From the May 13 – May 19, 2004 issue

News

Critical Conditions

Monorail May Face Unreasonable Requirements

by Erica C. Barnett

In the early morning hours on Wednesday, May 5, a public document was posted on the Seattle Department of Transportation's (SDOT) website. The document, a hefty sheaf of paper more than 37 pages long, was the first peek the public would have at the much-debated monorail transit way agreement, a contract between the mayor, the city council, and the Seattle Monorail Project (SMP) that stipulates conditions under which the monorail can run on city sidewalks and streets. But the debate over which conditions would be included in the agreement had been raging behind closed doors for weeks. Controversial aspects of the agreement include mitigation, the amount of insurance coverage the monorail is required to carry, and who bears responsibility if the monorail collapses in an earthquake or if the system can't be built.

Hours later, the agreement had vanished. What happened? Everyone involved, from Deputy Mayor Tim Ceis to council member Nick Licata, professed ignorance about the disappearing document. But one thing seems clear: As of last week, the mayor thought he had a done deal. He was wrong. Council members Nick Licata and Jan Drago, stunned at some of the conditions the mayor had tacked onto the agreement, threw the whole thing back on the negotiating table.

As it turned out, there was a reason some council members felt the mayor's version of the agreement merited further discussion. Actually, there were several reasons. The mayor's transit way agreement (which The Stranger snagged last week) contained a whole batch of mitigation, bonding, and insurance requirements that ranged from the profligate to the seemingly insane. Among the more contentious provisions:

- A requirement that the SMP pay to move all public and private utilities in its right-of-way. In contrast, Sound Transit's own transit way agreement with the city required the private phone company Qwest to move its lines (located, free of charge, in the public right-of-way) at its own expense. (Ultimately, Sound Transit and Qwest agreed to share the relocation costs.)

- A provision stipulating that if the city-owned West Seattle Bridge is damaged in an earthquake, the SMP must pay for 20 percent of the cost of repairs, regardless of whether the damage has anything to do with the monorail's placement on the bridge.

- A provision requiring the SMP to take out a $200 million "removal bond" to pay for the dismantling of the monorail "if SMP ceases to use any or all of the monorail transit way for the monorail transit system without reasonable cause."

- A section requiring major improvements to sidewalks, landscaping, and "urban design elements" more than a quarter mile away from monorail tracks. ("Those distances seem extreme to me," monorail backer Peter Sherwin says.)

- And, perhaps most egregiously, a requirement that the SMP build an elevated skybridge between the Elliott/Mercer monorail station (on Elliott Avenue) and the Queen Anne neighborhood up the hill. (Thank monorail foe Richard Conlin for this one; he's been battling for the skybridge, with no luck, for months.)

The mayor's proposal, taken as a whole, looked like a poison pill for the cash-strapped monorail. "It was kind of like when a lender asks you to sign your car and jewelry over and they ask you for the deed to your house," Sherwin says.

The tense negotiations were not a first for the council. They'd gone through a similar process with Sound Transit, which, like the monorail agency, had to get the city's approval to use the city's right-of-way for its project. But the result, judging from the mayor's draft of the agreement, was markedly different this time around. Sound Transit's light rail transit way agreement included nothing remotely similar to the specific bonding and insurance requirements the mayor larded onto his monorail proposal. Other provisions, such as the block-by-block mitigation requirements and stipulations that the monorail win official approval from city financial staffers before moving forward, weren't even addressed in the Sound Transit agreement. "There seemed to be a tremendous concern about the finances of the monorail," says Sherwin. "All I want is fairness. It seems like there's a double standard."

Clearly, the mayor's proposal needed serious pruning. So council president Drago, backed by Licata, drafted an alternative proposal that nixed the most egregious provisions in the mayor's agreement. (The council president has the right to offer a substitute to the mayor's proposal.) But that agreement, too, was spiked--this time, in the monorail's favor--after Licata got a firm dressing-down from Deputy Mayor Ceis, who warned him that advocating too hard against the mayor might result in some less-than-agreeable consequences. "It was going down the wrong road very quickly," Licata says. Translation: Drago's version was headed for a precipice, and Licata wasn't ready to go off the cliff. "There was a sense of the process being out of control. [The mayor's office] stopped negotiating... [and] we were headed for a schoolyard brawl."

So, with Drago out of town, Licata sat down with representatives from the city attorney's office, the mayor's office, the SMP, and council staff--some 16 people in all--and, in a marathon four-hour meeting, hashed out yet another "compromise" proposal. From the way those who were present describe the results of the meeting, everybody's happy. "Most of the document's in really good shape," SMP director Joel Horn claims. Meanwhile, Licata describes the accord as nothing short of "a miracle."

How much of Horn and Licata's bold claims are wishful thinking is unclear; as of Tuesday afternoon, no one involved in the negotiations would utter a peep about the contents of the latest version. If Licata and Horn did manage to eliminate some of the mayor's more egregious demands, the result would be a major victory for the monorail agency. If they didn't, the agreement could spell a veritable death sentence for the troubled monorail.

barnett@thestranger.com