicly let it die (and then quietly lamented its demise to me) because it was to their advantage to do so.

The result is a loss of faith in our local government, a smack in the face of grassroots organizing, and 1/5 of the City’s population left with no rapid transit for decades except some pretty new buses, and two of the fastest growing neighborhoods facing a traffic nightmare when the Viaduct closes in a few years.

1) Cities with good transit systems feature a number of modes. Look at San Fran with buses, streetcars, subways, and heavy rail.

2) The monorail was not an attempt to replace light rail. The argument made was that light rail, and its agency, are serving our region and connecting city to city. Monorail was proposed as a Seattle system, connecting neighborhoods with Downtown and each other. The two were supposed to work together, and the current light rail line being worked on is hobbled on travel time due to its need to make local stops in SE Seattle, and on its headways due to running at grade through that part of the City.

*) And, once again, anyone can build trains to ride on a single beam, just like anyone can build trains to ride on two rails.

2) Proprietary equipment is still more expensive, even if yes, Disney can find two manufacturers (mostly because Alweg is long gone, I think).

3) Perhaps that was a bad idea?

4) The monorail leadership made a huge mistake saying that it could pay for itself at all – and it’s not just something that was early on, it continued well after the second public vote.

5) I’m not aware of a single profitable monorail. Seattle’s monorail is not profitable anymore – poor design caused a fire and a crash that the owners aren’t paying for! Vegas certainly isn’t profitable.

6) Nobody was suggesting a 10-15% operating subsidy. Elevated was suggesting about the same operating subsidy as Link light rail…

7) The light rail bashing started at the top. Arguments otherwise are ridiculous, and easily debunked. Check out my old history of the monorail project at Higher Frequency (higherfrequency.blogspot.com), where I link to many articles about the monorail that should prove that point.

8) The Hitachi system was limited to 7%, in the bid documents. Our light rail has been built with a maximum grade of 7%. “Monorails” aren’t the bid we got, we got a bid from Hitachi.

9) The Hitachi switches took 60 seconds. As with your comment on the grades, I don’t care what other people have done, because we weren’t doing that.

10) The Mayor wasn’t in charge of PR for the monorail. If the monorail agency wanted to point out that the $11B was worst case, they could have used some of that advertising money to do so. They didn’t.

If the monorail went through all these issues and the light rail did too, why did we have to pass a light rail plan once, but SMP/Elevated had to put forth plans THREE TIMES? I think the reason is simple: Sound Transit’s ballot measures were flexible enough to handle adversity, like putting the MLK section at-grade. SMP was so wedded to the idea of monorail alone that they couldn’t do it.

You can’t even accept responsibility for their failure, you’re simply blaming other people. It’s sad.

Apart from the problems inherent in monorail systems (huge swtiches, small cars), the overriding point here, that should be repeated is: you’re going to save money by using only ONE modality. Two different modalities means keeping more parts in stock, having more mechanics on the payroll, etc.

And especially if one of the modalities involves proprietary technology, manufactured by only one company. What if that company goes out of business? Then you are left holding the bag. I know what you’re thinking: Hitatchi won’t go out of business! They have been around forever. Tell that to Bear-Stearns.

So, yes, it was an “either-or” proposition, and light rail was the right choice. Off-the-shelf technology, made by many manufacturers, which drives down prices. The rail portion is interchangeable with all railroad installations, including non-electric ones, which further drives down price.

And with the pot of federal money with construction of new projects limited, costs have to be kept in whatever manner possible.

Light rail can be elevated just about as easily as monorail. The stations are the same size, and the rail guideways are only somewhat larger. Supporting structures are about the same size also.

Don’t worry, Seattle, you did the right thing by kicking monorail to the curb.

1) We didn’t put our technology choice in the law just because we were a bunch of monorail freaks. There was already work done, some by the city’s transportation folks, to look at the best transportation modes for this corridor, and they pointed to elevated transit as the optimal solution. Limiting options after that point, simply allowed for more system design work to be accomplished.

2) While proprietary tech was a concern of some critics, it was pointed out that Disney’s monorails are built today by a different manufacturer, local talent in the Puget Sound region is capable of such work, and the City actually owns the specs to the existing Seattle Center monorail which could be opened up for anyone.

3) One of the stated reasons there were fewer bids is because the City required any bidder to also take out a bond that would guarantee 100% completion as well as funds for complete removal of the system if it failed.

4) I’s not entirely fair to take claims that it would “pay for itself” which came from the original visionary and put them together with those who said “it [could] be profitable” that actually developed the plan.

5) Why is it that two of the only transit lines to be profitable in this country (and there aren’t many at all) are the only two urban monorails?

6) And really poor PR aside, if we had been forced to operate with a 15% or 20% subsidy, would that have been so bad, when the average transit system in our country subsidizes 30, 40, 50+% of their Operations & Maintenance?

7) I’m not sure what to make of your third point. Some of those statements certainly weren’t made by anyone I worked or volunteered with. And I agree with the grassroots complaint. After the vote creating a formal agency, grassroots transparency clearly went out the window. All I can say is, it wasn’t that way when I was heavily involved, and I fought long and hard against it when that changed.

8) In fact, monorail is capable of higher grades than light rail. On the other hand, no route around here would be expected to have a grade that both technologies couldn’t manage.

9) I agree with you on the stupidity of the single tracking ideas. However, the comments you make are simply taken from the haters. In fact, a number of monorail systems around the world use switches. A simple visit in person or to some fan websites, would show pictures of quick-operating switches in action on working urban systems.

10) Finally, I will address the financing plan. The $11B plan which killed the agency in the media was never supposed to be the financing plan. OK? Please read that several times. The plan was never approved by the Board. It was designed as the worst case scenario; in other words, if costs ran high, interest rates didn’t work out, grants didn’t materialize, all sales taxes and utility relocation costs were required, etc. One of the reasons some monorail fans hate the Mayor so much is he is responsible for the existence of this plan in the first place, but never bothered to communicate that to the media or the public.

In the end, the problems the monorail agency went through really aren’t any different than those that affected Link Light Rail. The key differences are that local politicians fought for light rail, and the taxing district was bigger; so they simply paused and waited for more revenues to come in.

How do you suppose the SMP would have responded to the construction cost increases that nearly killed Central Link? Monorail can’t be made cheaper by running at-grade.

That said, I don’t really care to take the time. Most voters were obviously similarly confused.

It doesn’t matter now. Monorail was killed by the folks who wanted it killed. Some of us wasted 5-10 years of our lives on it, and we’re done mourning. It’s hardly the first time that a good idea has gone down the tubes due to politics and confusing citizens.

Maybe you haven’t seen the studies of development around the Portland Streetcar, and how developers regard it? Streetcars are great for creating infill density.