How Seattle Rejected the Monorail
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 29 พ.ค. 2024
- In 1997, Seattle voters approved a monorail transit system to be built across the city. Beginning as a cab driver's dream and growing into a major civic project, this was on track to become one of the largest systems of its kind in the world. But shortly before breaking ground in 2005, the project collapsed in on itself. This documentary tells the story of how Seattle ended up in this unusual position, and why the city's dream never got off the ground.
Chapters:
0:00 - Intro
4:57 - Chapter I: Thrust Forward or Fall Behind
12:56 - Chapter II: A Head-Scratching Victory
22:16 - Chapter III: Rise Above It All
28:44 - Chapter IV: A Long Way to Go
37:23 - Chapter V: The People's Boondoggle
47:25 - Chapter VI: A Beautiful but Fatally Flawed Dream
55:51 - Epilogue
59:01 - Credits
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This video is for educational purposes and is distributed for non-commercial use. It is not monetized or sponsored. All video footage, images and audio recordings are the property of their original owners and are used in accordance with Fair Use principles.
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Dick Falkenbury's personal account of the events can be read in his book, "Rise Above It All"
www.amazon.com/Rise-Above-All...
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Music:
“Atlantis” by Audionautix
• Atlantis
“Lush Meadows” by Martin Landström
• Lush Meadows
“Open Sign” by Almost Here
• Open Sign
“Drive-Through Dinner” by Magnus Ringblom
• Drive-Through Dinner
“Some” by Hara Noda
• Some
“Revving” by Martin Landström
• Revving
“We Were Like That” by Franz Gordon
• We Were Like That
“Tomorrow I’ll Be Gone” by Franz Gordon
• Franz Gordon Tomorro...
“Save it for Later” by Golden Age Radio
• Save It for Later
“Meet Me in Seattle (at the Fair)” by Joy and the Boys
• Joy and the Boys "Meet...
Great informative video and very well produced. Thanks.
The fatal flaw was the original funding. It should have been an increase to the sales tax, not an increase in the vehicle registration fee. Why? Because the more public transit that gets built going forward, the less number of cars you would have and therefore less funding in the future. I can't believe no one saw the irony in that funding scheme.
Had they gone with a sales tax increase, they would be enjoying a comprehensive monorail system today instead of the 1 mile tourist attraction.
A big thank you to Peter from the members of The Monorail Society for producing this documentary! It seems to me that the mismanagement and secrecy by directors is what killed it. The board and all of its supporters were enthusiastic for monorail, but not the leadership who were poor communicators. How utterly heartbreaking, a loss for Seattle and American history.
Any system is good, on TH-cam you get hits with monorail !
light rail fanboys won ?
The leadership's poor communication wasn't the only issue. They made some very poor decisions with their planning as well.
Single-tracking instead of reusing the existing monorail alignment or shortening the route is probably the one that stands out most, but also trying to force monorail into being a metro substitute connecting parts of the city to downtown, which is not what it's good at. Look at what Tokyo did with theirs: the monorails largely serve the dense inner city, where space for regular railways isn't available, and the heavier rail systems feed it. Had Seattle followed the Japanese example more closely, or even just had Sound Transit and ETC/SMP actually come together and developed a single master plan, things could've been much better, and both projects would've been all the more likely to survive for it.
Had the leadership communicated better, the project might've been saved, sure. But that would just mean a poorly-planned system actually got built, at greater overall cost to the taxpayer, especially after 2003 when parts of the line were going to be single-track and they started cutting stations.
No, what killed it was the funding scheme. It should have been an increase to the sales tax and not the vehicle registration fee. The irony is that the more public transit is built, the less vehicle registration fee funding there would be. I can't believe no one saw the irony in the funding scheme. Had they used an increase in the sales tax, it would have been built because most of the mismanagement and secrecy were due to the lack of projected funding and the need for the high interest bonds.
A "what-if:" had the initial proposal been a shorter, less costly "starter system," might it have succeeded?
I went to the opening of the 2 Line ("Short line") a couple weeks ago, it was an excellent event. Every time I learn more about the history of Seattle public transit it's disappointing; we should be so much further along with more connectivity. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't stop trying, and the energy behind the movement is stronger than ever. Our governor and both senators were at the opening, and it was so crowded I had to wait for the third train despite being there an hour and a half before the first departure.
Wonderful video once again, I'm glad to see one featuring an area I know so intimately now!
Thank you for coming!
I hear that the Link light rail folks are learning from their failures on the original line and improving the design, which is definitely good. Paying subway / metro prices for slow light rail service sure was rough. Here's hoping the at-grade crossings can be upgraded, and speed / frequency increased! Yay for mass transit, let's make it awesome!
You are not mentioning the opening day for crossing from Seattle to Mercer Island?
Oh yeah, right.
@@cr-pol next year
Probably the most frustrating part of seeing these chains of events end in failure is that oftentimes, preventing only a few of the bad decisions might have changed the fate of the project. Seems like that was especially the case here, given the fairly strong public support for the project until the hidden costs came out.
The storry of missmanaging project that have a really good potential to be semi revolutionary is way to common.
its almost as its sabotage every single time.
Agreed. But the critical flaw was the original funding scheme. They should have gone with an increase to the sales tax. Had they done that, it would have prevented most, if not all, of the worse issues later on with this project. It would have been built.
"Easier to build over challenging terrain" at 15:52, exactly, that's a big factor you can justify building an elevated system like a monorail system for, because using monorails leverages the ability to negotiate steep grades and tight curves and rapid transit capacity, like Chongqing's Lines 2 and 3! Chongqing, China is a huge densely populated but mountainous city, with multiple river valleys, so using monorail or an elevated metro is the best option, and Chongqing's monorails are capable of transporting 32,000 passengers per hour per direction! A cool fact about Chongqing's monorail is Liziba station on Line 2 where the monorail goes through a 19-story residential building, the station and the building were constructed together, so it's transit-oriented development to the max! The station uses specialized noise reduction equipment to isolate station noise from the surrounding residences! You can't plan a system without considering geography (whether it's rivers, mountains, soil, etc), transit isn't a one size fits all, and so in mountainous cities or mountainous neighborhoods of cities, or using cable cars, funiculars, elevated metro, or a monorail may be the best option! And geography aside, building elevated transit in general like Vancouver's SkyTrain, Miami Metrorail, Medellín Metro, or the Chicago L is great for grade-separation and thus great frequencies without having to build a whole underground system.
Geography is the reason why the iconic Wuppertal Schwebebahn or Wuppertal Suspension Railway in Germany is the way it is! They ended up building a suspended monorail because Wuppertal is located in a river valley (that's what Wuppertal means; Wupper Valley), and because of steep slopes, the original towns that now makes up Wuppertal expanded lengthwise (resulting in the thin shape of Wuppertal today). It wasn't suitable to build a tram nor a subway, so as a way to both unify the valley and find a place for transit to solve congestion, they built a suspended monorail that followed the Wupper River. It is the oldest electric elevated railway with hanging cars in the world as it opened in 1901!
Pittsburgh would really benefit from a Chongqing style system, both share similar terrain challenges
YOU'RE HERE TOO?
I live in the Seattle area and learned a few things in this video. Thank you!
The Disneyland Monorail actually opened with a funny story....Walt abducted then Vice President Nixon without Nixon's security! The monorail was designed by famed Imagineer Bob Gurr (who designed most of Disneyland's ride vehicles like Haunted Mansion and Autopia). Up until opening day, the monorail would not cooperate with them. Gurr and a German engineer worked tirelessly each night on sketching replacement parts and rushing them to Burbank so they could be built. The day before on June 13, 1959, the monorail ran as intended for the first time, but they were still worried for opening day on the 14th. Gurr was in the pilot's seat, with Nixon's family and Walt on board, but the secret service agents didn't get on board as Gurr left the moment Walt told him to. He was worried, with Walt staring at him, that the monorail would break down and he accidentally kidnapped Nixon. Thankfully, it ran as intended.
More on the Space Needle: At one point in time, the Space Needle was the tallest structure west of the Mississippi River! It was built to withstand up to 200 mph (320 km per hour) winds and earthquakes up to a magnitude of 9! It took 400 days to build it, 74,000 bolts to hold it together, and 5,600 tons of concrete poured into the Needle’s foundation! It was designed by John Graham & Company. The idea for a tower with a restaurant at the top came from Edward E. Carlson, chairman of the exposition, after he visited the Fernsehturm Stuttgart. After local John Graham designed the Northgate Mall in 1950, he got involved. Graham altered the restaurant to be a revolving one, based off another he was designing in Honolulu around the same time. Graham patented a gearing system that allowed you to turn the entire restaurant of 250 people with a one-horsepower motor for the original turntable. The new turntable uses 12 motors. Graham wanted a flying saucer design for the fair's Space Age theme. Architect Victor Steinbrueck was a consultant to John Graham's firm, and Victor came up with the wasp-waisted tower shape based on an abstract wooden sculpture in his home of a dancer by David Lemon called "The Feminine One", a sculpture inspired by Syvilla Fort. Syvilla Fort was a pioneer in dancing from Seattle, and she knew Lemon and Steinbrueck while at the Cornish School of Allied Arts in the 1930s. There is a bronze replica of this sculpture right outside the Space Needle.
Sad that Graham's revolving resturaunt in Hawaii was welded in place in the 90's.
An hour long Peter Dribble video on the Seattle monorail? Well hell I’m dropping what I’m doing for the day and watching this.
Basically me
I didn't realize it was so long until nearly 40 minutes in 😂
Or even Dibble...
@@carlgemlich1657 it was dribble to me, I live in NYC
I rode the monorail a few years ago, still smells like the 1960s in there, worth the short round trip, only wish the ride was longer
The PATCO Speedline between South Jersey and Philadelphia was the first in the US to use Automatic Train Operation/ATO as it opened in 1969 before BART did in 1972, though of course BART took it to another level by building a bigger system from the ground up! The Transbay Tube that opened in 1974 is an engineering feat! Something to mention regarding the Link light-rail is that after the rapid transit plan was rejected in 1970, they still wanted to build a sort of subway, so they opted to build a downtown bus tunnel that could be converted to light-rail, and this was proposed as the Downtown Seattle Transit Tunnel in 1974, approved in 1983, construction began in 1987, and opened in 1990. When the bus tunnel was opened in 1990, they already installed light-rail tracks in anticipation, however they had to be replaced when the tracks were later found to be poorly insulated and unusable. And there was a scandal during the tunnel's construction when it was discovered in 1989 that the granite was quarried in South Africa (but was cut and finished in Italy) despite a boycott of South African goods by the King County Metro Council at the time.
For several years, service in the tunnel was provided exclusively by dual-mode buses, which ran as trolleybuses in the tunnel and diesel buses on city streets. Putting buses in the tunnel meant less traffic on city streets! The dual-mode trolleybuses were replaced by hybrid electric buses to prepare for the light-rail as the overhead wire was replaced for light-rail. And when the light-rail opened in 2009, the tunnel had unique operations where buses and the light-rail shared it, just like Pittsburgh's Mount Washington Transit Tunnel! That is until 2019 when Convention Place station was sold to the Washington State Convention Center for redevelopment, closing the tunnel to buses two years earlier than the scheduled closure of 2021 (which was meant to coincide with the Northgate Link expansion). Making the tunnel light-rail only.
Loved this film Peter! THANKS! ❤❤❤❤
There’s a lesson we transportation planner follow: don’t start with a solution and look for a problem. Identify the need for transit improvement and then evaluate when modes and options would address them.
I was a huge supporter of the Monorail Project, and kept voting for it over and over. I began to have doubts when I read about the single-tracking. What made me finally vote No was that 50-year bond. I still think it was a good idea, but planned out terribly.
Uh, don't see why they couldn't extend the EXISTING MONORAIL incrementally station-by-new-station, like a Heritage Streetcar line, they failed in part trying to be too ambitious, if they had just done a modest extension, they would have gained experience in planning, building, and financing that could have lead to a longer line.
They should have just expanded the old monorail. It was literally right there.
I remember watching promo videos for the new monorail as a kid. So happy to finally have an explanation behind it!
Also low-key I was going to make this exact video for my channel, but you beat me to it and you probably did it better than I would :) amazing show!
Clearly the system was never gonna be as good as the monorail systems in Brockway, Ogdenville, and North Haverbrook!
@@AverytheCubanAmericanWell the plans looked pretty good
@@realquadmoo But as good as salesman Lyle Lanley’s systems? Don’t think so! 😂
I was referencing the Simpsons episode with those places, but yes, the plan did actually look good of course, and this was so interesting to watch
@@AverytheCubanAmerican and boy that sure put them on the map!
For anyone who has taken the Seattle Underground Tour, which highlights the silly mismatch between maintaining lower tidelands as real estate and building a properly graded city (at Pioneer Square), the mindset hasn't changed for Seattle in a hundred years!
There is something most peculiar about this municipal financing and development. Anywhere else it happens pretty well as expected, but Seattle has all kinds of bizarre issues. Maybe it is related to Vancouver's weird rejection of being integrated into Portland's light rail system? It needn't have cost that much and would have provided an alternative to the Interstate Bridge congestion which has been going on for fifty years (at congestion hours) at least!
1970
Seattle MSA - 1,556,000
Atlanta MSA - 1,182,000
2020
Seattle MSA - 4,018,762
Atlanta MSA - 6,930,423
Thanks for the trains!
No problem, our new metro system is much better than Forward Thrust was going to be
@@harlander-harpy no it is not the line one is already overcrowded in the downtown area. The tunnel cannot support any more trains per hour, and length of consist and on top of that they’re thinking on convert it to heavy rail but that’ll become too costly because it’s tunnel is only for low floor vehicles so the clearance won’t add up this is the problem with light rail. Once you build it, you cannot get rid of it. Like the highway only if you had subways in mind when building a light rails, which Seattle did not, they just built them because it was something to keep the pressure off the highways. without no critical, thinking that it was gonna grow in the upcoming years.people don’t understand when you built subway or heavy dense transit people moved to those areas because it’s easier to move around especially when you get to an old age that’s why a lot of people don’t like living out here and just sprawled empty space because it’s nothing especially young people who are the backbones of the city’s when people see you light rail they see Shanky dinky town they don’t see big metropolitan areas like New York, San Francisco, Atlanta, DC Philadelphia I didn’t see Las Vegas, which I’m living in right now as a big sprawl until I got here and I seen the entire skyline of just lights The light rail was built to basically keep people from building other really well good mode to transportation all because of cost and they don’t have to use it now look I’m a person who lives completely in a different area and knows that sound transit is going through chaos right now with its line one they took something that was supposed to become a part of Seattle only and that would’ve been the light rail system and expensive fleet of cars built in the 70s would’ve looked amazing. Now it’s sprawled with light rails that can’t even do their job right? It’s in the light rail. Subways are called heavy rail. The reason why I say that is because now in Los Angeles they’re planning on building a monorail through the San Fernando Valley & Hollywood and they have light rails too
@@harlander-harpyit definitely isn’t lol. Don’t delude yourself, the mlk at grade should be evidence of that
Hahaha you’re welcome for the funding but we’ve got it from here 😉 we’re gonna get ya back
@@skydiamond8705 The 1 Line is not overcrowded in downtown unless there’s a sports game going on. The tunnels are nowhere near capacity yet and literally next year the amount of trains going through it will double which is how I already know your comment is going to be total BS but I’m gonna keep going because you don’t deserve the spotlight. There has not been a single proposal to convert any part of Link to heavy rail so please quit making stuff up. Even if they did convert it to heavy rail (which again, nobody ever proposed that because it’s stupid) the tunnels are indeed large enough for typical subway trains because our trains are quite literally bigger than subway trains. The trains in many parts of the line are quicker than cars so I enjoy flipping off the traffic as I speed by it (you should try it, it may help with your anger and supremacy issues). Link is going to be able to handle growth very well, and certain boundaries that exist right now which may limit trains on an individual line to every 6 minutes are frankly going to be obliterated when we destroy everything in the train’s path and make cars deal with the consequences just to speed the trains up, easy peasy. We definitely do consider ridership growing in the coming years which is why we are building so much Transit Oriented Development and Affordable Housing near stations. In terms of perceiving light rail as “shanky dinky town” it’s quite the opposite as we’ve got nice bright trains which constant fresh and clean interiors and spotless stations unlike the literal pipes they call trains running around NYC. Yes, there is plenty of sprawl in the suburbs of many cities including your drunk hobo land, thanks for inviting me to your ted talk that you’re going to forget you had when you wake up with a hangover in a few hours. Sound Transit is NOT in chaos right now, they are VERY stable with extremely modern trains (may more advanced then yours) made by Kinkisharyo and Siemens, and the light rail system is doing its job perfectly. You really don’t know a thing about our system but you’ve come here to pretend we’re every other light rail system when the truth is we’re just a metro with pretty trains and catenary.
Anyways, you’re wrong, but this was a fun challenge to try to respond to your incoherent gobbled mess of unwarranted hate for pretty trains. Please for your sake just go back to bed and don’t respond until you actually know what you’re talking about, but you’re gonna be way more late and overbudget on that than Sound Transit’s every been on anything. Don’t drive for a while, peace.
Love the video. For the time being your channel is a hidden gem. As someone who lived in the Seattle area for 7 years, going downtown fairly often, I love learning the history. Fun fact, My first time riding a monorail was in Las Vegas as a kid to see Star Trek the Experience at the Hilton, as pictured in the video at 31:43.
Glad you are back. Your story telling is outstanding! Combined with the great visuals and beautiful music, it's simply stunning
About 45 years ago I worked down the hill from the fair site. Every now and then I would take the monorail. It was free and comfortable.
Speaking as one who was deeply involved in the monorail effort from 1998 to 2004 (and seen waving signs at 36:42 in the video), this is a well-produced and quite accurate documentary. Well done. Bittersweet...though I admit, I'm still mostly just bitter. But thank you, Peter, for producing this story.
Wow!- what a great documentary!
PBS needs to pick up your documentaries for the interesting subjects and high quality production values.
Thank you for your vision and work!!
I look forward to every documentary you post, Peter. (I can't call them 'videos,' they're so much better than that!) They're so well researched, the footage and images you use are beautiful, and the stories you tell are so interesting and historic. I love them. I'm already looking forward to the next one!
Another excellent video. And great selection of contemporary video, I had forgotten how much of the city you used to be able to see from the Monorail.
A failure to collaborate literally killed the Seattle monorail. The ungenerous temperaments of Tom Weeks and Joel Horn should be remembered as the kind of leadership that is to be strenuously avoided.
A great documentary
Being from the area from back in the 70's, as a kid I would ride sometimes. From where we lived 144 South between Military Way and Old 99 Riverton Heights. From there I would ride the bus to down Seattle to a restaurant named Fransisco's cool place down by the carwash with the pink elephant spraying it's self sign. Seattle was a cool city to grow up near as kid no worries not like today poor city is not be looked after like it should be.Anyway great presentation well put together and informative. The gentleman doing the voice over good you kept interested some people try to do voice over on documentary's and more or fall flat boring the listener to sleep or sound like finger nails on a chalkboard. Over on the Eastside of Washington we don't need light rail just less people moving the Tri-Cities no one from the wet side likes it anyway,I remember as kid how it looked down at. Not as Cultured as the Puget Sound area was the thinking well been here since the summer of 1980 moved her from Kenmore at the end of my Freshman year. Would run in to a couple class mates from my elementary school days at Cascade View Elementary school. We have a little taste of city life that's all we need not too much.
Great episode - thanks for your efforts!
As a Seattle native the Monorail construction debacle will always make me angry. Even before the 90's referendum the city could have done a simple line extension to connect the Space Needle to SoDo when the King Dome was being built but they never did. Another issue with the Monorail was that it was sadly too localized to Seattle. Mayor Nickels and other politicians wanted their grand light rail mega project that would cement their legacies. It is very funny seeing them worry about construction cost and time tables for the Monorail when the light rail system is going to cost 150 billion dollars when it is finished and that is not including future repair and maintenance. I don't want to end on a downer note but here we go. I was a kid in the 90's in Seattle (well north Seattle) and maybe this happens to everybody when you reach a certain age; but man I miss the way things used to be. Between Amazon taking over, real estate speculation, constant construction, and dealing with drug addicts (most of whom are from out of state though) this place just doesn't have character anymore. We're just going to have Mega City's where you are either rich or broke.
I was four years old and remember being in my grandfather’s backyard during an outdoor party… and watching the satellite pass over…. as the big deal and wonder… Now not so much 😂
The common factor that kills every "Gadgetbahn": A proprietary design with only a few and in most cases just a single manufacturer of infrastructure and rolling stock. This bloats up not just building costs, but also maintenance costs in the long run. And once the infrastructure and rolling stock need to be replaced, there is nobody to produce them at any reasonable price. Light rail has the advantage of having dozens of manufacturers all around the world; with infrastructure using standardized designs and vehicles generally use standardized components. This makes them much cheaper and future-proof without the risk of a vendor lock-in.
I love your productions, keep them going!
Oh yeah, Peter dropped a new documentary, I am looking forward to this evening.
I've always been kinda split on the monorail.
On one hand, if we did build it, it would've resulted in Seattle getting a good transit system a lot earlier.
But on the other hand, traditional rail transit is so much more practical and flexible than monorail transit.
Now that Las Vegas is contemplating decommissioning its monorail as well, there's a good chance that even if it was built, it may not have lasted. That being said, hands down the Forward Thrust should have been built - the the quality of the MARTA is sadly not appreciated in such a sprawling region.
As time goes on and systems mature the need arises for maintenance and ultimately vehicle replacement. I can think of numerous light transit, heavy transit and heavy rail suppliers (and may have worked for over the years). The same cannot be said for monorail which is more of a niche.
@@grapesurgeonAnd that’s honestly 100% expected. It’s a short line with two stations only; you have to either work or live near either of those stops to find it useful.
Monorails are practical they're just quite niche. If your building an all elevated line it's going to be cheaper than conventional rail and if you buy decent rolling stock it's not gonna have capacity of speed issues.
But if a lot of the project can be ground level or it needs to be tunneled conventional rail will still work better.
That's largely why Japan and Germany's monorails work, because they understood the limitations, didn't try to force them to do things they couldn't, and bought appropriate monorails for the lines. And Chongqing in china has a massive amount of monorail due to how mountainous the place is. The Mumbai and Bangkok Monorails are also going quite well.
Although Bombardier monorails are generally shitty
@@maestromecanico597 CRRC, Alstom and Hitachi are the big 3 monorail vehicle suppliers.
Great video-so well thought out and well referenced.
Another terrific video! Always excited to see what you come up with bext
I’m always so happy when a new Peter Dibble video drops!
Great documentary! :)
Great documentary! Loved it. Always high-quality work from Peter on this channel 🙌😎
Great video! Just found your channel and so many wonderful videos, keep up the great work!!
Monorail was and is still better for Seattle than light rail. It’s much more affordable. And would’ve put traffic off of street level. The light rail on road level is still awful in traffic.
Fantastic!!! Thanks so much for your hard work Peter!!! 👍
Hats off to you and your team. I watched this last night, and it was an incredible documentary. Great images, videos, quotes, and maps. Some of these TH-cam documentaries do not show you the visuals and representation you used. 10/10 keep them up!
Good video. The real tragedy isn't the loss of the monorail. It really wasn't a great idea--many neighborhoods through which it would have passed would have objected pretty strenuously. Who really wants the elevated line like down Fifth Avenue down the middle of California Avenue SW? The sad tale is the failure of rapid transit to get approved during the first Forward Thrust votes. The person in the video praising highways and cars was, I imagine, taken by surprise when Seattleites rose up against more freeways. Seattle could have avoided a fair bit of agony had it built a sound rapid transit system in the 1970s when land and labor was a lot cheaper.
I lived through all this. A really well done historical document. Peter is a real gem of the PNW history.
Great video! I love that you included Sound Transit information in the video as well. My favorite part, which I was hoping was included, was the information about Seattle losing federal funds and being diverted to Atlanta for their Marta creation. Being a couple of hours away from Atlanta, it's a little bit of history I always love to share.
So, the original World's Fair Monorail is about a mile long and cost $3M back then. When the SMP was running I think the CPI said that would translate to about $19M. Anyone heard of or remember the famous KL M-Trans letter to the SMP indicating they were building monorail for $8M a-mile USD and that they were interested in the project? Okay, extrapolate and say around $20M a-mile for monorail is a more than fair ballpark figure. In the relatively short time the MVET was collected by the SMP it is reported that $225M came in. $225M / $20M a-mile = 11.25 miles of monorail. I would venture to say that, without graft or need for the financing fiasco, we could have had the full-paid for 14-mile Green Line right then and there.
jesus christ that hit unexpectedly hard
As an 8 year old kid, I attended the “Worlds Fair”. Rode the monorail, went to the top of the Space Needle, and enjoyed the “wild Mouse” rollercoaster. Thanks for the memories.
10 years later, I started a career in transportation that lasted for 48 years.
that's actually very inspiring! The World's Fair & the monorail did leave a ever lasting impression on you!
I rode this monorail about 10 years ago from their Westlake Mall station. It rides very close to Macys, Jazz Alley, and a major hotel.
My uncle was brought in to repair and modernize the Seattle Monorail following the last accident. I was treated to a tour of the shop while one of them was under repair. Fascinating technology! My uncle is a train buff and told me the history of the Seattle Monorail and it’s operation since the 60’s.
Justifying a monorail by saying trams get stuck in traffic is so silly when the solution is literally just a little bit of paint and a few priority signals along the way. Once you allow yourself the option to take space away from cars you really don't need these massive, technically complex projects anymore. You'll probably get halfway there with bike and bus lanes honestly.
I always knew there was a push to go with monorail in Seattle, but I had no idea how far they got. Being on a county's citizens advisory council for transit and development myself, it's amazing how far they got and in how short a time frame.
Another fantastic documentary from PD. As always I wasn't disappointed, and was able to learn so much history
The sad fact is that I now have to brave the long months ahead until the next video is released.
Bruh this is a whole ass documentary! Good job my dude!
What a great capsule history of issues I remember really well. During those years I was one of many who couldn't believe stadiums no one asked for could be built, but public spaces and public transport that many did want, somehow couldn't. Thanks for another well done film.
The 11.4 billion ... most of those billions are future value of dollars, not present value. Given current interest rates and inflation.. maybe not that bad of a deal.
Thank you for this really comprehensive report. SO sorry to hear of the control freaks at the top who singlehandedly made this beautiful plan untenable (IMHO). Elevated, automated monorail is still the only system:
Designed to be retrofitted into a city;
Extremely low cost operation and maintenance;
Can pay for itself from the fare box;
CANNOT DERAIL;
Short consists = short stations = short headways = VERY FREQUENT service (think: a horizontal elevator);
Roads not closed during construction;
Very few utilities to be relocated;
Sleek, narrow beams, not a massive understructure for elevated streetcars;
QUIET operation, no steel wheels on steel rails;
Many more. And, it's not tying up street traffic. Rise above it all!
Another extraordinarily thorough - and fascinating - documentary!
When the establishment refuses to do what people wants…. The original line paid itself! So???
It seems there was a lack of "system-neutral" survey to choose a rapid transit system for the city and the region (or a combination of systems, likewise in SF), but two totally independet systems planned and developedover decades. It would have been interesting to read a study comparing the advantages as well as shortcomings of monorail, light rail, a skytrain-like system and maybe as an addition (electric, overhead powered) BRT in a hilly city with several bodies of water like Seattle and the Puget Sound region.
Rail has the advantage of switches that are cheap, fast and reliable. Standard gauge rail has the advantage of cheap rolling stock and cheap delivery of rolling stock and assuming that there are disused or underused train tracks in the area cheap and easy network expansion.
@@hWat-Ever Agree - that’s the reason why many north american new light rail systems started with the german “U2”-type in the 1980ies rolling as an off-the-shelf technology.
When I moved to Seattle in 2005 I paid a "Monorail Fee" of $50.00 to register my car. I wonder where the accumulation of those fees ultimately went when the Monorail expansion died?
I voted for the monorail at each opportunity and remember feeling devastated and betrayed when SMP was disbanded. The Link light rail system has some serious capacity limitations and a lot of those issues are due to running at grade with traffic in the Rainier Valley - something that would not have been an issue with the monorail. Also, it should be noted the Tacoma Link system is not true light rail - it's a low-speed streetcar stuck in traffic.
Yes, it’s a shame that ST didn’t build a heavy rail metro like proposed during forward thrust, or at least high floor light rail to give it higher capacity and higher speeds. Light rail should be limited within the city limits, it’s not designed to carry suburban commuters, it’s too slow for that. The only remedy at this point is if ST can figure out a way to buy out the rails for the current south sounder commuter line, electrify it and convert it to regional rail.
Kent/Des Moines to downtown Seattle is projected to be a 42 minute ride. Currently Kent to King station on the sounder takes 20 minutes.
The monorail would’ve been even worse than Link. Both in capacity and cost.
I wish there were more monorails. Its sad that seattle is building raised light rail, instead of MONORAIL. But they have tons of electric trolley buses which I also adore.
No monorails are bad and impractical in so many ways, just follow what the rest of the world does and build great railways.
9:39 Sam the gigachad!
Such quality work
Nothing has made me angrier in politics than the death of this project. Anything subjected to 5 votes is going to fail at one point or another. The slightest bit of political will at any point to help overcome the problems they were facing would've saved the project. Sound Transit delivered way less for way more money, and the politicians bent over backwards to prevent the people from killing it. Now we're going to pay upwards of ten times as much for Sound Transit to build something similar and have it open 30 years later. By far the biggest mistake this city has ever made.
That train legit has a relaxin' JFK AirTrain vibe & sensational fast speed even doe i never been to Seattle.
JFK Air train is actually a derivative of the system in Vancouver, which Seattle really should have considered much earlier. I remember stories from Seattle news visiting Vancouver’s Skytrain that opened in late 85 and they had put an initiative out to a vote to build something then and it was turned down. Estimates at that time. Mid nineties build out over a large system would have been $10 in Seattle due to the landscape. The fixation on the monorail is is bizarre as there are issues with escape route for the trains. They have only recently got light rail going properly, but they are going to be stymied by many of the level crossing. Calgary has light rail and the grade crossing is a pain. For driver and trains. Should have built “something” much much sooner.
@threeparots1 i'm not remotely fixated on it, but it looks so awesome & dope.
Seattle had/has a real problem. The greater metro is a lot like an east coast city, with extensive pockets of large populations in the outer burbs. What the city really required was a net of subway and heavy rail transit. But it's a victim of massive WWII, and post war population growth and the 50s/60s west coast freeway system. By the time they realized the issue the proper system was financially almost impossible. Light rail, nor monorail, was the answer.
The PNW version of Ken Burns releases another video!
Fantastic job! You continue to produce fascinating content, each video better than the last. I'm grateful for your return to TH-cam and I hope your break was refreshing and invigorating!
Seattle, as an Atlanta resident, we thank you.
But it's not like MARTA has in any way maximized what the system does. They built a moderate number of extremely expensive stations and then stopped cold, with no expansion for a couple decades now. Voters have repeatedly approved and funded and begged for badly needed in-fill options, like the Clifton Road rail, only to be told it costs too much, have a bus instead. MARTA has made no effort to consider any service options except heavy rail, which they then say is too expensive. They got Clayton County aboard and could have implemented commuter rail as used in many other cities, tied into stations already stubbed out for exactly that purpose decades ago. They refuse. It's their heavy rail or nothing. The streetcar wasn't their idea and they didn't want it. But they had to accept running it or make a lot of stupid people look stupid, and now they dangle it as a carrot because the public thinks it wants light rail everywhere. Don't worry. They know it will end up costing too much and has no risk of actually being built.
Thank for the vid Peter! Guess I’m booked this evening
Disney World runs buses as well monorails, ALOT of buses.
How I would love to go back in time and visit the Seattle World’s Fair. Looked so exciting and fun.
God, these videos are fascinating and so well done.
Worth the wait Peter.
Thank you!
I wish it had happened much sooner, but the convenience of Seattle’s Link (coming from someone who had lived in San Antonio, TX for most of their life, a city with zero rapid transit) feels like such a blessing. The quote from Senator Guess at 9:29 is just so laughable in hindsight
10:42 I love that you inserted that end result of the funds going to MARTA and i believe that your next video should be on MARTA and its challenges in modernizing and expansions up to today.
I live in Seattle and everytime I'm reminded of that fact I groan in agony lol
Excellent as usual, Peter. ALways wanted to ride the historic monorail but haven't had a good enough excuse to go to downtown Seattle.
It's silly that the monorail doesn't keep going at least to Pike Place.
Excellent video as always 👏🏽
Again, I'm filled with a little bit of sadness and amusement at the same time; the weird feeling of wanting to mourn the death of something that was never born.
Ahhhhh the RTA and their tax. My car tabs went from $117 to $475 in one year.
Amazing!!!!
Does anyone have any similar channels for PNW history as good as these are ?
I'm curious also!
@bchistory is amazing, it has all kinds of historical footage and docs about infrastructure projects, industry etc.
I always why Seattle rejected the monorail. But at 26:31 you said "solid mud." How is mud solid? 😁
Que lâstima esta historia. He usado el monorriel de Seattle e impresiona bien.
Ahora en Amêrica Latina se construyen tres sistemas de monorriel. En Panamá por los japoneses, en Dominicana por los franceses y en Monterrey por los chinos. En Sao Paulo ya hay recién un cuarto sistema funcionando. En Asia existen ya varios servicios operacionales. A ver como nos va en nuestra región pare así entender cuan confiable es en verdad esta tecnología.
57:53 where did you find that animation??
Mono = One Rail = Rail
monorail is the losing technology to come out of the American public transport renaissance
if things had of been different, if cities were more willing to risk it all on maturing a new technology, perhaps it would have changed the world.
But we need to live with the reality of our systems. Democracy is predisposed to be conservative, inactive, and cumbersome. It's hard to be ambitious when you need to please almost every single worried citizen to escape the fear of constant termination.
China can get away with building monorail simply because they have a more authoritarian, centralised state that can work on a big picture framework and plan in the long term.
Since we don't want to live under an authoritarian dictatorship, I think it's helpful to see these kinds of situations as the cost of being a free and democratic nation. Things are going to fail, projects will be terminated on the whims of the people. That's the system we've chosen
Wow Peters really back at it again, the mad man
And now i understand better why mass transportation has never been a thing in the United States, people like Senator Guess in the 50s screwed it up for the rest of us in the 2020s
My first degree was in city planning... and here is why I gave up on that career pretty much right at the start. City planning is like partial circumcision. As George Carlin put it "you either go all the way, or not at all." and that is what city planning looks like.... The city planner and those who do the data, research, science, and planning say "Here is what is best for our city for the next 50 years." but then that plan is picked apart bit by bit by bad media, idiot people, and politicians. End result... a half plan... partial circumcision of a solution. In short... American cities are screwed... and it's the fault of bad media NIMBY clickbaity morons backed by politician looking for some quick PR to get reelected.
Tram and street car systems more efficient and cheaper than bus systems, busses are very maintenance intensive and don't last long. After a infrastructure has been built, a tram is indeed cheaper.
Trams were removed because of lobbying by automotive companies and other interests and no good reasons.
The whole story of Seattle area light rail / monorail is a story of epic corruption.
I don’t know if it was an episode of Frasier or cheers, but I distinctly Kelsey Grammer delivering a line about how Seattle was a town that thought it was Disneyland😂
My dad maintained that the monorail should have/could have been run south to Sea-Tac airport, elevated above Pacific Highway South and making little if any traffic disruption. Instead, it was euthanized and replaced with a multi-billion dollar government boondoggle with pie-in-the-sky expectations. A failed pseudo-BART.
This was amazing! I long for an extended Seattle monorail, or at least a Seattle Skytrain.
Also one of the old LA tram cars are preserved. They lasted a very long time as well.
Oh gawd. While maybe "Monorail" was not the correct technology for Seattle. Light rail sure wasn't. Seattle is basically the same complexity as Vancouver, and some kind of Elevated rail was the right choice. Even a subway has the major drawback of not being able to do steep grades, so a north-to-south subway would have been possible, but a east to west would not. Look where the monorail is presently, a mostly downhill ride from the space needle to downtown. Light rail is awful at everything it proports to be good at except for urban sprawl. If a city is not compact, then yes light rail is an upgrade from a rapid bus. But every light rail project becomes a traffic snarler. All of them.
As for the existing monorail. Ride it. It's very bumpy and rattles a lot compared to the Vancouver skytrain. This is because the propulsion method on the cars isn't suitable to how it's being driven. Automatic driving gradually speeds up and slows down, but the way the Seattle monorail is driven is like a conventional rail vehicle with the driver lead-footing it and then braking hard. This is also responsible for several of the accidents.