Seattle's 1-Track Mind Goes Off the Rail

Now it looks like they will be asked whether they really, really mean it.

Citing spiraling costs, the City Council voted Friday to all but kill the planned 14-mile monorail project by denying street-use permits for it. Then, with just minutes to go before the deadline for submitting initiatives for the Nov. 8 ballot, the city's monorail authority approved a new measure asking voters to approve a scaled-back, 10-mile plan.

"It's time for the people to decide whether they want to save the people's train," said Kristina Hill, a defiant board chair of the quasi-public Seattle Popular Monorail Authority.

The authority acted after the nine-member City Council, following the wishes of Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels, voted unanimously to deny needed permits.

Members said they did so because of huge cost overruns in the projected cost of the line, slated to run from north Seattle, along Elliott Bay, just past the landmark Space Needle, through downtown, past the city's football and baseball stadiums, and over the bridge into the city's West Seattle neighborhood.

"It was a great dream, but the facts are in, and it's time to stop the squandering of millions on pie-in-the-sky projections," said Councilman Richard McIver. "It's over."

Not quite.

As Seattle Weekly Editor Knute Berger put it: Nickels "didn't kill the project, but he put a pillow over its face." Voters, Berger added, will decide whether to "finish the job."

With swallows-to-Capistrano regularity, the monorail idea has gotten public backing here, then been bogged down in squabbles over just how much it would cost and who should pay for it.

The monorail proposals call for expanding the existing 1.2-mile line that runs from downtown to the Space Needle, which was a futuristic hit when it was built for the 1962 World's Fair. While the line is still a popular tourist attraction, no one considers it a major solution to the city's growing traffic congestion.

In an effort to create a transit alternative, voters in 1997 approved exploring creation of a 40-mile citywide monorail system; in 2000 they voted to accelerate planning efforts.