Sound Transit told to forget monorail

By Eric Pryne
Seattle Times staff reporter

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"We want to focus on the three lines of business we started and make them even better," said Paul Matsuoka, Sound Transit's policy and planning officer.

Sound Transit has just started exploring the possibility of submitting a "Phase Two" package of transit improvements to voters that would build on the "Sound Move" plan approved in 1996. A draft study won't be out until fall; the Sound Transit board won't decide what to include in the new package until next spring at the earliest.

The planners' recommendation that monorail be dropped from consideration now sets up the first big decision in that planning process. About one-third of the comments Sound Transit has received so far have urged the agency to study monorail as an option.

Cleve Stockmeyer, a member of the Seattle Monorail Project board and chairman of Citizens for King County Monorail, said taking monorail off the table now would be premature.

"We're not saying, 'Do monorail.' We're just saying, 'Study it,' " Stockmeyer said.

The Sound Transit board could make a decision July 8.

Monorail has advantages, Matsuoka told the board yesterday.

But grafting monorail onto existing light rail or commuter rail lines could force riders to make transfers that wouldn't be necessary if those lines were simply extended, he said. "Should you be changing technologies in the middle of the corridor?"

Monorail also would be incompatible with some decisions state and regional officials have made about high-capacity transit, Matsuoka added. Officials already have chosen "bus rapid transit" for I-405, for instance.

Transportation consultants Parsons Brinckerhoff Quade & Douglas also recommended against further study of a monorail in a report to Sound Transit this month. It's generally not as cheap or as flexible as buses or light rail, which can be built on the surface, the report said. Those points are valid, Stockmeyer said, "but if congestion is the problem, then speed of travel is the answer. ... People know monorails don't get stuck in traffic."
 
Eric Pryne: 206-464-2231 or epryne@seattletimes.com