This post originally appeared on Orphan Road.
Please excuse my recent gondola craze, but here’s a little daydream.
Imagine you have a half day stopover as Seatac and are looking for something to do. The information desk gives you a few tips, and you find this route interesting. Start by hopping on the light rail and riding it to Westlake. Go up the stairs and ride the streetcar. When you get to SLU, transfer to the Galer St. Gondola. After your scenic trip up the hill, explore upper Queen Anne for a bit, then head down the hill via Kerry Park and our historic stairs (or take a trolley bus down, if you prefer). Head to the Seattle Center to look at the fountain and the Space Needle, then hop on the Monorail to get back. Extra time? Check out the Pike Place Market and maybe even the waterfront. If not, hop back on the light rail to the airport.
Man, you think, Seattle has their transportation system figured out.
I’m totally on board with your recent gondola craze, Matt, and have certainly indulged in some gondola daydreaming myself. You had mentioned in a previous comment that to “get this done” we would “just” need to get the right set of people interested. Sounds like quite a feat to me. It would certainly seem to be that it would difficult to make the case, at least to the general public, that this would not be a toy but a worthwhile component of our transit infrastructure.
That said, I would gladly donate some of my own time if somebody really wanted to try and advance this idea, and had some sense of how to go about it.
I don’t know that it would be tough at all to sell the public. Just pick a line and throw some facts at them.
West Seattle –> Downtown ferry station
11 minute travel time, no waiting between cars
up to 4,000 passengers an hour each way
roughly $50M (~$5 a person using a 30-yr bond)
Queen Anne –> Westlake
3 minute travel time, no waiting between cars
up to 4,000 passengers an hour each way
roughly $10M (~$1 a person using a 30-yr bond)
Would you pay $1 to try out a starter line? How about $10 for 3 lines? $30 for a complete system connecting most of our neighborhoods to transit?