Is it a champagne flute? A tulip? No, it's a monorail idea

When opponents warned last year the monorail would ruin the aesthetics of downtown, its supporters said they'd find a way to keep the tracks from casting the streets in the shadows.

Last night, at a public workshop at Benaroya Hall, designers of the 14-mile line unveiled an idea they think will allay those fears: The Steel Tulip.

It's not some wrestling hold a florist made up. It's not even some botanical experiment gone haywire.

It is an idea, in which the north- and south-bound monorail lines would run one on top of another, instead of side by side. They'd pass through five-story-tall structures, more champagne flute than tulip, spaced maybe two or three a block downtown.

Although some looked at drawings of the tulip at the public forum a bit quizzically, Richard Stevenson, who works downtown, liked the idea.

About 8 feet thinner than the 22 feet it would take to run trains side by side, Stevenson thought it would probably block less of the sun. "I think it'll preserve a lot more of the light and air," he said.

Joel Horn, the Seattle Monorail Project's executive director, said the tulips themselves could be works of art. "There's a lot of creative things you can do with steel. We see this as a way to enhance the way downtown looks."

After winning last year's election, monorail supporters are now getting into the nitty-gritty questions of actually building the $1.75 billion West Seattle-to-Ballard line.

Last night's meeting was the second of six the monorail authority is holding this week and next to figure out how to deal with several questions in the system voters approved. The agency plans to come up with a tentative plan April 2. After studying it, the agency plans to adopt a final plan in November.

Downtown, the agency is grappling with a number of questions such as how close to the shopping district a station should be. But the aesthetic concerns -- which took a front seat in last year's election -- may be the most important of them all.

Some people such as Howard Anderson, a downtown developer and a critic of last year's proposal, said a tulip design would indeed be thinner than running the trains side by side. But he noted they would also be about 20 feet taller. "It would be like a wall," he said. "I don't think it would be a great idea to run a (picket) fence through downtown."

Horn acknowledged the tulips would cost more. But the agency hasn't figured out exactly how much yet. And he said the cost would be covered by the $11 million reserve the monorail plan set aside for just these aesthetic improvements.

The tulip concept -- hatched by Dick Falkenbury, the former cabdriver who ran the first monorail initiative -- could also answer a couple of other dilemmas facing the designers.

Along its route, the line goes through some narrow streets, such as around the Seattle Center and Stewart Street downtown. Horn envisioned the monorail lines running one on top of each other in those areas, before running side by side in neighborhoods such as West Seattle, where giant tulips would tower over low-rise buildings.

Second was the question of what would happen if the monorail agency wanted to build stations attached to buildings as the current Monorail does at Westlake Center. Unlike the World's Fair Monorail, the new line would have two tracks. So how would people get from the far track to the building?

That would be no problem with the "Steel Tulip," monorail designer Jennifer Mundee told Richardson. Platforms would reach out from the building to each of the levels. "If you can imagine it, you'd get off on the third floor if you're on a monorail going one way, and you're going the other way, you'd get off on the fifth floor," she said.

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