Monorail expansion gets a boost from city study

The future of an expanded Seattle monorail got several shades brighter yesterday when city transportation planners concluded that elevated transit is the best way to move people between Northgate, Ballard and downtown Seattle.

A route linking West Seattle and downtown also is promising, the planners found in a three-year study.

After years of lukewarm support and outright hostility from the city's elected officials, the endorsement is seen as a monumental shift for monorail planners.

"This gives us an incredible head start," said Elevated Transportation Co. Secretary Tom Carr, adding that the city's analysis moves the monorail plan forward "by a couple of years." The ETC and city now predict the monorail could be up and running within seven years, if voters approve the plan next year.

City planners compared elevated rail -- including but not limited to monorails -- with buses running in reserved lanes and streetcar systems. They found that although elevated rail is most expensive at $82 million a mile, it also would attract the most riders -- about 50,000 a day by 2020. Elevated rail would carry as many as 24,000 more riders a day than would buses on the same route.

Elevated rail also appears to have the strongest neighborhood and business support, the study found.

Mayor Paul Schell said he commissioned the transit study in 1998 with the goal of making it easier to get around the city quickly and reliably.

"Spending time looking at each other's bumpers is a waste of time and it reduces the quality of our air," Schell said. "Elevated transit is one of the most viable options."

The city study determined that elevated rail could whisk riders from Northgate to downtown in 21 minutes. The trip from West Seattle would take 13 minutes, it said

The recommendations essentially complete city analysis of the corridor, Schell said. The city's data have been turned over to the ETC, along with the responsibility for planning any monorail there. Schell said his planners will focus on finding the best way to serve an east-west transit corridor around North 45th Street.

Carr praised the study as a "paradigm of how government should work."

"We always hoped that at the end of this process that the numbers would show that monorail is a viable alternative in this corridor," Carr said. "We're very pleased with the outcome."

The timing of the city nod to monorail, coming less than a month before the Sept. 18 mayoral primary election, was immediately dismissed as a political move designed to capitalize on last November's landslide approval of a monorail initiative, the second voter endorsement of an expanded Seattle monorail system.

Marco Lowe, spokesman for mayoral candidate Greg Nickels, called yesterday's announcement "an election-year conversion for the mayor."

Schell has repeatedly fought efforts to build a monorail, said Lowe, who noted that Schell signed an ordinance that repealed the pro-monorail initiative approved by voters in 1997, and blocked a $50,000 Sound Transit grant for monorail studies.

Nickels plans to campaign on behalf of monorail next year, when the ETC puts its construction and financing plan before the voters.

Both Nickels, a King County councilman, and Schell are also members of the board of directors of Sound Transit, which is attempting to build a light-rail system that would largely parallel the proposed monorail route.

Schell said yesterday that he has never opposed the monorail, but thought it was inappropriate for Sound Transit to finance the ETC.

Peter Sherwin sponsored last fall's initiative that required the city to give the ETC $6 million to prepare a monorail plan for voters to consider in 2002. He said he has never felt blanket opposition from Schell, but has seen Schell and most of Seattle's elected officials warm up to the idea in recent months.

Sherwin said he thinks Schell's endorsement helps monorail boosters, though it comes months later -- and far closer to the election -- than he expected.

Dori Costa, who managed the city's transit study, flatly denied any political motive.

"It took this long to get the work done," Costa said.

Harold Robertson, the ELT'S executive director, said it's easy to support monorail at this stage because specifics, such as the exact route, cost and impact on the community are not yet known.

While Schell said the city should seek state and federal dollars to help build a monorail if voters approve the project next year, Robertson said the first phase of the project will require primarily local money.

For the 10.3-mile segment between Northgate, Ballard and downtown, the city estimated the monorail would cost $848 million. The 5.6-mile West Seattle route would cost $586 million. On a cost-per-mile basis, elevated rail would cost nearly 531 percent more than a bus system and nearly 55 percent more than a streetcar system, city planners said.

Robertson said those estimates are plausible but could change with further analysis.

Schell said the monorail could be running well before Sound Transit's light rail, which is on hold while the agency looks for ways to reduce costs. The most optimistic estimate for its completion is 2009.

If built in the corridors now under study, the monorail and light-rail lines won't compete for riders, transit planners said.

"We don't think it would bleed riders one from the other because of the separation between the two lines. The monorail line would be complementary to ours," said Sound Transit spokesman Lee Somerstein.

Somerstein said people in Ballard are unlikely to travel to the University District to catch a Sound Transit train downtown.

Meanwhile, monorail systems are finding favor in other cities as well.

In Las Vegas, construction of a 4-mile monorail began this week while some Colorado residents are pushing an initiative that would dedicate $50 million to explore the feasibility of building a $4 billion, 167-mile monorail linking Denver's airport and mountain resorts.

Vancouver, B.C., has used technology similar to that of a monorail for 10 miles of elevated rail completed in 18 months, a testament to the time saving associated with the pillar system, city and ETC members said.

P-I reporter Chris McGann can be reached at 206-448-8169 or chrismcgann@seattlepi.com

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