Recluse reflections

Recluse reflections: What's left if Monorail Project folds?
Notes on spaces seen through windows

"But now he knows these hills, that is to say he knows them better, and if ever again he sees them from afar it will be I think with other eyes, and not only that but the within, all that inner space one never sees, the brain and heart and other caverns where thought and feeling dance their sabbath, all this too quite differently disposed."
-- Samuel Beckett

author

Robin Evans
Seattle

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Thursday, September 29, 2005

What's left if Monorail Project folds?

The Seattle Monorail project has spent hundreds of millions of dollars so far on a transit system that doesn't yet serve a single rider. They continue to collect about a million dollars a week from Seattle car owners.

So what do we have to show for it? Has the money that has already been spent bought us something that might be useful even if the monorail is never built?

As near as I can tell, there are a few obvious assets that might be useful to another project:

Real-estate assets. Although most of the system would have been built on City property, SMP had to buy several properties from private landowners along its proposed alignment. The properties would have been used for stations or other land-intensive needs like switches. The properties constitute the only real tangible asset of SMP.
An alignment proposal. After much discussion with various interests, SMP presented a proposal for the alignment of its system in early 2004. After more discussion, the City accepted the alignment subject to a number of conditions.
A contract bid with a private company for the design, construction, operation, and short-term maintenance of the system. Although the contract has a sunset clause of December 15, 2005, the contract documents may have some value even beyond that date.
Environmental Impact Statement and other design studies. SMP and other agencies produced a vast array of pre-design studies, and recommendations. Some of these studies and recommendations might be applicable to a similar project with the same alignment.

It's not clear what would become of the real-estate assets. The Legislature might direct that the properties be sold to pay off SMP agency debts and therefore rescind the monorail's MVET tax more quickly.

Most of what's left if the real estate is sold off are studies that don't quite constitute actual plans. It's unclear if any of these plans could be applied to other transit projects for the corridors.

City Council members seem to want something to replace the monorail dreams. When the Council passed its resolution revoking the City's conditional transit-way agreement with Seattle Monorail Project, members Lacata and Steinbruek insisted that this condition be added to the recitations:

WHEREAS, the City re-affirms its commitment and determination to developing an efficient, integrated, and cost effective public transit system that will serve the mobility needs of the citizens of Seattle and the broader region

Exactly what that CYA language might mean isn't all that clear, but an article in yesterday's PI suggests the kinds of things that might replace the lost dreams of the monorail. Before the monorail fell into limbo, city departments had been working on recommendations for future transit plans that could become part of a second-phase Sound Transit program. Understandably, the corridor that would have been served by the Monorail Project is excluded from the current plans since the planning process assumed that the Green Line would be built.

But without the Green Line, at least a few assumptions for these kinds of long-range studies would have to be revisted. Maybe a few of the studies produced at such cost by SMP could be applied to other transit scenarios.

McIver told the PI that bus rapid transit (BRT) might be an answer for West Seattle. This is a system that gives buses exclusive roadways in some areas. Before its recent temporary closure, the downtown bus tunnel and busway through SODO was an example of a BRT system. Sound Transit proposes several new BRT corridors are part of its long-range plan.

Unfortunately for transit riders in West Seattle or Ballard, it's doubtful that monorail proponents who've been excited about how cool a monorail might be would be equally excited about a system that used buses with four wheels on the ground. Even if such a system turned out to be just as efficient at moving folks from place to place, it would probably not achieve the kind of support it would need to become a viable alternative for commuters in those neighborhoods.

That would leave folks in those neighborhoods stuck in traffic unless they wanted to move to one of the areas served by rapid transit in Seattle.

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