What You Can Do in the Next Few Days to Save Your Seattle Monorail
Update: Take action at 2045 Seattle to Save Your Seattle Monorail
I move between Seattle and New York every few years. I love both cities, but no matter how many times I make the move, I’m always impressed at the power and efficiency of New York’s subway system and always disappointed at Seattle’s lack of rapid transit. As a result, it’s been my privilege over the years to vote the two times I lived here to make the monorail a reality (the first vote many years ago and the latest vote last fall.) It’s time again to defend everything rapid transit can do for the economy, for the culture and for the environment of Seattle. This city is filled with smart forward-thinking people and it’s time for us all to step forward and defend the monorail.
How do you defend the Monorail?
It’s just this simple:
The plan is solid.
The financing sucks.
Fix the financing and defend the plan.
Repeat it to anyone who will listen because, right now, those who have always tried to destroy the monorail are shouting as loud as they can that the whole thing should be burned to the ground. If this plan doesn’t survive, if we don’t build this plan we have on the table, it’s clear to me the city of Seattle won’t even approach rapid transit for another twenty years. (I wonder how much gas will cost then?)
We clearly want this thing. We know we need this thing. So, get to work. Defend the plan by demanding our leaders fix the financing.
What Can You Do?
Write to the following people and institutions and let them know you want your monorail! It’s time for leaders to be leaders and help us find the funding. Make your voice heard.
Write to Your Public Officials
Email Mayor Greg Nickels and tell him to lead us to the monorail we overwhelmingly voted for or call the mayor’s office at 206-684-2489.
Write to All of Your City Council Members
- Jim Compton by email or phone: 206-684-8802
- Richard Conlin by email or phone: 206-684-8805
- David Della by email or phone: 206-684-8806
- Jan Drago by email or phone: 206-684-8801
- Jean Godden by email or phone: 206-684-8807
- Nick Licata by email or phone: 206-684-8803
- Richard McIver by email or phone: 206-684-8800
- Tom Rasmussen by email or phone: 206-684-8808
- Peter Steinbrueck by email or phone: 206-684-8804
Write to the Local Newspapers and Tell Them You Want Your Monorail
The Seattle Times
The Seattle P-I
The Stranger
The Seattle Weekly
(include your full name, home address and daytime and evening telephone numbers for verification)
Write to the Seattle Monorail Project’s Board of Directors
Submit your comments to the Seattle Monorail’s Board of Directors.
Attend the Public Meetings
Attend one of the public meetings and defend your monorail by demanding they fix the financing and preserve the future of our mass transit.
North
Ballard High School Auditorium
1418 NW 65th Street, Seattle WA 98117 - View Map
Tuesday July 5, 2005
5:30 pm
Central
SMP Community Room
The Securities Building, 4th Avenue Entrance,
1913 4th Avenue, Seattle, WA 98101 - View Map
Wednesday, July 6, 2005
Immediately following regularly scheduled Board meeting, but no earlier than 7 pm
South
West Seattle High School Auditorium
3000 California Avenue SW, Seattle WA 98116 - View Map
Thursday, July 7, 2005
6:30 pm
A Sample Letter
Here’s the letter I’ve sent out.
Dear ________,
Last fall, I joined over 63% of my follow citizens of Seattle in saying that, yes, we want our monorail. That desire has not changed. Where we are today is very simple: the plan is solid, but the financing needs to be fixed and we look now to the leaders of our city to stand up and defend the needs and desires of the people expressed loudly and clearly no more than eight months ago . The leaders of this city, the mayor, the city council and anyone who has a voice to speak must now stand up to defend and build what this city both wants and needs: environmentally sound rapid transit for the city of Seattle. Keep the plan. Fix the financing. Build our future.
Regards,
Christian Gloddy
Permanent Link
Put a fork in this pig its cooked…..
Hardly. It’s come this far and there are a ton of people who aren’t going to let it go.
I’m fully support the construction of monorail in the Seattle region. The Green Line is one of three obvious routes to add mobility alternatives (HWY-99/SR-520/I-5).
I just attended the Ballard public meeting, and I’m pleased to let you know that a VAST MAJORITY of those attending the meeting are AGAINST the monorail and so should you be. I’m not against rapid transit. I’m against the fiscally irresponsible arrogant Seattle Monorail Project board. And I’m against funding a project that will NOT relieve traffic congestion. Your cause is doomed. The monorail is DEAD. Do the honorable thing and stop promoting a bad idea. If not, you can start paying my share of the mvet tax.
Contrary to what your site presents as “fact,” the monorail is not Seattle’s last chance for rapid transit. Perhaps you were in NY when Sound Transit happened. It’s being built. It’s here. Seattle IS building rapid transit. So why are you lying about it and saying Seattle needs the monorail or we lose out on rapid trasit? Can you say, “hidden agenda”?
I hardly consider light rail, which rides with and gets stuck in traffic, rapid transit. It’s as rapid as the terrible traffic that already exists.
Light rail can run underground, on the surface, or on elevated rails. It’s the answer, regardless of your myopic obsession with the dodorail. You are sadly misinformed. Give it up. It’s over.
Robert,
I’ve reviewed the light rail plans and am glad they are being constructed, although I’m surprised you are not critical of the outlandish costs that these plans have run into. It’s true that a light rail can run underground, on the surface and on elevated rails (as can a monorail) but the majority of Seattle’s light rail currently under construction runs with traffic. I’ve lived in areas with healthy light rail, subway and monorail systems (as well as some with unhealthy systems.) Perhaps you should let the citizens of Seattle decide what’s best for Seattle. You can worry about Tukwila.
I don’t know why you mention Tukwila except to deflect reality and obfuscate the issue. You are incorrect about light rail running with traffic. Look at the link and you’ll see tunnels and other non-traffic impaired rail service(http://www.soundtransit.org/projects/svc/link/) I am a citizen of Seattle (Capitol Hill), and I also have lived in other cities (NYC, SF) that had better mass transit than Seattle. I will be one of those who decides what’s best for Seattle (as can all residents). Speaking of which, where do you get the 63% support for the monorail? That is total fiction. The last vote scraped by with less than 51%. Considering only half of the registered voters actually voted, the monorail had support of roughly 25% of Seattle voters in 2004. Given what we know now, that number is certainly lower. I suggest you attend tonight’s public meeting and you’ll see how the tide has turned overwhelmingly against the monorail. SMP should be disbanded before they waste any more $$. $4M a month is being spent on NOTHING. Time to pull the plug and spend that money where it will make a difference in traffic congestion, not just in the well-lined pockets of the likes of Joel Horn and the other SMP gravy trainers.
A. I mention Tukwila because that is where you are posting from. Just so you know, here is your dns that gets exposed when you access any website: tukw.qwest.net
B. So, the light rail gets it’s tunnels by kicking the buses out onto the street. Yeah, that’s smart.
C. I’ve lived in NYC as well as D.C. and Taipei (which has a great monorail system).
D. 63% is pure fiction? To quote the Seattle P-I “With 99 percent of precincts reporting, 63 percent of voters rejected I-83 yesterday.” That’s the vote from last year and no, I didn’t count those who didn’t vote and I’m not sure why I would. Here it is on Komo as well. I’m not sure why you believe the recall vote scraped by when it was an overwhelming victory for monorail supporters.
I would like to add that I support light rail in seattle despite my criticisms, much like I support monorail in seattle despite my criticisms. I think a growing city needs multiple transit options and Seattle would be better to have both Monorail and Light Rail.
I live on Capitol Hill. My ISP is Qwest, which I assume is why that Tukwila thing comes up. GET A CLUE!!!
You are correct. The last vote was 63% of registered voters. It was the prior election that the dodorail won by 677 votes. One thing to remember is many people were confused about the wording of the Recall initiative. A “no” vote meant “yes” for the monorail. Many were confused and thought a “no” vote meant “no” monorail. Their own stupidity, but another reason I doubt the monorail had majority support. Not to mention the people who didn’t vote. They should have voted, but they cannot be counted as for or against. Therefore, the 63% of those who voted still represent less than 50% total support.
Regardless what it was last November, things have changed now. I speak from yesterday’s experience at the Ballard public meeting. Over 100 people signed up to speak starting at 5:30. When I left at 9:00, 60 people had been heard, and less than 15 supported the monorail.
Light rail should kick the busses out of the tunnels because those routes won’t need to be covered by busses after the trains start running. Not a problem.
Taipei I’ve never been to, but I know its density is much greater than Seattle’s. And so what it they have a monorail? It doesn’t mean Seattle needs one.
I agree it would be nice to have both sound transit and monorail. But we should focus on what works for the greatest number of people, what contributes most to relieving traffic congestion and getting people out of their cards, and what we can afford. Those criteria shut out the monorail.
We get federal and state funds to help finance sound transit. The monorail is SOLELY on the shoulders of Seattle car owners. A regressive tax if ever there was one. Why shouldn’t everyone pay? So many problems. So far to go. Kill it now. Spend the $$ more wisely, and not on a vanity project.
Hopefully we are both right in that the monorail and light rail will be constructed and become healthy rapid transit systems. Hopefully we will have enough capacity built up in multiple systems to deal with the growth that is in Seattle’s future.
How can you call this a good plan, but with bad financing since that absurd financing plan was so much a part of the overall plan?
It’s true that, under this plan, the monorail buses would not get stuck in traffic. Unfortunately, they would get stuck all-too-often on their own guide-rail bridges. If just one of those deisel buses breaks down along the one-track bridges that make up most of the route, it would likely slow down the entire system. The broken car would somehow (and that somehow is of course not specified or paid for) need to be pushed off to one of the huge light-blocking overhead switching platforms built on lids over neighborhood streets along the route.
But even if the buses on thier single rail run perfectly, the highly optimistic schedule promised by this plan depends on near perfect timing of buses going in opposite directions. If one of them is just a bit late, another one or two would have to pull off onto sidings (and hope that the untested switches on those huge lids over city streets actually work) or wait at a dual-track bridge for the late car to clear the single track.
That’s only one of many things that make this pipe-dream a terrible plan. If this went through, we might be better off just moving the ugly viaduct from Alaskan Way to 2nd Ave, since the massive bridges built for the single-use monorail buses would be every bit as ugly the multi-use viaduct is now.
It’s a bad plan. It’s been a bad plan from the start. It needs to be stopped before more hundreds of millions are thrown away on it.
Robin,
There are a number of things wrong with your statements.
1. The construction plan and the finance plan are two different things.
2. These are not diesel buses, but electric trains. I have no idea where you got the idea that these run on diesel from.
3. The idea that monorail technology is untested is simply untrue. A number of countries have healthy working monorail systems including Malaysia, Taiwan, Japan, Singapore and there’s even one in New York.
I too would like to see more dual tracking as well as smaller footprints on the beams, but I’m not going to let the idea of perfect get in way of good. The reaction of some people, that since it’s not perfect we should throw the entire thing away altogether, is a bit immature and childlike. No transit system is perfect. It’s an evolution. It took the New York City subway system 100 years to get to where it is now. Maybe we should get cracking on rapid transit here too.
Ooops. Yup. I’m wrong. They’re electric almost-buses, not diesel buses. But I really do think these things are far closer to being a bus than they are to being a “train”. I think of a train as something that allows a variable number of joined together. Can these things be joined together in a train-like manner or does each run independently, much like the articulated buses now used by Metro?
What we have here in this unbuildable plan are buses (electric ones, but buses nonetheless) on big view-blocking single-purpose bridges. But that doesn’t much matter. Even these electic buses on view-blocking bridges might be worth the sacrifice if there was a chance that any of it would actually become a useful rapid transit system.
But there’s little chance of that with these plans. And the problem is both aspects of the plans — both the construction plan and the financing plan.
Indeed, the construction plan and the financing plan are two different things, but one of the reasons the bureau trying to build this thing came up with such an absurd financing plan seems to be that they were trying to build something they could not afford with the money available to them.
I don’t see how they can fix the financing with this construction plan — especially since the source of funds was specified in the enabling votes. Are they going to somehow get more money without making people vote on the silly thing yet again? Or are they going to do something to cut more out of the construction plan which has already been cut to the bone, so that it no longer looks much like the vague plan approved by voters.
Yes. We should get cracking on rapid transit here. And as you have no doubt noticed if you’ve tried to walk in the retail core downtown or have driven south on I-5 “we” have finally (and far, far too late) gotten cracking. Rapid transit is being built as we speak. Finally. Too little. Too late. But it’s an evolution. And at least we’ve started on a practical and genuinely useful and versatile rapid transit system that we can begin to benefit from in a the reasonably near future.
Robin,
I have yet to see Seattle approach rapid transit except with the monorail. Neither the buses nor light rail count as they run right along with the traffic that is already backed up. In order to have rapid transit, it needs to run on it’s own track removed from traffic. In order to do so you have two choices: you can either go above the traffic or below. Above is not only a great deal cheaper to build (due to the cost of digging tunnels) but is also easier to repair in the event of a major earthquake.
It is very much a train and not an ‘electric bus’ as you refer to it. The green line is being designed to have two cars that are connected, but additional cars can certainly be added to make the train larger in the future. The cool part about the connected ‘through train’ system is that you can walk from car to car with ease which would allow for a three or four car train to stop at a platform only two cars long. This is really cool since people can easily walk through the train to the available exits. It also makes it easier to move between cars if you have a bike or are in a wheelchair.
Let’s compare this to the NYC subway system of which I’ve spent a good time of my life on (and have enjoyed.) You can move between cars, but it’s not safe or easy. Because of this lack of safety, NYC can’t safely run cars that are longer than the length of their stations to add capacity. Those with bikes or in wheelchairs don’t really have the option to switch cars.
We agree that the funding did not work out as we had hoped. Revenue came in a third short which, frankly, sucks. The cost of the line though is within the approved range. What was unacceptable though was the financing plan. It sucked and got killed for sucking so much. So, now we have some options:
1. throw up our hands and scream that it’s hopeless and run away
2. try to find better better financiers who will give us better bonds, lowering the overall cost of the system
3. go back to the voters to diversify the funding
4. go back to the voters to change the line
5. go back to the voters to both diversify the funding and change the line
We have a construction team assembled and a contract on the table. My hope is that we can find better bonds and make this contract a reality. If they find that the revenue shortfall is too much to trim up the debt plan, then it should go back to the voters to diversify the funding.
After four votes, numerous community meetings, the assembly of a construction team, the negotiation of a contract and years of public debate and discussion, it’s time to build real rapid mass transit for this city (and build it in time for the viaduct to come down). Running away from all this work to pretend that everything will somehow be okay without rapid transit is simply self sabotage. I want Seattle to become a better Seattle. I fear it will become Detroit. The choices we make now will make the difference.
I live in Texas, which has operating light rail transit systems in both Dallas and Houston. Light rail does not share traffic with cars. Trolleys, or streetcars, share traffic with cars. LRT frequently occupies abandoned freight rail right-of-way (becoming increasingly available due to the intermodal shipping revolution) and will, on occasion, run down a city street. Such streets are now closed to automotive traffic.
Because it has its own right-of-way, the only time LRT is affected by traffic is at grade crossings, at which time it stops for traffic signals. Even in this circumstance, such delays may be eliminated by passing under or over the grade crossing. This is an expensive option, yet it permits higher speed and greater safety on the line. The benefits of this approach for each grade crossing are weighed against the costs during the planning stage. The greater the cost of a project, the more difficult it is to get funded.
Dallas Area Rapid Transit is currently developing an override mechanism in which a train takes signal priority upon approaching an intersection.
Ken,
Although the system in Dallas, Texas sounds nice, Dallas is not Seattle. Our Light Rail will run with traffic a good deal of the time and stop at multiple lights. There are a few exceptions, but not nearly enough to make Seattle’s specific installation anywhere near rapid transit.
[...] ations press conference is available. Update The Seattle Monorail Project is in trouble. What You Can Do in the Next Few Days to Save Your Seattle Monorail Posted June 5th, 2005 [...]