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Tuesday, September 5, 2006

Seattle Monorail: Transit bargain?

SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER EDITORIAL BOARD

As Seattle City Council members move toward a decision on whether to spend $4.5 million to bring maintenance of the Seattle Center Monorail up to date, one of our readers has offered an instructive way to look at the question.

A contributor to the Seattle P-I's online "Soundoffs" weighed in with this: "There is zero possibility that we could replace this transit corridor with any different transit system (or road construction) that would move as many people for $4.5 million. ... Let's also compare the Monorail with the South Lake Union Streetcar that the mayor so proudly supports: SLU Streetcar -- $50 million, 1.3 miles, expected to carry 350,000 passengers in the first year; Seattle Center Monorail -- $4.5 million, one mile, regularly carries 2.5 million passengers annually (when running)."

Of course, the $4.5 million will serve only as maintenance catch-up to get the system back into regular operation. Cost estimates of thoroughly refurbishing or rebuilding the 44-year-old line approach $100 million.

It's reasonable for Seattle elected officials and taxpayers to delay the long-term fate of the Seattle Center-to-Westlake Center line until the question is the expenditure of tens of millions of dollars, not when the question is spending $4.5 million to keep an existing transit line in operation.

Will it eventually be worth those tens of millions to refurbish, or even expand, the Monorail line? Too early to tell. Is it worth $4.5 million to not lose what we already have? Certainly.

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