Citywide monorail proposal on track

With some downtown interests objecting that they've been wrongly bypassed, Seattle monorail planners last night tentatively adopted a $1.225 billion expansion plan that would extend the city's monorail service from one to 14 miles in five years.

They would pay for this expanded system -- which some see as one way to deal with increasingly snarled traffic -- with a 1.4 percent citywide motor-vehicle excise tax.

Board members of the Elevated Transportation Co. approved the draft plan, which will be subject to public comment for two months. The board expects to approve a final plan in August that would be submitted to City Council members, and possibly be put before voters in November.

Tom Weeks, chairman of the 11-member board of the agency charged by a citizen initiative with planning an expanded route, said that with a tentative plan in hand, "I think people will pay attention now" to the monorail issue.

But plenty of attention already is being paid. Westlake Mall businesses last night objected to the proposal to bypass the mall by running part of the route west along Stewart Street between Fifth and Second avenues.

"Those small merchants are going to be horrified" if the current monorail stop at the mall is eliminated, as the plan proposed, said Steve Koehler, representing Westlake Mall Associates.

A station should remain in the area, "the honest-to-gosh retail core," where it would serve shoppers, the nearby state convention center and hotels, Koehler said. In the end, board members agreed to study the possibility of running a spur line to Westlake Center.

Earlier, officials of the Experience Music Project at the Seattle Center voiced their displeasure at the proposal to remove the existing monorail, which has a station nearby.

EMP officials were "discouraged to learn about the decision not to route the commuter monorail through its current location, since EMP has gone to great creative lengths and expense to incorporate the monorail into its unique architecture," said spokeswoman Page Prill.

Prill and ETC Director Harold Robertson said the two organizations are discussing the possibility of including a spur line from the new system into EMP.

The company last week proposed a downtown route that ran south from the Seattle Center on Fifth Avenue North but with stations at the Northwest Rooms and on the east side of Fifth, across the street from the center.

Officials said ridership would be higher on Fifth, though construction would cost more because of the half-mile longer length than a Second Avenue route.

If construction began next year, officials said, a system could be operating by 2007. Planners assume trains leaving stations at four-minute intervals during rush hours and at eight-minute intervals at other times. The system would cost more than $25 million a year to operate, ETC staffers estimate, and would require operating subsidies during the first few years it ran. They estimate the system could be self-sufficient by 2012 if premium fares were charged for special event trains and advertising were sold at the 19 planned stations.

The plan proposes a system running from Crown Hill to West Seattle via the Seattle Center and downtown, and deals with most initial issues except one: what to do about the current private monorail operator.

They propose to finance construction and partial operation of the system with the vehicle excise tax.

The rate increase, which must be approved by city voters along with the plan, would be $140 per year on a car valued at $10,000. For an average city household with a car or cars worth $17,448 it would cost $244 per year, ETC staff estimated.

As currently envisioned, the system would begin at 15th Avenue Northwest at Northwest 85th Street, extend south on a new bridge over the Lake Washington Ship Canal and follow Elliott Avenue West and West Harrison Street into the Seattle Center.

From the center the new system would follow Fifth Avenue south, turn west onto Stewart, then south on Second Avenue to the King Street Station.

From there it would move behind Safeco Field south on what would be Third Avenue South to Lander Street, then west to First Avenue South at about Horton Street, where it would swing west to the West Seattle Bridge.

Once across the Duwamish River the system would head via Avalon Way Southwest to West Seattle Junction, ending at California Avenue Southwest and Southwest Morgan Street.

P-I reporter Larry Lange can be reached at 206-448-8313 or larrylange@seattlepi.com

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