“UNLESS AN INVESTOR can be found, the city ought to end this noble but futile venture. There’s no sense — or cents — in prolonging the obvious.” That was the end of a biting editorial from the January 6 Seattle Post-Intelligencer, titled “Time for Monorail to Fish or Cut Bait.” Its subject: the monorail ballot initiative that the establishment thought cute but impractical.
Now, two years after voters surprised pundits by approving the monorail concept, the P-I is calling for monorail planners to bag it, noting that no “substantial [private] investor” has yet demonstrated a willingness to “plunk down the huge amount of cash” necessary. Everyone’s hung up on the fact that voters said yes to the monorail when they were not asked to pay for it.
True, Paul Allen has not stepped forward to buy Seattle a new transportation system (nor has he helped Sound Transit), but monorail supporters say the persistent pessimism is unfair. They complain that the public sector isn’t doing enough to make the private sector believe a monorail plan might work.
Here are two recent examples. The Canadian-based Bombardier Transportation, which holds contracts for Sound Transit’s light-rail plan, has shown enough interest in the monorail proposal to create a “Seattle Monorail Team,” which includes outside engineering and investment consultants. But, in an October letter, Bombardier stressed that a little-known Seattle street law was a major obstacle. (An antiquated section of the city charter designed to prevent turn-of-the-century street cars from gaining an “exclusive franchise” over city streets causes problems for the board responsible for the monorail, the Elevated Transportation Company (ETC). The law prevents ETC from cutting an exclusive deal with a firm to build and run a monorail system.)
An exclusive deal, Bombardier wrote ETC, “is essential to our decision to spend the time and money” to develop a monorail plan for Seattle.
Tellingly, no one in city government has tried to address this tangible problem. Seattle Mayor Paul Schell wrote a lukewarm letter to ETC in early November. “I am interested in the next steps that the ETC intends to undertake,” he wrote blandly. Schell offered no sign that he would help fix ETC’s legal dilemma. In fact, he didn’t mention the issue at all, giving the distinct impression that ETC is entirely on its own.
“Schell has always been very receptive to meeting us,” says Marie Groark, an ETC board member. But most meetings, she says, have been nothing but hot air. “Nobody has closed doors, but nobody has given us great big bear hugs, either.”
ETC hasn’t simply met with a lackluster reception. In some cases, there’s a notable condescension from local politicians. Take the latest example from Sound Transit, which recently rejected two grant proposals totaling $220,000 for the ETC. Were light-rail planners showing contempt for the populist monorail idea, despite the fact that the monorail folks want to build a transportation plan that integrates itself to light rail?
Before the grant proposals were killed, however, Sound Transit Board Member and King County Council Member Greg Nickels came to ETC’s aid. He instructed the Sound Transit staff to find $50,000 to give to ETC to study ways to connect proposed monorail lines to the proposed light-rail line.
“When I asked why the monorail request was denied, Sound Transit staff said they wanted to do ‘real’ projects,” Nickels says.