I-90 monorail gets thumbs down

A monorail from Seattle to the Eastside across Interstate 90 faces daunting challenges, a Sound Transit study has found -- so daunting that several Sound Transit board members said yesterday the option is dead.

Based on cost and ridership, light rail is clearly the best way to get from downtown Seattle to south Bellevue, the study concluded. And it's also the best mode to get from south Bellevue into downtown Bellevue if aerial light rail is used there rather than a tunnel.

The study was intended to analyze how to tie the Eastside into the regional transit system, Sound Transit spokesman Ric Ilgenfritz said.

The agency's board will discuss in a workshop today this and four other studies that are part of the update of the agency's 30-year long-range plan.

Once the long-range plan is adopted this summer, the agency will begin working on Sound Transit 2, a 10- to 15-year set of transit projects to take to voters to add to the existing system that is under construction today.

The physical problems of getting a monorail through the Mount Baker tunnel and across the lake raise the cost of that option significantly. And the fact that riders would have to transfer in South Seattle to get between downtown Seattle and the Eastside on monorail dampens ridership numbers.

A major conclusion of the study of five different modes for getting between Seattle and the Eastside was that no single mode is best for all seven route segments on the Eastside.

The segments, which splay out toward Issaquah, Redmond and Totem Lake once light rail has crossed Lake Washington, are: Seattle to the south Bellevue park and ride lot, south Bellevue to Eastgate, Eastgate to Issaquah, south Bellevue to downtown Bellevue, downtown Bellevue to Northeast 40th Street (Overlake), Northeast 40th to Redmond, and downtown Bellevue to Totem Lake.

The five modes studied were light rail, monorail, bus rapid transit based on existing high-occupancy vehicle lanes with some improvements, buses using a new exclusive busway, and an exclusive busway built such that it could later be converted to light rail.

If a tunnel is used to get light rail from south Bellevue into downtown Bellevue, monorail emerges as the best choice in that segment, costing $400 million to $540 million to build compared with $780 million to $1.1 billion for a light rail tunnel. Monorail would carry fewer riders -- 26,000 compared with 37,000 for light rail, though.

Ridership tails off at the edges of the system at Issaquah, Redmond and Totem Lake. Accordingly, the less expensive bus modes tend to look better than either monorail or light rail from Eastgate to Issaquah, from downtown Bellevue to Totem Lake, and from Overlake to Redmond.

Bus, monorail and light rail perform roughly comparably in the segment between downtown Bellevue and Overlake.

King County Councilman Dwight Pelz, a Sound Transit board member, said breaking the study into segments makes it hard to see the big picture.

"It makes it difficult for a policy-maker to figure out how to put a system together," he said.

But Pelz and others said the monorail looks like a poor option.

Monorail cars made by Hitachi Ltd., the company that is negotiating to build the Seattle Monorail Project, would not fit through the Mount Baker tunnel, Sound Transit found. Cars made by Bombardier Inc. could fit, but only if the bottom of the Mount Baker tunnel was dug four feet deeper.

Another problem is that the monorail could not run elevated on the floating bridge because the columns would make it too heavy. It would also have to run on a steel rather than a concrete beam, which would be costlier.

There would be only one bidder -- Bombardier -- to build the system. "I think monorail's dead," Pelz said.

"I don't think it works," said Deputy Mayor Tim Ceis.

"It looks like from my first look as if monorail has got some serious problems that does not make that a viable solution," said Issaquah City Councilman Fred Butler.

But Edwin Stone, a founder of Citizens for King County Monorail, said there is nothing inherently wrong with running a Bombardier system on the Eastside and a Hitachi system in Seattle. It's common for transit systems to be made up of elements from different companies, he said.

The modest bus alternative -- to improve existing high-occupancy vehicle lanes for buses -- would be extremely inexpensive across I-90 but would run into cost problems in Bellevue, where Sound Transit proposes to build ramps directly connecting high-occupancy vehicle lanes on I-90 and on state Route 520 with high-occupancy vehicle lanes on Interstate 405.

Without those ramps, buses must weave through traffic to exit one freeway and then weave through traffic as it enters the intersecting freeway. But those ramps are very expensive, costing several billion dollars.

John Niles, technical adviser to Citizens for Effective Transportation Alternatives, a pro-bus group, was critical of the study. His group favors working with existing bus high-occupancy vehicle lanes and only phasing in expensive capital improvements like the ramps later on.

"This concept that you have to build a whole new system is not true," Niles said.

"We think the upgrade of the regional express bus system and more frequent service to better bus stops or new transit centers and maybe even some new buses is the better way. What I'm seeing (in the study) is bus rapid transit making like light rail."

The alternative to create an exclusive busway for getting either to Redmond, downtown Bellevue or to Totem Lake, would rely heavily on purchasing a Burlington Northern Santa Fe right of way running from Tukwila to Monroe that the railroad says it wants to sell. Light rail also would rely on part of the railroad right of way.

Bellevue is redeveloping an area between Bel-Red Road and state Route 520 and says it intends to create an exclusive transit right of way there, which could be used by bus or rail to get to Overlake from Bellevue.

All of the bus alternatives would involve running buses on surface streets in downtown Seattle and would require a transfer to access Seattle's light rail system.

The light rail plan assumes riders could ride from downtown Bellevue to the University of Washington and to Northgate without ever leaving the train, an assumption that boosts light rail ridership numbers somewhat. But if they wanted to go south to the airport on light rail, they would have to transfer.

Pelz, Ceis, Butler and Tacoma City Councilman Kevin Phelps, who chairs Sound Transit's finance committee, said light rail looks good for the Bellevue-to-Seattle connection.

"Clearly, we think it shows light rail is the best option, the best technology crossing I-90 to downtown Bellevue and maybe as far as Overlake," Ceis said.

"I'm convinced we should go forward with light rail on I-90," Pelz said.

Butler said that in the midterm he'd like to see increased bus rapid transit to Issaquah and Sammamish and light rail from Seattle to Bellevue and then to Redmond. But phasing is important, Butler said.

Phelps said it would be "short-sighted" not to take light rail all the way to Overlake and Redmond, where there are thousands of jobs being added by Microsoft and other companies.

Kenmore City Councilman Jack Crawford said he, Butler and Bellevue Mayor Connie Marshall plan to introduce an amendment in several weeks saying that once high capacity transit is completed across I-90 to the Eastside, Sound Transit would begin on a high capacity transit system on 520 across the lake. Redmond Mayor Rosemarie Ives has pushed hard for some form of rail across 520, the sooner the better.

Pelz, Ceis and Phelps all expressed reservations.

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