Seattle Monorail Project

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The Seattle Monorail Project was a proposed five-line monorail system to be constructed in Seattle, Washington by the Seattle Popular Monorail Authority. The Green Line was a fourteen-mile (23 km) line intended to run from Ballard to West Seattle (the most isolated part of Seattle and that least served by transit and linked to downtown by an earthquake-threatened highway, the Alaskan Way Viaduct) via Seattle Center, Belltown, Downtown, Pioneer Square, the International District, and Qwest Field.

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[edit] Origins

The road to the Green Line was a long and arduous one. It began in 1997 when a citizens' ballot initiative written by Grant Cogswell and Dick Falkenbury was passed by the voters. The initiative proposed that if Seattle voters approved a 54-mile X-shaped monorail plan (extending the existing 1.4 mile Seattle Monorail to the four corners of the city), and created an agency (called the Elevated Transportation Company or ETC) to build and operate the system, private entrepreneurs would come forward to fund and construct the system.

Falkenbury and Cogswell gathered the required 18,000 signatures necessary using an invention of Cogswell's which he offered unpatented to the citizens of Seattle, the Automatic Petition Gatherer, an A-frame device placed unintimidatingly on sidewalks for passers by to peruse and sign at their leisure. The device was used by several subsequent campaigns for the monorail and other issues in a spate of local activism which lasted until the early 2000s.

Although the 1997 initiative passed, and created the ETC, the agency had no public funding and was able only to study alternative routes and determine that private entrepreneurs were not going to build a monorail system without public financial support.

In 2000, Seattle voters passed a second monorail initiative, providing $6 million for ETC to carry out a study to determine an improved monorail plan with cost estimates and a funding package to pay for construction.

By 2002, ETC had developed the five-line system plan that came to be called the Seattle Monorail Project. This proposal was put before the voters as a new initiative in November 2002. This initiative dissolved the ETC creating a new monorail agency. The initiative also called for the construction of the first part of the system, the Green Line, and proposed a 1.4% Motor Vehicle Excise Tax (MVET) to fund the project.

The 2002 initiative drew opposition from a quickly formed group, Citizens Against the Monorail. They argued that the projected Green Line ridership was not significantly different from that already achieved by Metro buses. They also argued that building an elevated line with 7-foot deep concrete beams on Second Avenue in downtown would create a "wall" through the urban core. University of Washington Architecture Professor Folke Nyberg, a long-time supporter of monorail technology, also opposed the Green Line--along with his former student Jeff Boone, Nyberg argued for building the monorail line along the I-5 freeway corridor.

Voters passed the 2002 initiative by a narrow margin (less than 1% of the votes cast)--the result was not known for almost two weeks after election day as absentee ballots were counted.

After the narrow passage of the 2002 initiative, opposition did not disappear, particularly as the MVET soon proved to generate less funding than the plan had projected (see below). In 2004, a citizen-initiated recall election sought to end the Seattle Monorail Project by denying the agency the right to use the air space above city streets (public rights-of-way). This recall initiative proved very unpopular with Seattle voters; it was overwhelmingly defeated.

[edit] Construction

Construction was expected to begin in autumn 2005 and be completed in 2009. The agency was conducting confidential negotiations with Cascadia Monorail Company to develop the contract to design, build, operate and maintain the line, which under their proposal would use Hitachi trains. Another consortium called Team Monorail had to drop out of the bidding for financial reasons, but lobbied to be re-considered; they said that their proposal, using Bombardier trains, would be less expensive than Cascadia's and provide better services.

[edit] Financing

The tax to fund the project was based on the MSRP of the vehicle and a fixed depreciation table. In 2005, the average monorail tax per vehicle was $130.

The project fell under intense public scrutiny, as actual revenue from the motor vehicle excise tax that was to pay for the line fell as much as 30% under projected income, while projected costs rose by as much as 10%. To accommodate this, the SMP proposed a finance plan that included over $9 billion in interest to pay for the $2 billion construction. This would have required extending the tax out nearly 50 years, causing a small uproar in Seattle-area politics. Even local monorail boosters such as local alternative weekly The Stranger opposed the financing plan.

In response to public criticism regarding the above finance plan, the Seattle Monorail Project's board of directors killed the plan. The Seattle mayor Greg Nickels gave the board an ultimatum, to create a new plan or he would withdraw city support for the project. A new plan was not developed, and on September 16, 2005, Seattle mayor Greg Nickels withdrew city support for the project. On September 23, the Seattle City Council voted unanimously to withdraw support for the project, echoing Nickels' position on the issue.

[edit] End of the line

While the city of Seattle could not officially stop the project, it could withhold permission to build on municipal land, as Nickels did. Nickels also called on the Seattle Monorail Project to put a measure on the November 2005 ballot to determine whether or not to continue with the project, which marked the fifth time Seattleites voted on this issue.

Following the Council's vote, the Monorail Board met and approved a ballot measure for the elections. The measure shortened the initial phase of the Green Line to 10.6 miles (17 km) with the remaining 3.4 miles (5.5 km) to be added later. The SMP said it would dissolve if the measure failed. "Proposition 1" was defeated, 65% to 35%.

With the defeat of the measure, SMP reduced staff and started work to liquidate the properties purchased for the line. At the end of 2005, SMP only had 4 employees remaining. The motor vehicle excise tax on Seattle vehicles was terminated effective July 1, 2006.

On January 17, 2008, the Seattle Monorail Authority was formally dissolved, having liquidated all of its assets and paid all of its debts. The remaining balance of $425,963.07 in the Authority's accounts was transferred to the King County Metro system for use on bus routes serving the communities that would have been served by the monorail.

[edit] References

[edit] External links

  • 2045 Seattle - a grassroots movement that supports the construction of rapid transit monorail in Seattle, WA
  • Monorailmovie - documentary about the Seattle Green Line Project