Rising from slumber for a moment to deal with tom-foolery

Big news in Seattle is that the people who have always feared (for god knows what reason) the monorail are now on the rampage urging that it is Time for a Mercy Killing.

Although (Mayor) Nickels is ratcheting up the pressure, it's not enough. It's time for him and other Seattle leaders to realize that no one else is going to do the dirty deed. It's time for Nickels, the City Council, Seattle legislators, and the voters to stop kissing the monorail to death. It's time to use the "brave man's" sword and be done with it.

I find this so odd. Don't the opponents realize that a hasty, intemperate and over-reaching (legally) attempt by the Mayor and Council to kill the monorail will have precisely the opposite effect?
I'd be careful what I wished for.

Comments

[Greg Bartell]

Someone has to be the grown-up here, and we are lucky to have a mayor willing to fill the role.

Transportation planning in this area is out of control.
The populist appeal of the monorial is very Seattle. "That big old Sound Transit is run by professional bureaucrats who don't listen to 'the people',(snif) so we are going to make our own transit system." Now, the 'peoples' monorail has proven to be grossly expensive to build, and we are afraid to admit it. GIVE ME A BREAK. No other city runs this way.

Meanwhile, those mean bureaucrats at Sound Transit have kept their heads down and kept working, and guess what? We are going to have a light rail system!!!! And it's even going to serve the opressed masses in Rainier Valley, who will watch their property values shoot up when this thing is done.

[Matt]

Um, a goodly portion of those "oppressed masses" in the Rainier Valley will have moved to Renton, Kent and points south either because their businesses were pushed out to build the light rail line (which, by the way, is 1/3 shorter than that promised to voters. Remember that the next time you hear Sound Transit boosters talking about how the agency magically "reformed" itself and how the project is now under budget) or they were gentrified out of their longtime neighborhoods by the rising property values you laud.

That said, the Monorail is most likely toast because the revenue stream is falling short and the project is already over budget.

[clew]

AFAICT all other cities 'run this way', which is to say a mixture of hope, desperation and aspirational accounting. Big Dig? Orange County investments? The score of companies that went bust building London's underground? The only thing this isn't is unprecedented. Not to say we shouldn't improve on it.

Anyhow, I hope the light rail serves Rainier Valley, because they've cancelled so many of their few stations that it won't do anyone else much good, except maybe between the University and downtown - which route is sufficiently well-served by buses and express lanes already that it needs light rail less than the rest of the city.

I am sometimes astonished at how useless it's likely to be for me, given that I live almost exactly above the route and use transit all the time. The stations are too far apart for most of its riders to *walk* to it. It's suburban commuter rail, and won't help city inhabitants unless it pulls cars off the streets... I should start hacking on pay-by-mile systems with some privacy capability.

I'm not too chuffed about the lack of limit on Sound Transit's taxing authority, either.