June 28, 2000

Has monorail's time come, or gone?

On his way into town Tuesday, Kent Pullen had a monorail vision.

"The congestion on I-5 in south King County was unbearable," said the King County Council member. "Everyone seemed to be waiting. I kept looking at the right-of-way and thinking, 'Wow. It would be absolutely perfect to get monorail there.'"

Pullen's interest in the concept was piqued later that morning by a University of Washington architecture student, who presented an Interstate 5 monorail proposal at his Management, Labor and Customer Services Committee.

"A regional freeway monorail is not only feasible, but has the potential to make better use of scarce funds, would attract regional ridership sooner and minimize community disruption," Pullen said. "It's certainly a transportation system that can be set up at a lower cost to taxpayers and deliver better service."

The I-5 proposal -- to run a monorail from Sea-Tac to Alderwood -- is strictly conceptual, and is not proposed in any legislation at the city or county level. But the proposal is further evidence that the monorail idea continues to intrigue politicians and residents alike, and that the monorail debate is not likely to go away anytime soon.

"People want to see something happen that is bold and aggressive," said Seattle City Council member Peter Steinbrueck. "I'm just not wedded to [monorail] technology."

Steinbrueck will host a public forum on the issue of monorail service to Seattle neighborhoods tentatively scheduled for 6 p.m. July 27 at the Municipal Building, 600 Fourth Ave.

Council President Margaret Pageler had hoped to repeal the 1997 initiative passed by voters to pursue building a monorail in Seattle, but she said Tuesday that her repeal legislation will likely be amended by the full council later this month.

"A lot of council members are uncomfortable with the word repeal and would rather amend," said Pageler, adding that the original 40-mile monorail plan has been called into question. "Even the Elevated Transit Co.'s board has conceded that the 'X' plan to link neighborhoods with monorail technology is not feasible."

Bob White, executive director of Sound Transit, said the I-5 monorail idea is equally unfeasible.

"It's an attractive concept because you can avoid right-of-way issues that come up when trying to build rapid transit through existing communities like Rainier Valley or Capitol Hill," White said. "But the jump from conceptual to pragmatic gets harder."

Sound Transit dismissed running light rail along I-5 in part because it would shut down freeway lanes. But the most recent proposal, floated by UW student Jeffrey Boone, calls for no lane closures -- instead, running monorail under the north- and southbound lanes of I-5.

The proposal, outlined in Boone's architecture thesis, "recognizes the natural and built environment as attributes rather than obstacles," he told Pullen and the rest of the Management, Labor and Customer Services Committee. "It would truly be a Seattle solution."

Pullen said he was intrigued with the idea, in part because the monorail could be run through downtown streets without displacing buses from the bus tunnel, as light rail will do.

"With the chamber of commerce and the Downtown Seattle Association upset about the impending displacement of buses on downtown streets, it seems to me that the value of the monorail system is that it can deal with that," he said.

Boone said monorail would also be considerably cheaper, since it would not require tunnels. Boone estimates the cost between Sea-Tac and Alderwood at about $1.7 billion -- compared to about $2.5 billion to run light rail from Sea-Tac to Northeast 45th Street. Sound Transit has not yet secured $500 million needed to continue light rail to Northgate.

The monorail cost savings are in part due to the fact that Boone calls for running the line strictly up and down I-5, with links to downtown, rather than through neighborhoods such as Rainier Valley and Capitol Hill -- which he said can be served by buses.

But White said 60 percent of the workers and students on Capitol Hill commute there every day and would use light rail. Light rail's superiority over buses would "dramatically increase ridership" for Capitol Hill students and workers, he said.

White also argued that an I-5 monorail would not serve riders who live long distances from the freeway. "Passengers who get off at Northeast 45th and I-5 would be a mile away from the U district," he said. "Northeast 45th has an average travel speed of 8 mph. We [Sound Transit] try to get as close to passenger's destinations as possible."

Steinbrueck, who is skeptical of running a monorail to the city's neighborhoods but has not ruled it out, said monorail is not designed for large ridership. "It has some inherent shortcomings," said Steinbrueck. "It's not well suited for higher capacity. The cars have to be small because they're on a single rail."

"We need an element of reason and objectivity brought to the monorail debate," Steinbrueck concluded.

For White, the issue remains moving monorail passengers from I-5 transit stops to their neighborhoods. "The fundamental issue is freeways work well for cars who access it, via the existing surface streets," he said. "It's always encouraging to have people try to solve transit problems. But they discover it's not that easy."