Anti Choice
As we get closer to crunch time on light rail and monorail, it's getting harder for feel-good Seattle politicians like Greg Nickels to stick to his make-everybody-happy "Transportation Choices" mantra about supporting both systems. After all, there comes a time when decisions--like how to appropriate money--may help one system to the detriment of the other. In short, you've got to decide which system you're really for. (There's only so much taxing authority out there, you know.)
"Transportation Choices" advocates like Nickels have known all along (as this column has long argued) that building two systems is less efficient and unnecessarily expensive. There also isn't enough money and political will to go around. While it would be nice to have both systems (hell, why not seven or eight systems?), the fact is that light rail and monorail are competing systems. Local pols have always known that at some point they would have to make one transportation choice (singular) and take sides.
Well, on Monday, April 29, despite the continued rhetoric about supporting both systems, the city made its choice. Despite the plain superiority of the monorail (faster, cheaper, less intrusive, more public support), the city sided with Sound Transit's light rail project to the detriment of monorail.
For a clear picture of the city's allegiances, check out the sly little amendment that got attached to the Seattle City Council's pro-Sound Transit bill passed last Monday. While it's bad enough that the bill forces the city to cover Sound Transit's mitigation costs in the Rainier Valley to the tune of $50 million (costs that the feds were going to force Sound Transit to pay), more telling is the amendment drafted by Richard McIver and Jan Drago (and supported by Heidi Wills, Jim Compton, Margaret Pageler, and Peter Steinbrueck) that states: "Creation of this Fund shall not establish a precedent for the creation of similar funds for other large... infrastructure projects that have significant impacts...." Can you say monorail?
"I won't support the amendment," said dissident city council member Judy Nicastro. "Everybody knows this is really about the monorail. If we're going to set up funds for light rail, we should be willing to set it up for the monorail as well."
The idea that the city would dole out cash to Sound Transit while simultaneously barring similar subsidies to the monorail sends a loud and clear message to voters. It's the same message the city has been sending to monorail supporters for years: Screw the voter-approved monorail plan.
Jan Drago, who sponsored the amendment, made this clear at Monday's vote, declaring, "This sends a loud and clear message that other groups should not expect that we would follow in this pattern... this shall not establish a precedent."
It also sends another message, one that politicians have been reluctant to own up to, but one they put in writing with this amendment. To the detriment of monorail, the city's "Transportation Choice" is Sound Transit's light rail.
