Today is a good day to vote. I was able to hit the polls before work today. Megan studiously filled out her absentee ballot last night.
Rule of thumb for this election – If you talked about killing the monorail, my vote will not be yours. I think this is now the fourth time I’ve had to vote on whether or not to build a monorail (I think the fifth time overall for the City). I think a big problem (and I may not have all the facts) is that it was set up as an independent agency. This sounds good in theory but not quite as good in practice. It’s a City transportation issue and project and should be treated as such. However, not being under direct control of the main City government provides easy shots for elected officials to pooh-pooh it and get in its way. It also doesn’t hurt that you have a lot of large property owners in the downtown area throwing a lot of money at it to try and derail it.
I can sense the impending doom in the future when they decide to replace the viaduct that runs along the waterfront. The traffic downtown sucks already with the buses from the tunnel moving up on the surface streets while they modify the tunnel for the light rail That is only adding hundreds of buses a day. What do you do when the 27,000 trips on the Viaduct have to be moved elsewhere? (I’m assuming the number of trips is much greater than this. The only number I could find was a 1983 vehicle count.) The monorail isn’t the only solution but without – mass transit above grade –we don’t even stand a chance.
Thank you for this rant.
i can’t keep all the seattle mass transit options straight… monorail, light rail, …
is the proposal to have separate bodies that manage monorail and busses? i’m assuming light rail is a go as they are modifying the viaduct. why not just expand light rail? why the need for monorail and light rail?
as a side note i think the portland light rail solution is working quite well (albeit on a smaller scale). light rail is governed by the same body as the bus system… tri-met.
good thing i’m now working for SDOT so i can solve all of our city’s transportation problems…
damn right. ah how i enjoy a new face around here.
o my friggin lord. i had no idea (I am down here in the central calif coast, another wasteland of mass transit) that they actually put up a fifth vote for the monorail, and in an off-year election no less. i cry for seattle. such a great city, with the number one most obvious thing wrong being the lack of decent mass transit. actually, i shouldn’t say that. while light rail/monorail processes have been in an almost endless cycle of chasing their own and each others tails, the bus system has continued to improve. it actually is a model for bus transit in the USA. i don’t know what has progressed with the real time bus display boards (beef?), but a miniscule portion of the light rail or monorail budget could blanket the city with real time bus info, taking all of the uncertainty out of bus transit. perhaps the eminent city council will finally recognize this in the wake of the disastrous monorail vote a few weeks back.
the really sad thing is that this was a process that the public really supported. four times. usually with far greater than 50% support. but as beef said, the money and the politicos (pretty much one and the same in this case) were not behind it. why? because the light rail project was their baby.
OK… light rail vs monorail (now a moot dichotomy).
llight rail is on the surface a lot of the way, so it has to deal with traffic. this can be not such a big issue (see SF trolley system and Portland’s very successful light rail after which, I imagine, the seattle plan was modeled), but it definitely does not do enough to relieve congestion – the biggest problem seattle faces transit wise.
So even though light rail is often no better than a bus in time of travel, the psychological difference to a lot of people is the key. “buses are dirty; trains are snazzy.” so eveen though the light rail route is pretty much duplicating the #7 bus route – one of the best bus routes in the city, with expresses too – there are some riders who would probably ride the light rail who don’t ride the bus.
But not enough. As the city admits,the light rail line will not reduce congestion one bit. And as beef points out, the fact that the downtown tunnel trafffic is now up on surface, congestion is actually made worse in the shortterm. a shame, since, the bus tunnel was a great option for suburban commuters – off the street, right onto the express lanes of the highway. not any more.
I hope that the planners are moving towards a major bus/train transit center in south seattle (say in SoDo) that would service light rail, commuter buses and the sounder. then commuters could hop the light rail to get to their commuter buses. Not as convenient as it was for them last year, but better than waiting on the downtown street for your commuter bus.
monorail, as beef suggests, had one great advantage: being off the surface. but as soon as they got into sibngle tracking issues the clock on the commute started to tick.
the only hope I can see is if a mayor is elected who runs on a mass transit platform. the mandate from an election like that could force the city council to actually fund a city project to build off the surface mass transit – possibly in combination with setting up certain roads as light rail/express bus only. the thing is, the public would support that. the problem with all the transit decision making up til now is that people were afraid to make the difficult choices to result in an efficient system. Hence a light rail stopping short of the airport by a few miles. Hence a monorail plan making 90 degree turns around NIMBY screechers in the seattle center and belltown.
ah well…and just when it looked like ballard and west seattle were REALLY gonna come into their own…
peace