Why only monorail?

We read that the Monorail recall effort is certified.

Unless the Seattle Monorail Project is able to derail it, a ballot measure that could kill the proposed 14-mile elevated train project will go before Seattle voters in November.

I am against this initiative and will vote "NO" -- but no matter about that for the moment.

What puzzles me is why this "recall" effort -- and recall in quotes because the substance of the initiative is to prohibit the City of Seattle from issuing the permits required to build the monorail -- well I wonder why the initiative does not also prohibit any above-ground transit infrastructure. Why not prohibit any elevated trains?

For background, there is another mass transit effort being built in this region but it is a steel-wheeled program. Some segments of it are proposed to be elevated above grade. The neighborhoods -- my own, in fact -- through which these elevated might pass are ferociously against such a proposal and want the line to be in a tunnel.

Why, I wonder, did not the anti-monorail folks include any above-grade transit? They could have immediately picked up a lot of votes in my neighborhood; and for a program that won by only 877 votes, even a small swing could be decisive. So why not pick a principled -- if indeed I think wrong -- approach of opposing all elevated transit? That position has a certain reasonableness and common-sense appeal. It might very well have won the election for them. But to pick out only monorail..well it seems odd and not even in their own electoral self-interest. Unless of course the whole anti-monorail business is actually driven by Sound Transit, the builder of a steel-rail system. Then it would make enormous sense.

Comments

[David Sucher]

Adam, I can see where you are coming from. But I don't think that the issue is referenda; in fact several of the most important and successful things -- shoreline management, for instance -- have emerged out of initiatives of the people.

I think it's more a matter of our endless desire and proclivity to rethink things. We are not so much the Evergreen State as the Hamlet State.

[Adam Krom]

Good points. Sometimes the people can truly provide leadership that pols just can't, and some countries, such as Switzerland, have a very advanced referendum process.

With that said, many bad ideas emerge from the referendum process as well -- and they often get codified as virtually immutable state constitutional ammendments. For example, the anti-tax movement puts states in a strait jacket (witness Colorado general funds and Washington transportation funding). Then there are social refereda dealing with gays, immigrants, and other groups. There are so many examples of half-cooked ideas.

I don't suggest that elected representatives don't come up with some disastrous legislation. However, it is generally far easier to change legislation passed in the normal manner than "mandates" received from the general electorate. We'll have to see what the outcome is in Florida, for instance, where the Governor, almost inexplicably, has chosen stopping the bullet train as his personal mission. But it's an uphill fight (thankfully).