SEATTLE — A proposal to build the nation’s first long-distance monorail line in Seattle was leading late last night, with many absentee votes left to count, the Seattle Times reported.
After trailing early in the evening, the $1.75 billion proposal surged ahead at 11 p.m., prompting hundreds of people at a campaign party in Belltown to begin chanting “Mo-no-rail. Mo-no-rail!”
Campaign leaders cautioned the crowd that the outcome wasn’t decided yet.
“I think it’s going to be a long week, but we’re excited about it,” said Patrick Kylen, campaign manager for the pro-monorail effort.
Poll votes were running 54 percent pro-monorail. Early absentees ran only 44 percent in favor, but late absentees often resemble Election Day poll votes.
About 20 people at an anti-monorail gathering in downtown Seattle turned silent when the late results came in.
Henry Aronson, founder of Citizens Against the Monorail, frowned and said, “I remain cautiously optimistic. It’s just too close to call.”
Before the election, monorail proponents had wooed Seattle voters with a core message:
The hourglass-shaped city is too narrow for more freeways or surface rail. Tunneling is too expensive. Therefore, the best way to move more people from north to south would be to build over the streets, an idea captured in the campaign slogan “Rise Above It All.”
Opponents countered that the $1.75 billion should be saved for more critical needs such as the creaky Alaskan Way Viaduct, widening Interstate 405, or building a new six-lane Highway 520 floating bridge.
The idea of a city monorail system was just a dream of Seattle cabby Dick Falkenbury seven years ago, but by 2002, many voters came to believe it was the most realistic transportation plan being offered.
Unlike the statewide gas-tax increase in Referendum 51, which would fund only the planning phases of a new Highway 520 bridge and a new viaduct, the monorail plan promised to build a tangible project within the city — one that environmentalists favored. And unlike a regional highway-and-transit package being assembled for a possible vote next year, monorail was touted as Seattle’s chance to seize control of its transportation destiny now.
The 14-mile “Green Line” would connect Ballard, Interbay, Seattle Center, downtown, the sports stadiums and West Seattle by 2009.
It would be by far the most ambitious monorail project in the nation, more than three times as long as one under construction in downtown Las Vegas.
Funding would come from an annual tax on motor vehicles of $140 per $10,000 of value.
Voter Gordy Linse of West Seattle was willing to accept the tax, though it would cost him around $250 when he renews the license tabs on his Subaru Forester.
“I do think we need to have alternatives and I believe the citizens need to step up. It’s our time,” he said. “The easier thing would be to pass it off, the harder thing is to consider the common good.”
The Elevated Transportation Co. (ETC), which wrote the monorail plan, called ultimately for five monorails to be built through additional voter-approved taxes or federal grants. Whether people would spend that kind of money — and tax themselves for highways too — was sharply questioned.
The anti-monorail people piled on other issues — so many that they sometimes seemed to contradict themselves.
They said the line wouldn’t attract enough riders, but that the trains would be too small to carry everyone. They said the monorail would be imposed on neighborhoods, but that it would be blocked by litigation. They said the monorail would serve a useless “Ballard-to-West Seattle” corridor, but cried that the concrete guideways would smother downtown.
The ETC failed to publish models of stations and tracks in outlying neighborhoods, leaving voters such as Irene Garvey of Fauntleroy to wonder what the future would look like.
“It would just ruin the Junction,” Garvey said of the pedestrian-friendly West Seattle business district.
The campaign, watched in other cities as a referendum on transit technology, sparked rivalries between monorail backers and supporters of Sound Transit’s planned $2.4 billion downtown-to-Tukwila light-rail line.
“There’s no city in the country even thinking about putting a monorail downtown. It’s a scar on the city,” said Richard Borkowski of People For Modern Transit, a pro light-rail group.
But Kim Pedersen, president of The Monorail Society, said a yes vote could make many cities rethink light rail.
“People will realize, maybe, that monorail works in real cities, instead of just zoos and amusement parks,” he said, alluding to the stereotype created by the Disneyland monorail.
Yesterday’s vote was the third citizen initiative on monorail in recent years, but the first to come with a price tag for taxpayers.
“What other city in the country would tax itself to build a monorail?” Falkenbury shouted to the crowd at the pro-monorail party. “Right now in this country, there are no prouder words than to say, ‘I’m from Seattle.’ “