The monorail scams here have always been about the real estate and concrete rackets making off with billions in public funding. The scale needed to make such a transportation mode useful with Seattle's topography is beyond what the planners ever discuss. (This ain't Vegas) If you can't move more people daily than light rail, you're just wasting money.
It should be no surprise that the current front person doesn't have a real plan.

Does she even know who you are?!?!

She sounds like some sort of narcissist. Which would be okay, actually, except she also sounds like she has no common sense about how to handle different situations, and that's a bad sign.

By the "...many others before her have failed," do you mean those dedicated citizens who fought against a developer controlled city council that fought against the monorail with every bit of power they had? A city council who took every possible step to drive up the cost of that monorail, and force study after study by changing the goal posts?



That's not to say that the current crop is competent at all. Seriously, of the local media, the Stranger is the most likely organization to give the issue the sort of coverage it deserves. You would think that anyone trying to sell the voters of Seattle an idea would bend over backwards to convince the editorial staff of the Stranger that they were professional enough to get it done.

I was a suporter of the monorail idea the last time around, before it all imploded. This time I'm much more skeptical. It would take some convincing to talk me into it again. So far, this current campaign has done nothing right to regain my confidence. I could still be persuaded, but right now I'm leaning on the no side.

This idiocy is just one example. The Stranger was one of the biggest monorail advocates last time. Stranger readers are probably more predisposed to support this kind of idea, being largely fans of transit. So blowing off The Stranger is a terrible political move. Nothing like going out of your way to alienate one of your potential allies. Dumb, dumb move.

Monorail, still a bad idea. There just is no reason to go experimenting with such a novel system simply because we have a leftover from the worlds fair.

whats the worst that could happen? lets go for it! again!

What is her background? Why should we trust this person more than Sound Transit to get high capacity transit to West Seattle and Ballard?

So, SECB, are you reporting that, if we vote for this study, Elizabeth Campbell will be one of the people being paid to carry out the study?

I'd say the narcissist in the room is SECB.

@10 Ah, I see from the Times article the measure does seem to put her on the interim board...

"The ballot measure calls for the new transportation authority to be governed by an interim board of nine members, six of whom are listed in the petition and three of whom would be appointed by the listed six. The listed six are people pushing the proposal, including Campbell."

Putting Campbell in charge of a board with $2M a year to "study a monorail" is about as inspired as creating a fund that gives $2M a year to Tim Eyman, just more lefty.

Sorry we can't suck up to you enough Stranger, with just this poor unpaid schmuck coming to visit you in the palace HQ. Get over yourselves, Jesus

Apparently Ms. Campbell doesn't quite grasp the concept of politicking.
Politicking is the art of selling your campaign to enough people to win, not acting like a self centered, petulant brat who can't be bothered sell your campaign at all.
In politics, "build it and they will come" does not apply.

Have people already forgotten the last Monorail scam?

But main street's still all cracked and broken.

the measure explicitly puts Campbell on the board?? Can I vote "HELL NO" ?

(Thanks for my morning spit-take, UF.)

Obviously Ms. Campbell missed her calling as the head of Seattle Tunnel Partners...

everyone pile on the disorganized volunteers! good thing she didn't post of video of herself killing a mole or something; she'd be the internet's worst human in history of the day. tm

Monorail LOL

@19,
It's impossible for me to resist quoting that classic Simpsons episode every time this monorail issue comes up.

ChristWhatAnAsshole.

@14 Seriously? Failing to show up for a rescheduled meeting puts only one person in the wrong here, and that's the person who failed to show up (and then had the temerity to be rude about it!). If you don't get that then add yourself to the list of people no one should do business with.

The Stranger is one of only a handful of newspapers serving the city. The interview schedule shouldn't be that grueling. Spokespeople generally go out of their way to be available. We aren't talking about an exclusive with The Queen.

I am as avid a past monorail supporter as can be, and this is the first monorail ballot measure I will be voting no on. I believe I would be disrespecting the legacy of past monorail campaigns, whatever their faults, to do otherwise.

Anyone who (A) had a sincere interest in the ETC and the Green Line project and (B) has a clue ... has by now coalesced around Seattle Subway and the effort to build light rail along the Ballard-downtown corridor as part of Sound Transit 3. And in the interest of being grade-separated through downtown, there's going to have to be a new tunnel through downtown. And yes, voters in our Sound Transit subarea are going to be willing to pay for that.

Elizabeth Campbell's appointment-keeping capabilities are nothing more than a sideshow. Come to think of it, her little monorail campaign is itself nothing more than a sideshow.

CAMPBELL: The Municipal League had a question to mayoral candidates – what is the mayor’s job? Thinking it was really about the literal job of the mayor, I looked up the city executive’s duties in the Seattle City Charter. I answered and then expounded upon the fact that the paramount job of the mayor is maintaining the peace and quiet in the city. Silly me, it turned out the rest of the candidates spoke about liking people and wanting to work with people, and all received better Muni League ratings.

She is a West Seattle treasure.
http://westseattleblog.com/2009/08/seatt…

So, No, she would be unable to achieve a productive outcome.

I voted Yes on the monorail vote that promised things that it simply could not deliver, even though I would not likely ever ride it. I do think there are situations and projects that rise to the "good of the city" status. A monorail just didn't get there. Handing Campbell $2,000,000.00 to explore a very expensive solution to a problem that could be solved with more flexible solutions is not something I am going to do.

No, hell no.
I think she would damage this city's ability to find and fund comprehensive solutions to anything she involves herself in.

How's that Big Bertha Tunnel working for you?

Yup, voting for the monorail - maybe this one will use minimalist stations and avoid stupid bridge choices

Since its the same West Seattle / Ballard route, I assume they'll use the same blueprints and re-buy up all the land that was sold off when it dissolved in 2005, which will cost a bit more now. The vote is to study the project, it will need another vote to approve a much higher car tab tax to pay for it, except if that fails, is there a sunset clause that closes this new transit authority down, or will it continue collecting $5 per car?

People seem to forget the last attempt cost 124 million dollars, seriously, 124 million for nothing. Seattle wasted 10 million on fancy self cleaning toilets, but at least they still had toilets.

MononucleosisRail. I'm allergic, no thanks.

"Your time is not more valuable than mine. You have the same 24 hours I do."
That's my second favorite quote of the year!

@ 21, you read all this and only conclude that Campbell is disorganized, and nothing more?

@20 Actually, Campbell fought against the tunnel.

And truthfully, there is nothing, including actually building a overcost monorail, that Campbell and the board could do to even scratch the surface of the expense and disaster that is the tunnel.

But, Campbell really blew this one. Politically, for a measure that goes against the status quo, one has to have the Stranger at least neutral, and preferably positive toward your objective.

A board like this measure envisions will have to function politically, even if it is fighting against the tide of the status quo. She's indicating she doesn't posses the minimum necessary skills to do that.

There was no practical reason of any kind for her to have said this: "Your time is not more valuable than mine. You have the same 24 hours I do."

When one is campaigning, you are ALWAYS asking for everyone else's time, even if it is only to fill in your bubble on the ballot.

If you think the monorail is too expensive, why don't you ponder how much it costs to dig tunnels.

The monorail did not die because it was a bad idea. It died because the politicians business backers could not make enough money from it. A train that does not get into accidents will not need replacement cars, so the train co. loses profits there. The tires will only need to be replaced about twice a century, so no windfall for the tire company.

It's still the better technology. Grade separated. Costs less to build. Less disruptive to other traffic during construction. Less of an eyesore once built than light rail. And conventional minded, corporate owned politicians will have none of it.

If there had been any leadership at city hall, the project would have been given to Sound Transit with a mandate to get it built. All we get from city hall is business as usual, and when we get people in office who aren't insiders the Seattle Times and local TV do everything they can to run them out of town.

This flap is due to my error -- Elizabeth Campbell was not scheduled to be there!! I thought she was since the campaign manager had backed out but actually another board member was to be there instead. And re my comment to you, I was looking at the issue from your perspective when I said "that was a good point", but the conversation was cut short.







Form my perspective Elizabeth Campbell is anything but an incompetent manager of money and projects. She is a successful business woman who has self funded much of this difficult effort. And most importantly she understands the arrogant and insular nature of politics in Seattle and elsewhere. The monorail project was and still is a people's movement. If you expect this operation in its currently unfunded status to be spit and polish with bullet proof scheduling of a full time PR staff then you are not what I expect of the Stranger.







I would agree with liberatusquirkus, get over yourselves. After all you did do an in-depth character assassination on one of her friends and she has a right to be angry. You should do that level of research on more of the questionable local and state pols once in a while.







And regarding the monorail, that is the only transit solution that has a decent shot at ultimately operating out of the farebox. Monorail systems all over the world do this as well as the Seattle Monorail which actually returns money to the City each year. And the former Green Line was estimated to be breaking even 9 years from start of revenue service. That's why they were able to obtain a firm design-build-operate-maintain contract for the project.







And the resulting cost with soft costs for the Green Line would be about $2.1 billion in today's $. Compare that to Sound Transit's $8 billion estimate for a similar but slightly longer route that provides the same level of service, i.e., no street level operations. And for all that dinero we get to subsidize the system in perpetuity and ride through tunnels like rats in a sewer -- but that's at least 15 years out based on ST's track record (assuming the region’s voters will even support a huge amount of $ for new Seattle centric light rail transit in say a 2016 vote), so not to worry.







One other point that people may miss -- the post mortem study shows the Green Line board was badly misled by the state officials regarding the amount of revenue from the car tab fees. Their venial sin, if a sin at all, pales in comparison to Sound Transit’s mortal sin of missing their 2006 target for service over their initial 21 mile line by some10 years and having to triple the cost -– but no one seems to remember that when they pick on the monorail. Of course it did not help that the county exec and the mayor, prodded I suspect by downtown property owners, were relentless in their attacks on the system. Dan Savage got most of it right even though he was a little foul mouthed about it.







So Stranger, man up and help this egalitarian operation do something uplifting for your city. Gotcha may sell papers but it doesn’t help the grass roots movements.

For those of you making comparisons with the state's tunnel you do understand that: 1. the state would be paying a dime toward a monorail. 2. Voting for or against a state highway in a municipal election is ineffectual. 3. Voting for a tunnel study is handing $2,000,000 over to a loon. 4. At the end of the fairy tail district elections will result in a big NO city wide.

The only connection here is that some of you folks are putting them in a statement as if there was a connection between the two.

You want $2,000,000 then get rid of the foot ferry, or start a Transportation Benefit District for those that would actually benefit.

@35, her words speak for herself, it's self-inflicted character assassination.

@35

Please stop calling the monorail a grassroots effort. Its not. All the other transit wonks appose it, and for a lot of good reasons. The most important of which is that the effort lacks any credibility or capability. They haven't bothered to actually engage the public or activists, they haven't bothered to reach out to the politicians, they haven't bothered to do any realistic research, they haven't bothered to create realistic estimates of the project's scope and cost, they haven't bothered to run a "Pro" statement on the ballot, and they didn't bother to show up for this meeting with the SECB.



That is a huge sentence because I kept thinking of things they haven't bothered to do, just in running this small campaign. So I am MASSIVELY skeptical that this same group of people could manage a project of this size.



Add to that the fact that this $2M would be spent to study something that the City and Sound Transit JUST FINISHED STUDYING, and OMG no. (Sorry about the caps)

I'm kind of a transit Nazi. I've rarely met a bike/bus/rail project I didn't like. If you told me you had a new plan to outlaw cars in the city of Seattle I'd at least give it some serious thought.

That said, I'm not touching this with a ten-foot pole. I'll be shocked if this gets 30 percent support.

"Seriously, of the local media, the Stranger is most likely to give the issue the coverage it deserves. You'd think anyone trying to sell Seattle voters an idea would bend over backwards to convince Stranger editorial staff to be professional enough to get it done." That's a Greenwood quote editted, worth repeating.

Think single-track monorail. Minimal visual/physical impact. Stations easier to locate, readily beside upper-story building patios. My 2007 "Circulator Monorail" is 6 miles of 'single-track' with 13 stations, 4 cars every 5 minutes, 2 spare cars maintenanced inside one floor of new nicer Mercer garage. A beautifully scenic overhead route. 1/6 mile subway serves Center House basement/Fischer Dance floor. All-weather access. Due west monorail nicely pops out the hill above Key Arena Plaza, swoops to a simpler NW corner station. KOMO gets the only double-track station to step-out and step-on the next car passing back to stations nearest Center event activity. Wow.

Current route north from Exposition Hall parking garage is 4th straight to KOMO. 5th overhead is decommissioned or kept for future spur line. From KOMO, south to SR99 opening and view southwest Alki Point and Waterfront. Better access than JCFields can do with their Waterfront design. Stations across from Pike Place Market and Coleman Dock.
A Twenty minute cycle Circlator Monorail. Circulator Monorail cost: $500mil. Economic value-added investment exceeds $1bil.

So, Elizabeth Campbell has earlier copies of my work in her position. She, like most of you Stranger/Crosscut/Bike people in Seattle, never fucking bothered to get yourselves a goddamn copy from your fucking city hall, look at it for more than two goddamn seconds and THEN make a fair assessment. Instead the loudest nitwit among you decides what is actually possible with monorail.

Elizabeth's plan is bogus. She's a nice lady though, I've found, tries to be polite, may suffer from acute misinformation like most other much worse frickin Seattler dumass. Please don't put streetcar on 1st Ave. 4th/5th couplet connector would be safer, better overall. Seattle's new streetcar lines are the nation's worst. 1st Ave connector would make them worse.

Wow. When people show you who they are, believe them. I would love to support a monorail in theory, but Campbell showed enough unprofessional and emotionally immature defensiveness (taking a journalistic piece on someone else she is friends with personally--it's not even about you, Elizabeth, or is that concept too foreign for you to understand?--feeling entitled to punch back rather than taking responsibility for screw ups, and punching down by blaming her scheduler), disorganization and overall narcissistic incompetence to convince me to vote no for anything that her name is ever attached to.