Rabid anti-monorail activists battle the monorail true believers in the campaign’s final weeks. A report from the trenches.

Tuesday, September 24, 7:00 p.m., 42 days to Election Day
Derek Stanford is here at University Baptist Church looking for answers. He's one of 75 or so 43rd District Democrats who are convening in the church's dingy auditorium to consider endorsements for the upcoming election. Monorail is the last item on the endorsement agenda, right after Referendum 51.

Thirty-one-year-old Stanford is a statistician. He moved to Seattle from Los Angeles in 1993. He lives in the University District and works at a software company with offices on Lake Union. The proposed Green Line won't speed his daily commute, but he supports monorail anyway. "We need some kind of mass transit system along the lines of a subway," he says. "The price of a subway is prohibitive. Monorail seems to be the closest thing that doesn't cost as much." In other words, truly rapid transit has to be built below ground or above. Tunneling is too expensive. That leaves monorail.

When it comes time for the monorail debate, Seattle City Council Member and monorail supporter Nick Licata goes up against Henry Aronson, co-treasurer and principal spokesperson for Citizens Against the Monorail. Licata cites monorail's well-vetted budget estimates, its cost-effective technology, and the "accountability" inherent in having two elected members on its nine-member governance board. Aronson warns of a motor vehicle excise tax (MVET) that will last "forever," urban blight, and $1.5 billion wasted on a Ballard-to-West Seattle monorail that doesn't solve any of the region's dire transportation problems.

A forceful Aronson outmatches the inexplicably meek Licata, who fails to counter any of Aronson's criticisms. The MVET is not forever. The future monorail authority can borrow up to $1.5 billion to construct the Green Line and collect the proposed 1.4 percent motor vehicle excise tax until the debt, plus interest, is repaid. Even if the project encounters big cost overruns or a giant spike in interest rates, the MVET's life span is limited by the bond term, which is 30 years at the outside--pretty standard for large public works projects. The ordinance also prevents monorail from extending the MVET without public approval once principal and interest are repaid, and from using MVET dollars to pay operation or maintenance costs. Plus, if you itemize on your federal income tax return, your share of the monorail MVET is deductible.

Unfortunately for monorail, Licata is mum on these and other counterpoints. Monorail has won endorsements from 11th, 34th, 36th, and 37th District Democrats, the League of Women Voters, the Washington State Council of City and County Employees, the Sierra Club, Teamsters Local 763, and others. Tonight, the 43rd votes 34 to 18 not to endorse, with nine votes urging no recommendation. As for Derek Stanford, he leaves the meeting still committed to monorail. "I didn't hear anything that dissuaded me," he says. "I feel more sure of my position in favor."

···

After the first monorail initiative passed back in 1997--with 53 percent of the vote--city government tried ignoring it, dismissing it, choking off funding for it, and finally repealing the damn thing, while Seattle's business establishment, cozy aboard the Sound Transit gravy train, quietly withheld its support. Monorail was revived in 2000 when I-53, the second monorail initiative, grabbed 57 percent of the vote. The idea has been gaining momentum ever since. Despite the best efforts of anti-monorail activists, 55 percent of respondents in the latest Seattle Times poll still "support" or "strongly support" the proposed Ballard-to-West Seattle Green Line.

Critics dismiss monorail as more religious experience than transportation solution. It's true that in order to embrace the idea, you have to take a leap of faith. You have to believe that a Green Line will eventually come to pass, and that it will beget a Blue Line and a Purple Line and ultimately a citywide monorail system, and that people will ride this system and it will be good. Critics call this "drinking the Kool-Aid," and inveigh against monorail's cost estimates (too low), ridership projections (too high), tax increase (too big), governance structure (too clubby), ballot language (too vague), parking provisions (inadequate), blocked views (sacrilegious), and promise of profitability (preposterous).

Monorail backers respond dutifully:

· The Green Line cost estimates were reviewed by five separate professional groups, including one engaged by the city who called the numbers "highly credible."

· The biggest problem with ridership projections is the way opponents misinterpret and misrepresent the numbers (see Josh Feit's sidebar).

· A tax of $10 per $1,000 of assessed value is nothing to sniff at, especially if you drive a Lexus SUV. But public transit projects are expensive. On the upside, you can take a federal deduction for your MVET contribution, and once the Green Line opens in 2007, you may save as much in gas and parking as you pay each year in taxes.

· The proposed structure of the nine-member monorail board (two elected, seven appointed) reflects a concern about maintaining momentum. The city's monorail analysis cited "management continuity" as a "major risk factor" in the project's success. To maintain momentum, it makes sense to retain the cream of the current monorail board. There is a provision in the ordinance requiring the Seattle Popular Monorail Authority (SPMA) to let voters decide by 2009 on whether to elect a majority of SPMA board positions.

· There's $25 million in the monorail budget to create parking around stations--Interbay, for example--that aren't easy to reach by bus or on foot. Critics say it isn't enough. But public transit is supposed to be about not driving your car, remember?

· Some blocked views is the price you pay if you want monorail service to downtown hot spots like the Pike Place Market, Westlake Center, and the Colman Dock pedestrian walkway. The good news is that advances in technology allow today's guideways to be higher, slimmer, and spaced farther apart, and monorail riders will enjoy some of the best views in the city.

· Promises of profitability are always risky business, especially in the public transit arena. But it does happen. Japan's Tokyo-Haneda Airport monorail line turns a profit, and so does Seattle's current two-stop monorail.

There's a tried-and-true campaign strategy called FUD--fear, uncertainty, and doubt. It goes like this: opposition forces raise concerns, usually one a day. The concerns don't have to be legitimate. They don't even have to be true. They just have to introduce a kernel of fear, uncertainty, or doubt in the public mind. It's a great way to bury a solution. But FUD doesn't solve the problem, which is congestion. Whether you support monorail or not, the plan does address Seattle's congestion problem.

Monorail is not a cure for congestion. Supporters don't make that claim, and they are smart not to, because it's a false promise. Congestion is here to stay. Anyone who claims that crisscrossing the city with train tracks (elevated or otherwise), expanding 405, or widening the Viaduct will eliminate Seattle's traffic snarls is lying or delusional, or both. These transit projects may, if we're lucky, keep congestion from getting worse, but none of them will eliminate it. Monorail is another transportation choice--an option that, depending on time of day and destination, is preferable to idling (and idling and idling) on I-5 or Elliott Avenue or the West Seattle Freeway. Think of New York again, a city that has both bad traffic and a fast, efficient, diverse mass transit system. "You still can't drive in New York," says Derek Stanford, who spent a week in Manhattan last August. "But you can get around anyway." Bingo.

Opponents don't seem interested in a congestion debate. By and large, the organized opposition to the monorail can be divided into two camps: NIMBYs and regionalists. NIMBYs are understandably worried about what monorail guideways and stations and the associated development might do to their neighborhoods; regionalists, many of whom are Sound Transit supporters, are just plain worried. Given light rail's history of mismanagement, cost overruns, and unaccountability--none of Sound Transit's board are elected--and the fact that it's hard to subsidize regional transportation projects without Seattle dollars, it's no wonder regionalists view monorail as a threat.

In the end, some of the critics' charges may turn out to be true. Large urban transportation projects are, by their nature, complicated and costly and full of surprises. Worst of all, they rely for success on that most unreliable of variables: human behavior. Seattleites need to do more than vote yes on monorail; they need to ride it. Usage is what makes public transit investments pay off.

"People feel less guilty about driving when they supported transit for someone else," says Dr. Steven Polzin, director of public transit research at the University of South Florida's Center for Urban Transportation Research. "But empty trains or buses or monorails don't reduce congestion." In Polzin's view, monorail has two advantages. One is grade separation. Elevation equals shorter, more reliable travel times. The other monorail plus is something Polzin calls "aura." Different modes of transit possess their own power to draw riders and support by, for example, appealing to a sense of nostalgia (trolleys) or futurism (monorail). Planners underestimate the significance of the aura effect at their peril. "Those traits," says Polzin, "are what gets the public and the business community excited about the system."

Aura has helped carry the monorail this far. But if the 43rd District Democrats meeting is any indication, critics may be starting to chip away at the public's resolve. Can you say FUD?

···

Thursday, September 26, 7:30 p.m., 40 days to Election Day
Talk of conspiracy swirls around the League of Women Voters' forum at Town Hall. Earlier in the day, the city's normally reliable monorail suffered its second breakdown in five days, and monorail supporters can't help wondering, only half in jest, whether opponents have launched a sabotage campaign. (The very next day, a test run of New York's elevated AirTrain, intended to carry travelers to and from Kennedy Airport, ends in derailment, killing the young conductor.)

ETC board chair Tom Weeks is kibitzing in a back corner with Peter Sherwin, fellow ETC board member and executive director of Rise Above It All. A few minutes later, the pair is joined by Dick Falkenbury, the cabbie and monorail padrone who started the movement in 1997. "Confident," says Falkenbury, when asked how he feels about the monorail's chances at the polls. The only missing member of the monorail Fab Four is Joel Horn, ETC's technical program director and the man who wrangled all the facts and figures into the monorail proposal that will be on the November ballot.

Once again, monorail gets second billing behind Referendum 51, the $7.8 billion statewide transportation funding package. When that lively debate ends, half of the 100-plus crowd clears out, and Tom Weeks and ETC board member and State Senator Jeanne Kohl-Welles take their seats onstage alongside Henry Aronson and Richard Borkowski (who is representing People for Modern Transit, a Sound Transit support group).

Kohl-Welles, a Queen Anne resident, leads things off by extolling the monorail's convenience. Borkowski thanks the ETC for a comprehensive proposal that, unfortunately, demonstrates that monorail is "neither feasible, nor affordable or appropriate." Aronson gets heckled when he tries to make his point about the pointlessness of a Ballard-to-West Seattle line. "When was the last time you turned on drive-time radio and heard about the backup between West Seattle and downtown?" he asks. "Every day," comes the weary reply from a West Seattle commuter in the crowd.

Weeks makes a much better foil for Aronson than Licata, forcefully promising that monorail "can and will" operate at a profit. Then, in response to Aronson's claim that the Green Line won't solve any of the city's congestion problems, Weeks reminds the audience about a transportation study commissioned by former mayor Paul Schell. Reacting to pressure from monorail supporters, Schell, no fan of monorail, asked staffers in 2001 to explore ways to relieve congestion in the Ballard-to-West Seattle corridor. To everyone's surprise, they recommended monorail.

···

Despite the barrage of criticism, there are really two tradeoffs with monorail: One is views, the other is money.

Seattle is a city of views. Dramatic mountain and water vistas give the city its unique character. Members of the Seattle Design Commission and some neighborhood groups are already cringing at the thought of elevated tracks and stations. Technology has made the monorail footprint smaller, but it can't make the trains or the stations disappear.

"Visual pollution is just as bad as other kinds of pollution," says Larry Pflughoeft, who voted against endorsement at the 43rd District Democrats meeting. Seattle Design Commission chair Donald C. Royse made his feelings known in a Post-Intelligencer column outlining concerns about monorail guideways "blocking views of Elliott Bay." Henry Aronson, who lives on Second Avenue along the proposed Green Line route, is more dramatic: "Monorail is going to be a blight in Ballard, a blight in West Seattle, and it will desecrate downtown."

A minority of Seattle residents, particularly along Second Avenue south of Stewart, will see their views change, especially when a train goes by. On the other hand, says Joel Horn, everyone gets to enjoy "the best views of Puget Sound imaginable" from the monorail, as well as a faster, more efficient way to move around the city.

Many Seattleites actually like the way the monorail looks; there are people who live in the newer apartments and condos along Fifth Avenue because they enjoy having a view of the monorail. There are also economic upsides to monorail. "Stations attract development," says Don Chen, executive director of Smart Growth America, a Washington, D.C.-based coalition that promotes transportation choices. "They're not only a mode for efficient transportation, they're a center of economic activity."

Still, there's no getting around the fact that if the monorail initiative passes, there will be a lot more concrete in the air. "Is it worth the tradeoff?" asks Joel Horn. "That's a good debate. We tell people to go to Fourth or Sixth Avenues, stand at any cross street, look back at the Fifth Avenue monorail, and if you think that that view blockage is too much, don't vote for it. We're not saying it will be beautiful. We're saying go look. Form your own opinion."

But, adds Horn, remember to keep the bigger picture in mind. "The real battle here is the battle against the car. We've got these great neighborhood centers and this great downtown, but the only way to get to them is by car, so your whole life revolves around traffic management. How do you get people out of their cars? You create a system that's better. Above ground separates mass transit and car traffic. It gives people time certainty and wonderful views."

The other monorail tradeoff is money, which raises the longstanding city-versus-region debate. Regionalists argue that expanding regional transportation capacity (I-5, 405, etc.) is far more critical than building some silly little urban transit system. They worry that monorail will drain support from statewide transportation packages like Referendum 51, which pays primarily for highway expansion and repairs. It's true that monorail is unabashedly Seattle-centric, and it's about time. It's the reason City Council Member Jan Drago recently drank the Kool-Aid. Expanding 405 or 520 or even I-5 won't help Seattleites get around town--and who's to say Seattleites don't have a right to tax themselves to build an in-city transit system if that's what they want?

One could argue that over time a successful monorail system will lure more drivers out of their cars and generate more development within city limits, both of which would help relieve congestion along key regional corridors. One also has to question the value of expanding roadways in the face of empirical research that shows it doesn't work. More lanes don't mean less congestion. The Washington, D.C.-based Surface Transportation Policy Project (STPP) recently studied traffic congestion in 60 U.S. cities and concluded that expanding highways actually made congestion worse. The extra capacity encouraged more people to take more car trips and generated more sprawl, which created even more traffic.

Of all the money-related issues, trust may be the single biggest hurdle for voters weighing the cost of monorail construction. In the era of Sound Transit, cost estimates for transportation projects have come under intense scrutiny. "People just don't trust large-scale construction projects," says Tom Weeks. Which is why the ETC made every effort to generate realistic cost estimates. This is where the financial arguments raised by monorail critics--particularly those from the Sound Transit camp--really start to smell like FUD.

The numbers critics are attacking have been reviewed by one independent cost estimator; two firms who build elevated rail systems; Golder Associates, an independent consulting firm hired by the city; and Daniel Malarkey, former managing director of the Seattle office of ECONorthwest (the region's largest economic consulting firm) and now an independent consultant specializing in cost-benefit analyses. "Our numbers," says Weeks, "will withstand any scrutiny."

Calling the Green Line's estimates "highly credible," Golder Associates concluded that there is a 50 percent chance the Green Line will cost less than its $1.7 billion (in "year-of-expenditure" dollars) projected cost, and a 90 percent chance that it will cost less than $2.05 billion (year-of-expenditure dollars). The difference has to do with "risk events"--earthquakes, for example--that could drive up the cost. Either way, Golder expressed a "high degree of confidence" (95 percent) that the proposed 1.4 percent MVET will cover the expense of building the Green Line.

As for Daniel Malarkey, he cautions that the monorail project is in its infancy, and that a lot can go wrong between now and the completion of the Green Line. But he calls the thoroughness of the ETC's cost estimates "unprecedented" for a Seattle transit project.

To illustrate, Malarkey points to the $1.7 billion estimate (again, year-of-expenditure dollars) for building the Green Line. This number, he says, represents the true "total cost" of the project, combining the $1.26 billion to actually construct the Green Line with the roughly $400 million in related costs (such as those of operating the Seattle Popular Transit Authority, the agency that will succeed the ETC, maintaining a cash reserve, and planning for future monorail lines).

Related costs are often left out of budget estimates for large transportation projects. The omission can generate mistrust and frustration down the road when a project's budget starts to balloon. In 1996, at the request of Sound Transit citizen review committee member Emory Bundy, Malarkey reviewed Sound Transit's cost estimates. The proposed budget for light rail's initial segment did not, for example, include the cost of converting the bus tunnel, maintaining cash reserves, or planning for future lines. The public suffered sticker shock when the bus tunnel cost was factored in.

Bottom line, says Malarkey, "$1.7 billion is a good number." But is it a good investment? How do we measure the benefits relative to the costs?

The benefits of a monorail system include shorter travel times, more reliability, some freed-up road capacity, fewer auto-related accidents, and cost savings in gas, maintenance, and parking for drivers who leave their cars at home and take the monorail. Analysts like Malarkey assign dollar values to these benefits, add them all up, and compare the total to a project's cost. In the case of monorail, benefits exceed costs by $123 million. If you compare monorail's cost-benefit to alternatives like, say, Sound Transit, the cost-benefit ratio gets better. Malarkey's Sound Transit analysis, performed on 1996 cost estimates, showed that the cost of the light rail project exceeded its benefit by $2.1 billion. (The cost of the light rail project has nearly doubled since then.) "As I compare the monorail to other transportation choices, it starts looking really good," says Malarkey. "It is a reasonable public investment, and it's hands down better than light rail."

While an argument can be made for a light rail system that serves the region, it may not be the best solution for Seattle's urban-mobility problem. For this problem--how to construct a rapid transit system in the middle of a crowded, hilly city--elevated technology may work better. "If you want a transit system to work, what you have to have is speed," says Tom Rubin, a Los Angeles-based expert on planning and financing large transportation projects. "Speed is expensive. But properly done, monorail could work very well in your area."

Sunday, September 29, 4:30 p.m., 37 days to Election Day
The crowd on Tom Weeks' backyard deck parts for Cindi Laws, who carries a roasting pan loaded with freshly steamed clams. The clambake/fundraiser at Weeks' beachfront home near the Fauntleroy ferry dock is packed with monorail fans. But with the possible exception of Dick Falkenbury, Cindi Laws is the most devoted.

Laws drank the Kool-Aid way back in 1985 when, newly arrived from Eastern Washington, she would drive down from her Everett home, park at Seattle Center, and hop the monorail to her job downtown. "It was my favorite thing to do," she says. She eventually went to work for former U.S. Senator Brock Adams, and recalls how Adams secured $2.5 million in the 1991 transportation authorization to expand the monorail. Both the money and Adams disappeared in a swirl of allegations about sexual misconduct. When Falkenbury resurrected the concept of an expanded monorail, Laws, who lives in Alki now, jumped at the chance to get involved.

She has served on the ETC board for the last two years. Unlike other monorail supporters, Laws isn't troubled or surprised by the questions being raised about the monorail plan. "Let's get over it," she says. "It is a big project. Anybody who thinks we can get through a campaign and ask for $1.7 billion and not have any criticisms has been smoking too much crack. The naysayers are going to have their say."

Laws is, however, concerned that the vocal (and, in her view, largely NIMBY) naysayers might thwart a really good idea. "We really have to look at what is more important," she says. "That we move 20 million people a year, or that we let a small handful of greedy old white men dictate our future? Do we want to be tied to asphalt, sitting in traffic, breathing carbon monoxide fumes, driving seven miles from West Seattle to downtown and having it take over an hour--as it sometimes does? Or do we want to get to and from work, school, and play safely, efficiently, and without pollution? I think the answer is obvious."

I started working on this monorail story in July. In the last three months, I've talked to monorail fans and monorail foes, transportation experts, rail researchers, budget analysts, financial consultants, activists, urban planners, bureaucrats, engineers, politicians, academics, self-appointed monorail historians, and just plain citizens like Derek Stanford, trying to decide--for myself, at least--whether monorail really is a good idea. I have to say, and not without some trepidation, I've been convinced. I'm voting yes. Pass the Kool-Aid.

For nearly seven years, despite opposition and apathy from the city's establishment, the monorail has managed to survive, and even thrive. Voters recognized that a citywide monorail system deserved serious consideration long before establishment types like Tom Weeks and Joel Horn got on board. Even if voters say yes in November, the process will be expensive and contentious, and it will be a long time before the system is built out enough to benefit everyone. But a citywide monorail system isn't pie in the sky, and voting yes on the Green Line is the first step.

"Voters have twice said yes to the monorail [already]," says Laws. "Third time's the charm."