Don't even consider tearing down the Monorail

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Susan Paynter

Wednesday, December 7, 2005

Don't even consider tearing down the Monorail

By SUSAN PAYNTER
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER COLUMNIST

And there it was, hanging in the air like a noxious odor.

"We ought to just tear it down."

I heard it from a fellow journalist. From a shopper at the deli case. And from a gawker who'd stared upward at the shredded silver skin of the Seattle Center Monorail's red car after its Nov. 26 crash with the blue car on a narrow pinch-point of the track.

Driver error. Design flaw. For whatever combination of reasons, the Monorail trains will be out of commission and their elevated tracks will stand empty at least through the holiday season. And some think it should stay that way.

Get over it. The Monorail was a '60s thing, an aging Disneyland ride and more trouble than it's worth, they say.


		Jim Bryant / P-I
	The Monorail heads through Experience Music Project on its short trip to Westlake Center. Critics who want to tear it down now that it's out of service may not realize that the Monorail is a moneymaker.

What is it with this rush to neutralize if not neuter Seattle into Everywhereville? To care more about recycling our trash than restoring the icons that tell us who we are by reminding us where we came from?

If it's a matter of money -- and isn't it always? -- insurance is apt to cover most of the cost of the repairs, Seattle Center spokesman Perry Cooper believes.

And if, even when it's up and running, you think the Monorail is a pain in the money drain, guess again. The thing not only breaks even, it's actually a profit maker, pulling in about $300,000 to $400,000 a year for this burg. Not to mention moving tourists and homers alike in a way that's faster and more fun than any bus. Tens of thousands of them ride it a day during summer festivals like Bumbershoot and The Bite, and thousands take it between Seattle Center and Westlake Center in the wintertime. (We've already heard how the shopkeepers at Westlake have had to cinch their Santa belts since the crash.)

Some people ride the Monorail every day, parking their cars at one end or the other. "It's pretty efficient," Cooper said. "A bus has to stop at all the lights. To get all the way down Fifth takes three to four times longer than the Monorail, not even counting the time spent waiting for the bus."

And then there's the undeniable cool factor. Yes, at 43, the Monorail is still cool, insists Charles Hamilton, who designs Web sites for HistoryLink. It may be one of the most venerable monorails in the world but it still pulls kids to its front windows to grin and point at the scene whizzing by below.

The cool factor is one reason Hamilton always wondered about what he considered the low rider estimates for the proposed and recently defeated Green Line extension. People will ride something just because it's cool, for the fun of it, he said. People who probably would never ride a bus like the idea of streaming along up there in the air.

But the Monorail is also a moving landmark. It's a marketable, functioning piece of Seattle history, not a leftover World's Fair trinket. Seattle without the Monorail would be like Seattle without the Space Needle, without ferry boats on the Sound. Without the Smith Tower between the behemoth buildings of its skyline.

Attorney Dick Ford, who is working on accountability issues for the State Transportation Commission, is a man with a hard eye on the bottom line. And, personally, even he says, "I would hope they would not tear it down. It's part of our heritage, clearly a symbolic thing." But he says the Monorail also serves the important function of tying the Center to downtown Seattle.

If it's not hugely expensive to keep running, it absolutely should be saved, he says.

Even the Seattle Weekly's Knute Berger, who staunchly and outspokenly opposed the Green Line, wants to see the Monorail saved.

And architect-preservationist Susan Boyle says that those who say, "but it's so oooooold" or who only see the kitsch value in the Monorail are missing the point.

It's crucial for a city to hold on to things like the Monorail, Pike Place Market and Pioneer Square. "One of the best things that ever happened to the preservation of Seattle's legacies may have been the 1970s Boeing recession," Boyle said. It stopped the city from a frenzy of urban renewal teardowns until we got a grip on the long term.

The Monorail evokes what the World's Fair was all about, Boyle said. "About technology being responsive to people. About our response to Sputnik and about the connection of our neighborhoods."

But wouldn't a clean, column-free Fifth Avenue be nice?

At the height of the hullabaloo against building the Green Line, detractors talked a lot about the negative impact the track would have on businesses along the route.

But, ironically, business owners in the shadow of the Monorail along Fifth Avenue were some of the line's biggest supporters, Hamilton said. Before HistoryLink, he served on the Elevated Transportation Co. board between '98 and 2001.

In the next two weeks, engineers for Seattle Monorail Services will assess the damage from the crash. They'll decide what to do next and how much it will cost.

For Seattle's sake, let's hope that "just tear it down" never becomes one of the options on the table.

Susan Paynter's column appears Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Call her at 206-448-8392 or send e-mail to susanpaynter@seattlepi.com.

Soundoff (Read 15 comments)
The Seattle Center Monorail -- the only Monorail we have -- is out of commission, but Susan Paynter thinks the city needs its iconic elevated train back. Do you? Why, or why not?

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