May 21, 2001

Monorail group seeks public comment

SEATTLE -- The Elevated Transportation Company is seeking public comment on its proposed monorail corridors. Earlier this month ETC identified potential monorail routes that would run from West Seattle to downtown and from downtown to Ballard.

Last week, ETC selected Berger/ABAM of Federal Way to perform initial planning for the project. In November 2002, Seattle voters will decide whether to proceed with monorail.

Interested parties may comment at a public meeting to be held Monday, June 4, at 6:30 p.m. in the Seattle City Council Chambers, 600 Fifth Ave. Also, comments may be e-mailed to comment@elevated.org, faxed to (206) 262-7939, or mailed to Elevated Transportation Company, 701 Fifth Ave. -- #3600, Seattle, WA 98104. Comments must be received by July 2.

I have been on the light rail system that they have in Portland. Although it may be nice to ride, I soon discouvered that it also gets bogged down and caught in the traffic congestion in the city. It also must stop at all red lights in the downtown and residential areas. I found it to be no more efficient than a city bus. A monorail system is above the traffic and does not have to content with the problems of congested downtown and residentual streets. How nice it would be to just cruise above the crowded streets and straight home. I believe once people see how convenient and quick it would be, that a lot of people would soon be out of their cars and riding high on the monorail. It would seem to me that it would go up a lot faster than digging tunnels and less expensive. I think the politicians better take serious on what the people want. The people voted for a monorail but the politicians have disregarded what a democracy is (the majority rules). I think we should clean house on any politician who opposes this fast and reasonable form of transportation.

I think that the Monorail is the way to go for mass transportation. The one that we have seems to have run almost non stop since it started and runs back and forth to the seattle center everyday at a reasonable speed. It is also much quieter than most light rail systems that I have ridden on. I agree with the previous commentor about the monorail being above the traffic. It doesn't have to stop at side streets and lights like the trolly or light rail does so it would be faster. In fact I think that it could be the solution for mass transportation on the western side of the state. You could run the monorail up and down I-5 inbetween the north and south bound lanes. It should be able to run between any highway. That would allow use of existing park and rides, and allow existing bus routes from the park and rides to stay the same. Since you would be using existing transportation routes, the monorail should meet most commuting needs, and should cost less than building an entire new system. The money that would hopefully be saved could be used to make the monorail system larger than what was planned for the light rail.

The previous comments are indicative of the anti-light rail movement's disregard of the facts. While monorail may prove to be a good point to point transportation line, slow switching mechanisms will forever doom it from becoming a regional "system". In fact, there isn't a single monorail system (i.e. multiple, interchanging lines)in the world, most monorails are linear strings of multiple stations. The arial system dooms the taxpayer to paying more when geography allows for an at grade alignment. To correct the above writer's misconception of at-grade light rail, true Portland's light rail system runs through their downtown slowly like a bus, but once out of the downtown the system is faster than any bus and as fast as a monorail due to its designated right of way. The Sound Transit light rail will move swiftly in the existing downtown tunnel. While in the Rainier valley, it will have designated right of way and signal priority (meaning green lights all the way). The key difference between the systems is the ability to expand in the future, light rail can easily accomodate new lines while monorail's sluggish switching mechanisms prevent it from doing the same. Since this is the first segment of a regioinal system I think it is important for that system to be able to grow efficiently in the future.

The key factor in how fast a given transit system will be is the distance between stops - NOT the mode. If stops are spaced about every mile, the average speed of the system will be about 35 mph. If stops are spaced every half-mile, the average speed of the system will be about 25 mph. And if stops are few and far between, such as on some of San Francisco's BART lines, <i>average</i> speeds can approach 60 mph - faster than even a wide-open freeway. Both light rail and monorail are effective modes of transportation. Portland's light rail has cost taxpayers about $50 million a mile to build. A full-size monorail guideway, such as those found in Japan (as opposed to the "toy" monorails used at Disneyland and Las Vegas) would probably cost about $100 million a mile. This is significantly more expensive than Portland's light rail cost - and thus, in Portland, light rail is the more applicable technology. But in Seattle, it is monorail that should reign. SoundTransit's light rail "starter system" has ballooned to a cost of nearly $200 million per mile - in other words, <b>light rail in Seattle will cost twice as much as monorail</b>. The tunnel to the UW is a boondoggle that should not be built, and monorail should serve the corridor instead. The Rainier Valley needs further study, because it could be possible to built surface light rail in the Rainier Valley for less money than monorail. But monorail should be used on the lion's share of Seattle's primary transit routes. Unlike Portland, Seattle is a dense city, with narrow street right-of-ways that cannot easily accommodate the extra 28 feet needed for light rail tracks. Portland has 100-foot wide easements on major arterials (such as Interstate Ave), and abandoned railroad grades elsewhere (such as what is now the Westside MAX light rail line) that have made light rail feasable there. But in hilly, densely-packed Seattle, monorail is by far the obvious technology of choice. The existing monorail between the Seattle Center and downtown should be left as-is, with no modifications. Instead an alignment through Ballard to downtown via Nickerson and Westlake, south on 5th, west across the West Seattle Bridge, and then south to the southern edge of West Seattle should be built to demonstrate the feasibility of monorail. Once the naysayers have shut up and realized monorail can move people effectively, monorail can take over the segments of SoundTransit's doomed light rail system that haven't been built and will never be built - namely, the UW tunnel. In 20 years Seattle will have an extensive monorail system, with one set of light rail trains shuffling up and down the Rainier Valley at 25 mph while the rest of the city gets around in style.

If Mr. Steinburg's assertions about "sluggish switching" were correct about monorail, he would have a point. He states "In fact, there isn't a single monorail system (i.e. multiple, interchanging lines)in the world, most monorails are linear strings of multiple stations." I personally have ridden on two major monorail systems with spur lines that are part of the online system, Chiba City and Osaka Monorails. Both of these systems are being expanded as Mr. Steinburg suggests they don't have the ability to. Dortmund University's monorail also has an active spur line with efficient switching as well. We even have a monorail system in the USA with an online spur line using switches, Jacksonville. Another point, if monorail switches are so sluggish and inefficient, how do all those linear monorail systems in the world reverse the direction of their trains at the end of the line? Non-sluggish switching! Tokyo-Haneda, Chiba City, Tama, Osaka, and Kitakyushu Monorails have quick switching or their systems would grind to a halt. Soon to be added...Naha, Kuala Lumpur, Branson and Las Vegas. I thought I had debunked the "Switch Myth" years ago with my article at http://www.monorails.org/tMspages/switch.html . Evidently not.