SEATTLE — The $1.75 billion in proposed new taxes for Seattle monorail would be better spent to extend the Sound Transit light-rail line to Northgate and Sea-Tac Airport, monorail detractors said in a debate last night, the Seattle Times reported.
Their remarks, in the first of two “Great Monorail Debates” at Town Hall, are sure to heighten suspicions among some monorail backers that opposition to the Nov. 5 monorail ballot measure amounts to a conspiracy by Sound Transit supporters.
Former Seattle Mayor Charles Royer and former Port Commissioner Henry Aronson said an initial monorail line serving the city’s western half solves none of the area’s worst traffic chokepoints, while light rail is designed to be a regional system.
“If we build the Ballard-to-West Seattle monorail tomorrow, we’ll still have the transportation problems we’re facing today,” Aronson said.
Pressed by moderator C.R. Douglas to state what he would do instead of build monorail, Aronson answered, “Northgate to the airport, absolutely.”
“So the cat’s out of the bag!” whispered Patrick Kylen, campaign manager for Rise Above It All, as Aronson spoke.
Aronson and Royer also mentioned replacing the Alaskan Way Viaduct as a better use of the funds, because three-fourths of monorail riders would use other transit if the monorail line were never built.
“If the monorail tax passes, and the day after the monorail tax passes the viaduct comes down, we have taxed all the low-hanging fruit. We don’t have anything left to tax. We’ve got to be smart. This is not smart,” Aronson said.
Though Northgate is beyond an initial Green Line monorail route, monorail activist Peter Sherwin asserted that the monorail will become regional. “When we get to Northgate, there will be another connection,” he said.
Sound Transit is now struggling to garner $500 million in federal funds to build an initial 14-mile line from downtown to Tukwila, a project costing in excess of $2.1 billion. No specific route or funding plan exists yet to reach the University District or Northgate.
In the event both lines get the go-ahead, a monorail agency and Sound Transit could conceivably compete for future federal grants.
Other systems noted
Tom Weeks, chairman of the Elevated Transportation Co., which wrote the monorail plan, said that the nearly 300,000 daily trips on Tokyo monorails show the system can serve a region. He also pointed to the Vancouver, B.C., SkyTrain, which is not a monorail but runs above traffic on elevated railroad tracks, except for a downtown tunnel.
Earlier yesterday, Royer held a news conference, calling on monorail backers and the Seattle City Council to make clear that a monorail endorsement from the League of Women Voters, appearing in the King County Voters Pamphlet, is incorrect.
League switched
Last week the league changed its position to neutral, but too late for mention of its original pro-monorail position to be removed from the voters guide.
King County has updated its online version of the guide.
The league’s endorsement had already been printed on brochures to be mailed soon by the Rise Above It All campaign.
“There’s over 130,000 of them,” Kylen said. “No way in God’s green Earth are we sticking a pen over that.”
On Monday, Jim Compton became the fifth member of the nine-member Seattle City Council to publicly endorse the monorail, joining Heidi Wills, Judy Nicastro, Nick Licata and Jan Drago.
“I think they’ve got good people running this, and it has the potential to be an innovation a lot of other cities will copy,” he said at a pro-monorail rally outside Seahawks Stadium.
His said his support is significant because it creates a pro-monorail majority that can act quickly on permits for the monorail. Additional pro-monorail clout is provided by Nickels and City Attorney Tom Carr, a former monorail-board chairman.
Joining them this week as monorail supporters are former governors Booth Gardner and Mike Lowry. Former governors Dan Evans and Al Rosellini previously endorsed the plan.