This is so pathetic
"The Seattle Monorail Project board has just approved a Nov. 8 ballot measure to shorten the proposed line, and run it from the Alaska Junction in West Seattle to West Dravus Street in Interbay.The Seattle Monorail Project has just officially become the mass-transit equivalent of Terri Schiavo. It's not hard to figure out who the parents are in this drama.
"The decision to send a ballot measure to voters came hours after the Seattle City Council agreed to advocate for the termination of the financially troubled monorail plan. Last night, monorail board members rejected putting forward a ballot measure or any plan to shorten the line. Mayor Greg Nickels had pushed hard for both.
"'It's time for the people to decide whether they want to save the people's train,' said Kristina Hill, SMP board chair." [LINK]
"The people's train"!? Could she possibly have called it something that made her seem more out of touch? Pathetic.
The City Council votes to refuse street-use permits for the monorail (unanimously, which the Seattle Times left out of its story), and the SMP board's response it to send a truncated version of the already unsupportable Green Line proposal to voters on November 8. This one would run to West Dravus Street in Interbay, or basically the middle of nowhere. As unlikely as I ever was to take a monorail from West Seattle to Ballard, I'm about a thousand times less likely to take one from West Seattle to West Dravus Street. For what? To get a Red Mill burger? Pathetic.
And speaking of unsupportable, how are they planning to elevate the people's train if they aren't allowed to build support columns in the streets? Why don't they just go straight to a plan to build the line from West Seattle right across Elliott Bay, terminating in the waters off the Port of Seattle Grain Facility? That line would be more direct, they wouldn't need street-use permits and there is about as much to do in the waters off the Port of Seattle Grain Facility as in Interbay. And they would still be building A MONORAIL, the people's train. Pathetic.
One thing is certain: I really don't want to be stuck paying a motor vehicle excise tax for several more years (on the fraudulently high value imputed to my car) for the benefit of an abandoned public works project. I think that regardless of what happens on November 8, the SMP and its board should not be disbanded, but, rather, reconstituted with the new mandate of finding a way to end the vehicle excise tax so that no Seattle driver is required to pay it more than one time after the final demise of the monorail plan. I'm being generous here. It will be galling to pay those hundreds of dollars even once more. It will seem unfair. They'll probably compound the sting by continuing to dispense those little monorail stickers. Pathetic.
(Someone observed that the new SMP executive director picked the day of President Bush's "we will rebuild New Orleans" speech to float the idea that maybe some federal money could be available for the Green Line. The new executive director seems like a seasoned professional (although maybe with some unresolved issues, like the patient in that one M*A*S*H episode who volunteered for Explosive Ordinance Detail duty), but his timing here was . . . pathetic.)
posted at 12:03 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home