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Seattle Architect Proposes An Elegant Alternative to Light Rail
By Jeff Boone
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For a copy of Jeffrey Boone's thesis, "Only Connect: A proposal for an alternate urban transit system," contact the author at 2136 N 63rd Street, Seattle, WA 98103, boonejt@yahoo.com, (206) 234-1312. Seattle City Councilmember Peter Steinbrueck has scheduled a public forum on the monorail and Seattle’s neighborhoods at 6 p.m., July 27 in Council Chambers, 11th floor, Municipal Building, 600 Fourth Avenue. |
Down in Rainier Valley, the vultures are circling: Seattle Housing Authority (SHA) and a host of other property developers have already put in their bid for the numerous business and residential properties along Rainier Avenue and Martin Luther King Jr. Way that will be acquired by Sound Transit in the course of building an at-grade light rail line. Up at the other end of the line, Roosevelt residents worry that Sound Transit will choose a freeway alignment to Northgate, which will take 34 homes out of the neighborhood and bypass the rapidly-growing Roosevelt business district completely. Members of the University community are upset that a freeway alignment could close the popular farmer's market at University Heights so Sound Transit can sink a hole in the playground for spoils removal; the farmer's market closure and Sound Transit activity at the site may put the community center out of business. Brooklyn residents, who will support two stations and attendant construction in the very near future, have just learned that Sound Transit intends to clearcut the leafy western edge of the University of Washington campus along 15th Avenue Northeast between Northeast 43rd and 45th streets in order to construct a station at that corner of the campus. And it's unlikely that downtown, Broadway and U-District merchants will come out of the construction period wholly intact.
These are only a few among the many casualties of the rolling wrecking ball known as the Central Link light rail line, a 21-mile run from SeaTac airport to Northeast 45th Street in the U-District. The line will cost $2.1 billion, or $100 million per mile; $1 billion of it will be spent on a three-mile tunnel from downtown to the U-District. Sound Transit is already half-a-billion dollars short and needs an additional half-billion to extend the line to Northgate. Sound Transit says construction will last five years. Others say 10. Some wonder if it's time for a reality check, but you won't find those naysayers on the Sound Transit board. The Mayor, City Councilmember Richard McIver and King County Councilmember Greg Nickels remain stubbornly optimistic that light rail will be integral to solving the region's transportation crisis: demolition and displacement may be bitter medicine, but it's good for us.
Into the debate steps Jeffrey Boone, a newly minted architect out of the University of Washington. Boone has proposed a mass transit alternative to light rail, what one might call a 21st century solution for the 21st century: run a monorail up the I-5 corridor.
It's an elegant proposal Boone devised in the course of writing his master's thesis. And it has caught the attention of both King County Councilmember Kent Pullen and Sound Transit; Pullen likes it, Sound Transit says it is not feasible.
Boone characterizes I-5 as an underdeveloped swathe of land that could support a monorail alignment. Among the benefits, according to Boone, is that a freeway alignment means less land acquisition, service to a wider demographic, no impact on freeway capacity and a more attractive ride than the light rail system. The reduction in property takes, infrastructure requirements as well as operating and maintenance costs make monorail substantially less expensive than light rail.
Boone notes that a freeway monorail system could be built to Alderwood or Snohomish County in the first phase.
"Your priority," said Boone, "can be extending the line to Alderwood and building priority stations, adding intermediate stations later. With a tunnel you have to shell out [for] the station in the first phase. Cost deters adding stations later."
Monorail, notes Boone, is half the weight of light rail and is much less infrastructure intensive. It can climb hills and make turns, and it is quiet. While critics have pointed out that monorail cars have lesser carrying capacity, Boone counters that monorail systems can provide service at a frequency twice that of a light rail system. For example, the Sydney monorail runs at three-minute intervals; Sound Transit trains will be up to 15 minutes apart.
And Boone fervently believes that light rail will set back transportation ten years.
You have to look at how much it will cost, says Boone, for how little system we'll get.
"Even if we do get funding," says Boone, "it will be 12 years before we get to Northgate, decades before we get to Snohomish or Pierce counties."
Boone estimates that 16-24 miles of monorail could be built along I-5 for the cost of the Portage Bay tunnel alone. Monorail capital costs range from $25 to $60 million per mile; Sound Transit will spend $100 million per mile for the Central Link.
And Sound Transit's strategy, remarks Boone, is to get any riders. For Boone, the point is to get new riders.
"To attract car users, you have to provide an attractive alternative to using regional highways. You have to provide an enjoyable experience."
Boone contends that a 25 mph ride through Rainier Valley and stations 280 feet deep in the U-District will not persuade people to leave their cars at home. And bypassing or omitting major employment and shopping centers, including Southcenter, Northgate and the Duwamish industrial area, is the Achilles' heel of the light rail alignment.
For now, Boone is one of a small group hoping to take his proposal beyond publication as a thesis. "It's a viable contribution to the transportation dialogue," said Boone.
Reader Comments
Discuss this article in the forums!
| Art Lewellan | Jul 28, 2000 | Portland, Oregon | transit engineer |
| I've always said that the subway extension is the principle mistake of the LINK Project. At $330+ million per mile for 4 stations, the cost is prohibitive. The line could be put on the intended 1960's route: the express lanes of I-5 to the north. Consider: "If commuting does not decrease, it will increase; always overwhelming highway & transit capacity". You can quote ME on that. Theoretically, light rail systems can be designed to first serve the commuter & then decrease the need for commuting. This requires economic diversification of the suburbs; bringing revitalization to depressingly garish, suburban commercial districts. Ultimately, the I-5 express lanes will not be needed for auto traffic during the rush hours, because the revitalization brings more workplaces closer to the suburban station areas. The new economic activity also builds "off rush hour" ridership. I suggest directing the line off the express lanes just north of the bridge & follow along I-5 on the surface or elevated, with as little impact as possible. And, where impact is unavoidable, ameliorate with landscape improvements, economic development or short segments of underpass or subway. I defend the MLK surface route. The safety improvements created should be thoroughly discussed & defended. I suggest following I-5 after MLK & possibly utilizing Interurban Ave South, to a station at South Center & then turn west to the airport. I believe that light rail is still the best choice, but the subway alignment will be a shrill, dullsville ride, serving too few people, while it bankrupts the transportation pocketbook. Avoiding the subway extension will save enough to both reach Northgate & upgrade connecting transit; another necessity. | |||
| Jerry Johnson | Jul 29, 2000 | Port Orchard, WA | Ferry boat engineer |
| Jeffery Boone presents a well researched article which, in my opinion, neglects one important point. To be successful, monorail needs to carry many passengers from where they live, to where they want to go, then back again. They can go quickly, quietly, safely and cheaply above the fray. They are versitile enough that they can follow arterial streets, alleys, cut across wetlands or gullys, and they can climb hills better than anything else. The point is they can go anywhere, including the median strip of the freeway. | |||
| Art Lewellan | Jul 30, 2000 | Portland, Oregon | transit engineer |
| What the existing monorail system needs is modest expansion. If the system were extended a mile or two, with routing that converts the limited "back & forth" line into a "continuous running circulator" (loops at each end), 2 new stations would increase the destination to destination index from today's 2 possible trips to over 10 possible trips. If 2 new stations are added on each end, the possible trips increase to over 30. This would give Seattle an improved service monorail at a modest price. The capacity & speed of light rail is greater than monorail. The trick with either system is to reduce the impacts & construction costs. This can be done with LINK light rail, as I suggested earlier, but I suspect "special interests" are dictating route selection; exactly what happened with Portland's rejected South/North MAX. Portland's new "Interstate MAX" proposal, clearly shows that simplified engineering reduces impacts & costs. There is more support for Interstate MAX in Portland (& Vancouver) than there was for the over-engineered South/North MAX, whose unacceptably high environmental impacts were so shocking, they weren't printed in the local paper or reported on the TV. I continue to fight for light rail, but it cannot be overengineered by unfettered construction & development interests with blank checks from the public treasury. | |||
| Roger Pence | Aug 03, 2000 | Seattle | planning consultant |
| Unfortunately a freeway alignment for rapid transit (whatever the mode--light rail or monorail) fails to serve key regional destinations such as the U. District, Capitol Hill, and First Hill, not to mention Rainier Valley. Can you imagine what it would be like to exit such a system at the NE 45th Street freeway overpass to face a transfer to a shuttle bus to get to the University? You might make it there--15 or 20 minutes later. Freeway alignments look attractive to folks whose worldview is shaped by the private automobile. The need for connections to where people actually live and where they actually work (or go to school) are conveniently overlooked. Sound Transit, for all its faults, is trying to serve these high-traffic areas directly, without forcing riders to make inconvenient and time-consuming connections via shuttle bus. | |||
| Jeff Boone | Aug 07, 2000 | ||
| The article presented only a hint of the complete research and proposal I developed. Unfortunately, many of the comments are based on assumptions. For example, I did not propose a station at NE 45th, nor did I propose using express lanes. The University Station would be at NE 40th, 5 minute walk from the heart of campus, and accessible to expedient shuttle service or a branch line (people mover, monorail, etc). A freeway monorail would be the regional spine, into which neighborhoods could tie as they deemed appropriate. The freeway, one should remember, is already heavily populated with individuals who A freeway monorail would not only serve major regional commercial and cultural destinations better, it would actually serve the REGION and have more potential in getting people out of their cars. (Sound Transit, at best, will actually reach Snohomish or the Eastside some 20-30 years from now.) According to the Economic Development Council of Seattle and King County, Sound Transit's tunnel will primarily serve current transit users -- and METRO already serves the UW-downtown quite well. Is it fiscally responsible to spend a billion of our scarce and precious transportation dollars simply to pick up current bus users? This tunnel comes at the expensive of extending regionally, and picking up current car drivers. It is sheer fantasty to believe these car drivers will be attracted to using stations up to 23 stories underground and 200 ft deep tunnels. A freeway monorail would provide an ENJOYABLE, expedient and highly-visible alternative to freeway congestion. It would minimize our dependence on the freeway and help to alleviate the burden placed on our neighborhoods due to the overflow of freeway congestion. L.A. made the mistake of siphoning billions of transportation dollars into a light-rail subway system plagued by cutbacks and cost overruns, and the demand for more freeways has only increased. And subway ridership is dismal. Sound Transit will only strengthen the region's distrust of public transportation and demand for automobiles. Another thing to mention. Rainier Valley deserves better transportation, but the idea of serving an area by destroying it and gentrifying it is a form of new urban renewal. Also, planners envision an at-grade transit boulevard such as the Greenline in Brookline, MA. However, successful at-grade light-rail systems always run very small trains, and never run as primary regional lines. Sound Transit plans to divide and conquer MLW like a ghost of RH Thomson Expressway -- noisy, dangerous and a gash as wide as I-5. Rainier Valley simply is not the appropriate location for a regional line as people will not choose to leave their cars behind to travel 25mph, stopping at every light and station along the way. It will actually take twice as long to get to the airport than it currently does by bus from the downtown. I recommend people check out lightrail.com where one will see that Sound Transit is by far the most expensive light rail system listed (that is, of course, except the disastrous subway in L.A.) I also recommend people research transit studies for the region over the last fifty years. The Puget Sound Council of Governments, for example, argued in the 80s that a light-rail system to the UW would be very problematic because the stations would be too deep and the service would be no better than METRO. It also argued that the idea of a local UW transit system was contradictory to the idea of a regional system. In addition, not one prior to RTA recommends the Rainier Valley as a regional line (too circuitious, and comes at the expense of serving BOEING, the port and rest of the major employment area of the Duwamish.) Anyway, please contact me if you would like to see the whole proposal and talk in more depth. It is a new proposal for using the I-5 corridor. | |||
| jim passi | Aug 11, 2003 | shoreline wa. | camera shop |
| i dont think very many people are going to use it much i think a few will but not many to pay for it | |||
| dan muphy | Dec 19, 2003 | redmond | |
| I truly believe that the problem is getting people off the steets and into mass transit. If we used a regional freeway system people would stop riding the buses that commute long distances on the freeway and thus free them for more localized routes from the stations to the surrounding neighborhoods. If there were more busses on a looping route to and from the station, then the wait from the time the bus comes, to the time it arrives, and the MONORAIL departs, would be minimal. Convience would not be sacrificed any more than trying to drive on a freeway that hasn't seen any reduced traffic(most traffic was reduced on side streets). If people were stuck in traffic on the major freeways, and they noticed a monorail passing them every 5-10 minutes, I guarantee increased ridership. People could drive to a park and ride. The critism that the park and rides already are overcrowded does not apply because most of the current park and ride commuters would be boarding a monorail. As Mr. Boone stated this is the spine, not the skin. It should link everything together as the central nervous system does in our own bodies. Without it, we couldn't function properly. Without a regional monorial(preferably next to the freeway) our mass transit dreams will fail to function properly. Why wait until we waist precious money. Sound transit should at least be considering this option, IF they are going to be the one running this mess. My final comment is that I work in downtown Seattle; If i had the choice between sitting in traffic and then having to pay for parking, or jumping on a bus which then arrives at a station just prior to a train's departure time....hmmmmm. What makes the most sense? | |||
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