The Seattle Monorail Project is supposed to release final details of the proposed contract and implausible financing plan today. Just in time to give insufficient time for public review and comment before the agency board votes to approve the contract in early July.
Meanwhile, the SMP has been trying to prepare public opinion by sending out insanely disinformational "updates". Watchdog group OnTrack has been fisking the Monorail updates with updates of its own:
two of the latest are here and here
UPDATE: yet another OnTrack fisking of Monorail propaganda: here
Posted by Stefan Sharkansky at June 20, 2005 10:13 AM | Email ThisI don't see Seattle lines having any such merit.
Posted by: Andy on June 20, 2005 10:22 AMBoth the planned systems in Seattle miss the mark completely. My biggest gripe with light rail is that it will be far too slow. The same system planned here is in San Jose - it is like riding a very slow bus and takes forever to cover a distance that can be covered in 5 minutes in a car (from hotels to downtown). It's rarely full, usually empty.
But, at least light rail has a mixed package of funding and is spread over a much larger population. Monorail is idiotic because it was voted on by solipsistic Seattle residents who think they are a separate state. With only one source of funding, it punishes everyone while only rewarding small populations in West Seattle and Ballard.
I would have been happy to support light rails financing plan and route, but using a monorail instead of a silly bus on rails that stops at stop lights. I've heard a lot of people say that.
I can not understand why these two organization could not get together and plan something smart.
Now, we are stuck with a huge tax bill for two sub-optimal (very sub-optimal) systems.
Meanwhile, Nickels is off trying to save the world by joining Kyoto. Sims is out saving the whales.
There is NO leadership in this silly county and city.
Posted by: BananaLand(aka Iguana) on June 20, 2005 10:35 AMOf course, nobody else in the city will. I went to a review on the monorail project hosted by a couple of Cascadia monorail people. They were accompanied by a PR flack. When I asked if they were planning on putting any parking at either end of the line, I got a very frosty, "No" from the engineer. Then the PR guy launched into a 10 minute speech about how the monorail is a neighborhood solution, buses will bring people to it, blah blah blah.
The monorail is Seattle's ultimate statement of social engineering. They hate cars; therefore they'll do any and everything they can to get rid of them. You guys notice that parking is getting more expensive and more scare? By God, they're going to force everybody to use their white elephant mass transit...and if they have to ban cars altogether, don't be surprised :)
Okay, so I exaggerated on the last one. But as long as $0.05 is Mayor, we'll have 60 mass transit systems running as inefficiently as possible, serving no one. Why? That's the lib way: Throw money at a problem so you feel better about it.
Posted by: steve_dog on June 20, 2005 11:15 AMYou left out two words in your statement:
"That's the lib way: Throw money at a problem so you feel better about it."
It should be: That's the lib way: Throw other people's money at a problem so you feel better about it.
Posted by: fred on June 20, 2005 11:20 AMI would love a train that heads from ground zero in oly and jets to Seattle or PDX- but until it's fiancially viable I don't think it's a good idea.
At the very least I think I'd get on board for planning for one- even if it's 20 years from now- smart planning means setting aside right of ways for this stuff so that when it does become viable- you don't have to pull a Sims and confiscate a bunch of businesses and land to make it happen and base your political career on screwing people.
Posted by: Andy on June 20, 2005 11:29 AMI stand corrected, sir :)
Reminds me of a statement by some Louisiana Senator back in the early seventies. It sums up Seattle libs perfectly:
"Don't tax you, don't tax me...tax that fellow back behind the tree"
Posted by: steve_dog on June 20, 2005 11:31 AMIs being mindless & pointless "just a reflexive thing with you?"
Posted by: alphabet soup on June 20, 2005 11:41 AMYou forget all the taxes that are on car rentals that will be lost. You libs tax so many things that it becomes a zero gain thing - stop using one taxed product/service to go to another taxed product/service.
I also see your belief in "taxation without represntation". Screw the tourists, they (probably) don't vote here. Tax tax tax, and make other destinations more desirable!
Posted by: fred on June 20, 2005 11:43 AMFred Fred Fred, cant you see ... that is why they are not running it to the airport, they WANT you to rent a car so you can drive to the monorail.
I think Steve-dog and me should invest in some property at both ends and put up a private pay parking garage.
Posted by: Itsaquak on June 20, 2005 11:53 AMThere is one fatal flaw in your arguement... and that's the assumption that a Crown Hill to West Seattle Monorail will bring in more tourists. What do you base that on? I've never heard of anyone going to the Bay area because of BART or Vancouver, BC because of their monorail.
Also, how does more tourism = more free money to Boeing?
Posted by: Mike H on June 20, 2005 11:54 AMAs a matter of fact, my family did six days of 'the tourist thing' in the Seattle area, year before last. We stayed in Tukwila and spent a total of about a day-and-a-half on the city of Seattle proper. We make a conscious effort to use mass transit on vacation but no conceivable mass transit system for Seattle would have gotten more than two rides out of us.
Posted by: F451 on June 20, 2005 11:59 AMI feel so stupid, I missed that one completely!
Posted by: fred on June 20, 2005 12:14 PMIsn't school out now? Shouldn't you be working on your Burning Man costume for this year?
Posted by: Andy on June 20, 2005 12:15 PMTourism is like trying to cover the variable costs without covering the fixed costs.
It ain't gonna happen. It can't happen.
Why? They ratcheted up the costs past any possible break even point.
How many sailors are willing to set off on a journey from which they cannot survive?
These people should be restricted to homes where knives and forks are denied the residents. I'd be happy to volunteer to help mow the lawns and weed the flowerbeds.
Posted by: scott158 on June 20, 2005 12:22 PMJust think, tourists can ride in the monorail and get on the ferries, do a return and get another ride on the monorail. Good dollars.
steve- isn't that the idea of stuffing everyone into the cities and doing mass/rapid transit- no cars?
Posted by: swatter on June 20, 2005 12:28 PMA certain clown wants to know.
Do the clowns in Olympia and Seattle realize that there is only a certain amount of money that people (even rabid liberals) will be happy handing over, and if they spend it on their pet projects rather than plan for the future we suddenly have a "crisis" every year and the people start saying no?
Posted by: Sideshow Bob on June 20, 2005 12:34 PMThese things are monuments to excessive vanity.
It's amazing to watch this junk arise Phoenix-like from the ashes of WPPS. I'm not sure what the limit on how many times in a lifetime a person should have to endure this idiocy. I just know that we have to be gettin' pretty close.
Posted by: scott158 on June 20, 2005 12:36 PMNo. If I wanted to write the headline in German, it would be "Stirb, Monorail, stirb"
Posted by: Stefan Sharkansky on June 20, 2005 12:43 PMGuess who is a HUGE proponent of the monorail? Allan Darr, the business manager of Local 302 in Seattle. Darr is also the Democratic operative who has vast experience in cheating in union elections in the Seattle area. He's probably helped the Dems cheat in the Gregoire election too.
Read more about Allan Darr at:
www.corrupt-union.com
and, read his "deposition" at the same website. Republicans and Independents need to know who the true enemy really is.
Posted by: Apeman on June 20, 2005 12:45 PMRebuild the roads, and get it over with.
Screw social engineering.
Posted by: Sailor Republica on June 20, 2005 01:04 PMThis just in:
Former union "mob informant" Ronald Fino (in the FBI's protective witness program) will be a special guest on Linda Chavez radio talk show today at 4:00 pm EDT (Monday, June 20th). He will be discussing, among other things, fraudulent union elections and how they may cross-over to general public elections.
Linda Chavez' show can be heard live on the web at:
www.wmet1160.com
Posted by: Th Minuteman on June 20, 2005 01:06 PMSeattle needs a balanced and intermodal system, and it is about time we retro-modernize King Street Station(Northern Pacific and Great Northern, when they tuned it into the mess it is today, called it Modernization), as King Street Station is getting more passengers passing through it every day. There are some corridors like Aurora that could use a Monorail, as the grades would be too steep for Light Rail to access it. Also, at the time I was wondering why West Seattle, but then I read about the events of June 11, 1978, when the West Seattle Bridge was hit by a freighter. A low level light rail bridge or any low level bridge(except for the current one, which is a unique Double-Leaf Swing Bridge) across the Duwamush is a bad idea. The best redundancy, and would be cheaper, is a year-round Water Taxi, which would be operated by a private operator.
Posted by: MASSTRANSITFAN on June 20, 2005 01:51 PMAll of this public scrutiny and debate is good - so long as it is fact based and not just politically motivated.
Posted by: Rob on June 20, 2005 02:16 PMDepends on whether or not it makes sense to do so.
Look at our monorail. The reason you take people out of their cars is to solve a traffic problem, ie. too many cars.
Can you honestly look at the monorail and say that it solves a traffic problem? Is it difficult to go to West Seattle from Ballard right now?
I'm not against mass transit per se. I'm against poorly implemented, boondoggle mass transit like we have here in Seattle. Both the SMP and Sound Transit are pork projects aimed at keeping the unions happy. Neither actually solves a real, quantifiable problem.
Posted by: steve_dog on June 20, 2005 02:40 PMSame question to you:
In all honesty, what is the most pressing traffic problem we face in the Puget Sound area today?
Is it going from West Seattle to Ballard? Or is it maybe the 405 corridor, crossing Lake Washington, or going through Southcenter?
The monorail's problem is that it doesn't solve any problems. None.
Posted by: steve_dog on June 20, 2005 02:45 PMWould you be quite as happy about the monorail and all that it brings to your neighborhood (and 15 other neighborhoods) if you had to pay for it? Many people are in favor of local improvements to their neighborhood when others foot the bill. Taxpayers are donating their tax dollars to increase the value of your property. How is that fair?
Posted by: fred on June 20, 2005 03:15 PMMy dad is in a rest home on Mercer Island. It is a quickshot home, but the fire in the Mt. Baker Tunnel gave me a major dilemna, and continually 2nd Guessing my decisions, we would never have gotten off the Eastside. Going by one traffic report, SR-520 was the best bet, but turned out some people jockeying for position where the Carpool Lane ends on 520 got in an accident. I stuck to my decision, 520, and it was clear sailing on the other side of the choke point. I am a fan of transit, so I would not have got so upset seeing the buses, both I-90 an 520 buses going by while I was stuck. Well, a Light Rail line, speeding by in it's own right of way, with no problems ahead, would have had a good billboard for people to think about.
Posted by: MASSTRANSITFAN on June 20, 2005 03:15 PMWho do you think makes up a rather large proportion of the 2 million + riders each year on the existing Seattle Center Monorail?
And it's not that tourists are going to ride the monorail to places to attractions in West Seattle. (Although they're certainly welcome to the Junctions for shopping and eating.)
It's that the ride across the West Seattle Bridge will offer one of the best views of the Seattle skyline and Mt. Rainier and the ferries &tc around.
And it will cost them perhaps 1/3 what it costs to go up the Space Needle.
Posted by: FoM Prez on June 20, 2005 03:47 PMactually i dont have a problem with the monorail. It shifted into favor when it went on the ballot and passed (unlike the sports stadiums)
The people not only said they wanted a monorail, they raised thier own taxes to pay for it.
As such,I have to agree with it. I do believe in the initiative process which allowed the actual residents to say whta thier priority was, and how they wanted to pay for it.
I do not feel this way about the light rail, which has failed every time it got near a ballot, and yet they build it anyway.
The monorail won its election. It has my support. Poor planning or not, I still respect elections.
Especially when i live in a different county!!
i grew up in san diego. they put in a huge light rail system. It didnt help one bit. just moved people from busses to trolleys. Freeways are still a mess.
-lee
+++
-lee
+++
Buses work in express lanes on I-5 and I-90. Buses work heading out into suburbs.
Buses do NOT work in high traffic corridors within the Seattle city limits, where at rush hour many buses average 12mph. Buses do not work on game days when they are stuck in the same traffic as all the cars on the road.
Have you ever spent 35 minutes or more to go from Pioneer Square to Seattle Center (or vice versa) because the bus wasn't moving?
Posted by: FoM Prez on June 20, 2005 03:53 PMExcept for a couple of problems:
1. King County elections counted the votes.
2. They aren't going to be able to deliver what they promised, and knew about it ahead of time.
Yet when the people have spoken on bills that the left doesn't like...they run roughshod over it. Sales tax on food, increased sales tax on gas, 601-spending limits.
Quite frankly, there is an inverse and proportional correlation between the left's vitriolic verbiage and the actual "will of the people."
Take that!!!
Posted by: scott158 on June 20, 2005 04:25 PMI would like to see Metro do some improvements to the 7 once the Central Link is finished. The 7 still is and is going to be a great route in Southeast Seattle, but should, wherever possible, have it's own lane, and passing wires. Since it will pass Central Link at 3 locations, it would work as a feeder-trunk route. It can continue as a trunk route, especially points North of McClelan Street, and feed Central Link.
Also, Central LINK can take some of the pressure off of the 7, because the current route to SODO from the Ranier Valley, the 38, has to climb McClellan St, and negotiate Beacon Hill, then go down Holgate St. Central LINK will go through a tunnel to get to the other side of Beacon Hill. The Station site is already being worked on, they are just waiting for the mole to arrive to dig the tubes. Wished the moles were re-usable.
Already Metro has made one improvement to the 7, and that is splitting it in half, with the New Route 49 handling the U-District-Downtown Leg. A few weeks ago, I saw 6 linemen working on stringing the wires for the new layover points in Belltown. That is one-sixth of the linemen Metro employs to oversee the trolleybus network.
Posted by: MASSTRANSITFAN on June 20, 2005 04:44 PMWhat a bunch of CRAP!
Posted by: Norm on June 20, 2005 08:57 PMOh, that's right... unlike votes, you can't fake money. Sorry, my bad.
Posted by: YourGovernorCostsMillion$ on June 20, 2005 11:04 PMI addressed this issue YEARS ago with DOT after a truck tipped on 90 Westbound and backed up traffic through Issaquah, and up and down 405 one afternoon. I did it via a comment book at the Puyallup fair. And the response I got?
Some Asian engineer who could barely speak a word of english called me from DOT to tell me that it would have cost the state a few thousand to reverse the lanes, so they did not do it. Now, this guys English was pretty poor, and I may have been mistaken in what he said, but I don;t think so. A few thousand. All the while, the lost time and productivity (took me me almost an hour to move ONE mile that night) as well as all the gas we burnt clearly ran into the MILLONS of dollars that evening. And this guy says they were worried about a few grand.
Sheer lunacy.
Posted by: dano on June 21, 2005 03:59 AMI have been stuck on a bus moving up 1st ave that was slow. You know what? I got out and walked and got some excercise.
Posted by: Take my money....Please on June 21, 2005 09:28 AM