Seattle Sun Newspaper - Vol. 8, Issue 6, June 2004
Copyright 2004 Seattle Sun. Please feel free to use the article below in your research. Be sure to cite the Seattle Sun as your source.
Seattle Sun letters to the editor
Don't automatically greenlight Green Line
The monorail is the most expensive project in Seattle's history. We cannot afford to build it twice. If the Green Line ends in failure, the rest of the system will never be built. For this reason, if the project is to succeed, it absolutely has to be done right the first time.
Despite a 30 percent budget shortfall, the Seattle Monorail Project (SMP) is rushing ahead. Rather than admit to significant financial problems, they are changing the product that was promised to voters and wasting literally millions of taxpayer dollars on a slick ad campaign to try to convince us that we aren't being duped.
The SMP is proposing many unsatisfactory designs, such as:
· Single-beam sections. Simply put, the dual-beam design promised in the campaign is better, resulting in speedier commutes and a safer system.
Furthermore, it would eliminate the need for huge overhead concrete switches, the smallest of which are 30-foot by 90-foot concrete slabs. This is twice as large as the footprint of an average house!
· Station elevators. The campaign promised escalators. They are more efficient at moving large numbers of people just look at what the airport uses. Since the monorail stations are going to be three or four stories above ground, moving people to the platform is an important concern.
· No parking solution. Although many people would drive to the monorail stations, the SMP is providing no parking. Their "solution" is to make local residents pay for zoned parking permits. Won't this lack of parking discourage monorail use for downtown events?
· No agreement with Metro. There is no agreement between Metro and the SMP to integrate the systems. A person riding the bus will apparently have to pay additional fares when transferring to the monorail.
The City Council has a duty and obligation to ensure that the monorail will work effectively and integrate well with existing public transportation systems. The City Council should demand that the SMP slow down, think, and provide workable solutions to the problems it faces. The City Council has the power to make these demands because it is authorized to grant the building permits that the SMP needs to continue the project.
PLEASE urge your City Council members to demand solutions BEFORE granting building permits to the SMP!
JEFF BELL, Ballard
Monorail may not be worth the cost
On June 15, proposals are due from the two teams competing to build the Green Line Monorail. We will then learn what kind of transit project is affordable given lower revenues and higher costs. As the monorail project heads for its date with fiscal reality an even more important question has dropped out of sight: what will the monorail actually do to improve traffic and mobility in the city?
The monorail's performance should be measured by more than simply how many people it can carry per hour if designed with single-beam sections that slow travel times. The key question is whether the monorail will cause enough SOV drivers to switch to this new/old form of transit technology to reduce congestion and increase mobility. And, of course, performance needs to be measured in terms of cost-effectiveness: are the benefits equal to or greater than the construction costs that will run to more than $3 billion (including interest on bonds) over 30 or 40 years? The benchmark alternative for cost-effectiveness is the existing bus transit system that could be improved to decrease travel time and increase on-time reliability.
The answer, unfortunately, is that the monorail will have only a marginal effect on the city's traffic environment. This is not personal speculation, but a conclusion supported by official documents produced by the Seattle Monorail Project. Take the projected daily ridership of 69,000. According to the STP's ridership consultant, 82 percent of the
monorail's riders will be bus riders. In other words, new transit riders will be just 12,500. This compares to approximately 165,000 cars that now cross the Ballard and West Seattle bridges combined each day. So at the most, traffic volumes in the Green Line corridor will be reduced by 7 percent.
Although small, this would be a welcome outcome if the world would just hold still. But the city's population is expected to continue to grow and by 2020, according to the STP's Environmental Impact Statement, traffic in the area affected by the Green Line will increase by 16 percent if the Green Line is built, and 17 percent if it's not built.
Another performance measure is suggested by the recent STP advertising blitz that featured the catchy phrase: "Imagine 5 million fewer car trips a year." This also seems like a large number until one asks how many car trips do Seattle residents make in one year? The answer, from regional planning studies, is that we make about 600 million, at the average rate of five per household per day. This ignores trips in and through the city by non-residents. Again, the impact of the Green Line on travel is quite small, less than 1 percent.
This should lead us to ask whether these outcomes, or perhaps better outcomes, could be achieved at less cost? The answer can be found in a study of alternative transit improvements that the city completed in 2001. Called the Intermediate Capacity Transit Study, it found that bus travel times in the Ballard and West Seattle corridors could be improved with modest expenditures. These improvements include better signal timing and giving buses priority of movement at signals. Also possible, and one of the changes that has been discussed for the monorail, is to realign more local bus routes to feed express buses at transfer points.
That the Green Line is not a transportation solution is obvious. That transit improvements that are equivalent or better can be achieved at much less cost, is also apparent. But the Green Line will have one attribute that for some has value. It will be a civic icon that will serve to identify and distinguish the city, just as the old and much shorter monorail does now. The question for citizens, and perhaps for voters should the monorail again be subject to ballot approval, is whether we need a new icon. And if we do, is there perhaps one that is less expensive, leaving money on the table for high priority transportation projects? Several come to mind: the Viaduct/Seawall, the Magnolia Bridge, and long-postponed street repair across the city.
DICK NELSON, Fremont
(Editor's note: Dick Nelson is a Seattle native and a former state legislator who served a district that included the Ballard area. He is a technical consultant specializing in transportation and land use policy.)
Field lighting compromise sought
(Editor's note: the following is an open letter to City Council member David Della:)
The Low Income Housing Institute reached a settlement agreement with the Seattle Parks Department on a number of key areas of concern after we had filed a challenge to the adequacy of the Parks Department's Environmental Impact Statement. We appreciate the consideration provided by Eric Friedli and other City staff in negotiating a settlement with us. However, some issues remain where we need your assistance to resolve.
LIHI and the Parks Department were not able to reach agreement on the type of lights or the hours of operation. We respectfully request that you consider the following proposal, which we feel is a valid compromise given the needs of transitional housing residents living at Sand Point:
1. We ask that you support a 9 p.m. shut off for sports field lights. ...
2. We ask that you support no lights one evening a week to provide peace and quiet to transitional housing residents and our neighbors. ...
3. We ask that you ensure that the type of lights installed do not shine into the homes of our residents or create glare. ...
4. We ask that the Parks Department build and landscape a "buffer" between our transitional housing and the