Speaking as one who was deeply involved in the monorail effort from 1998 to 2004 (and seen waving signs at 36:42 in the video), this is a well-produced and quite accurate documentary. Well done. Bittersweet...though I admit, I'm still mostly just bitter. But thank you, Peter, for producing this story.
LVT might've solved this, if it really came down to the funding. Otherwise, it's a prime example of how the people we elect can actively work against what we have decided and overtly expressed on multiple occassions should be done. Many of those shenanigans should've been illegal, yet a lot of those characters moved onward and upward in the system -- to be even better empowered to sabatoge the project.
@@janningc The whole thing was rather frustrating. I voted for the monorail during the elections where I was allowed to vote. But, I don't remember the people in opposition having an alternative for grade separated transit to help deal with the massive traffic problems that were already a common occurrence at that time. Let alone the ones that were expected to come due to population growth.
@@kickinghorse2405 Yes, it was deeply problematic that we had to keep voting on these matters until an acceptable result was reached. I do think that it was a mistake to not include more monorails as part of the overall transit system. Yes, there are issues, for example it's one of the hardest types of transit to change routes on, but it's also above the ground, looks cool and is relatively quiet. It's also a great option as they can climb up and down things that other options really can't handle without a great deal of problems. Also, a short monorail through downtown could help a lot with the problem of being largely maxed out under ground.
They (city) seemed to just like taking/having “info gathering/ vacations” to Japan, Vegas 2x, San Francisco, etc…😅 To come to conclusions like…”they seem to take passengers from place to place” Wow….i think my dead for 30 yrs dog named Milo knew tht fact❤
Monorails are somewhat problematic in some ways, hence why they haven't really caught on. However, I do think there's a case for having them in a few strategic locations where it's hard to run other transit options, or like along the water front where it's just cool.
Great informative video and very well produced. Thanks. The fatal flaw was the original funding. It should have been an increase to the sales tax, not an increase in the vehicle registration fee. Why? Because the more public transit that gets built going forward, the less number of cars you would have and therefore less funding in the future. I can't believe no one saw the irony in that funding scheme. Had they gone with a sales tax increase, they would be enjoying a comprehensive monorail system today instead of the 1 mile tourist attraction.
The idea is sound, if you can finish a project fast enough that people don't vote to lower registration fees. Cars more expensive, rail gets built, rail cheaper than car, fewer cars, then rail sustains itself. Generally, you only get one election cycle to get all of that done, unless you start drafting laws to compel later Administrations to progress your own projects.
No. The fatal flaw is public transportation. City bureaucrats who drive BMWs love to dream up multibillion dollar projects (boondoggles) for the "little people" to stand outside in the rain/snow/blazing heat/ freezing cold waiting for the transit to come along which almost never on time. What is up with monorail? My city has an elevated train line (it's actually both an elevated train and a subway) which is commonly called "the el" or the M-F (Market Frankford line) which runs from Northeast Philadelphia to West Philadelphia via center city. It was built a 120 years ago and was rebuilt about 25 years ago. Despite how old it is, it isn't profitable. How is a monorail any better?
Lived here 30 years. Still can't get from Kirkland to West Seattle on any kind of mass transit, short of a very slow sequence of very slow busses.... c'est la vie.
Thank you for collating and presenting this. As someone whose interest in a Seattle came from a syndicated TV show to Australia, to finally being able to visit in 2018, learning more and more about the trouble past and history has been incredible. I sincerely appreciate it.
I was a huge supporter of the Monorail Project, and kept voting for it over and over. I began to have doubts when I read about the single-tracking. What made me finally vote No was that 50-year bond. I still think it was a good idea, but planned out terribly.
I think the mistake more than anything else was that it was too focused on monorails when there should have been light rail and other grade separated components as well. There definitely are locations where alternative modes of transportation would be appropriate. There needs to be a better way of getting up and down Queen Anne Hill, especially during snow. I've thought for quite some time that having a Gondola option for just getting from the top to a small transit station would add so much to the area, and solve the problem of access during snow storms.
I went to the opening of the 2 Line ("Short line") a couple weeks ago, it was an excellent event. Every time I learn more about the history of Seattle public transit it's disappointing; we should be so much further along with more connectivity. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't stop trying, and the energy behind the movement is stronger than ever. Our governor and both senators were at the opening, and it was so crowded I had to wait for the third train despite being there an hour and a half before the first departure. Wonderful video once again, I'm glad to see one featuring an area I know so intimately now!
I hear that the Link light rail folks are learning from their failures on the original line and improving the design, which is definitely good. Paying subway / metro prices for slow light rail service sure was rough. Here's hoping the at-grade crossings can be upgraded, and speed / frequency increased! Yay for mass transit, let's make it awesome!
I was born in 95 in Seattle so I never got to have adult thoughts and feelings about it when it was still relevant, but I remember as a child how people talked about it. It was about hope at the end of the day. It’s one of the reasons I love Seattle still. It’s a very special place and I never want to leave. It’s people like Falkenbury that make me love living here.
Probably the most frustrating part of seeing these chains of events end in failure is that oftentimes, preventing only a few of the bad decisions might have changed the fate of the project. Seems like that was especially the case here, given the fairly strong public support for the project until the hidden costs came out.
The storry of missmanaging project that have a really good potential to be semi revolutionary is way to common. its almost as its sabotage every single time.
Agreed. But the critical flaw was the original funding scheme. They should have gone with an increase to the sales tax. Had they done that, it would have prevented most, if not all, of the worse issues later on with this project. It would have been built.
"Easier to build over challenging terrain" at 15:52, exactly, that's a big factor you can justify building an elevated system like a monorail system for, because using monorails leverages the ability to negotiate steep grades and tight curves and rapid transit capacity, like Chongqing's Lines 2 and 3! Chongqing, China is a huge densely populated but mountainous city, with multiple river valleys, so using monorail or an elevated metro is the best option, and Chongqing's monorails are capable of transporting 32,000 passengers per hour per direction! A cool fact about Chongqing's monorail is Liziba station on Line 2 where the monorail goes through a 19-story residential building, the station and the building were constructed together, so it's transit-oriented development to the max! The station uses specialized noise reduction equipment to isolate station noise from the surrounding residences! You can't plan a system without considering geography (whether it's rivers, mountains, soil, etc), transit isn't a one size fits all, and so in mountainous cities or mountainous neighborhoods of cities, or using cable cars, funiculars, elevated metro, or a monorail may be the best option! And geography aside, building elevated transit in general like Vancouver's SkyTrain, Miami Metrorail, Medellín Metro, or the Chicago L is great for grade-separation and thus great frequencies without having to build a whole underground system. Geography is the reason why the iconic Wuppertal Schwebebahn or Wuppertal Suspension Railway in Germany is the way it is! They ended up building a suspended monorail because Wuppertal is located in a river valley (that's what Wuppertal means; Wupper Valley), and because of steep slopes, the original towns that now makes up Wuppertal expanded lengthwise (resulting in the thin shape of Wuppertal today). It wasn't suitable to build a tram nor a subway, so as a way to both unify the valley and find a place for transit to solve congestion, they built a suspended monorail that followed the Wupper River. It is the oldest electric elevated railway with hanging cars in the world as it opened in 1901!
A big thank you to Peter from the members of The Monorail Society for producing this documentary! It seems to me that the mismanagement and secrecy by directors is what killed it. The board and all of its supporters were enthusiastic for monorail, but not the leadership who were poor communicators. How utterly heartbreaking, a loss for Seattle and American history.
The leadership's poor communication wasn't the only issue. They made some very poor decisions with their planning as well. Single-tracking instead of reusing the existing monorail alignment or shortening the route is probably the one that stands out most, but also trying to force monorail into being a metro substitute connecting parts of the city to downtown, which is not what it's good at. Look at what Tokyo did with theirs: the monorails largely serve the dense inner city, where space for regular railways isn't available, and the heavier rail systems feed it. Had Seattle followed the Japanese example more closely, or even just had Sound Transit and ETC/SMP actually come together and developed a single master plan, things could've been much better, and both projects would've been all the more likely to survive for it. Had the leadership communicated better, the project might've been saved, sure. But that would just mean a poorly-planned system actually got built, at greater overall cost to the taxpayer, especially after 2003 when parts of the line were going to be single-track and they started cutting stations.
No, what killed it was the funding scheme. It should have been an increase to the sales tax and not the vehicle registration fee. The irony is that the more public transit is built, the less vehicle registration fee funding there would be. I can't believe no one saw the irony in the funding scheme. Had they used an increase in the sales tax, it would have been built because most of the mismanagement and secrecy were due to the lack of projected funding and the need for the high interest bonds.
It was an unfortunate conundrum where sincere and decent citizens were advocating together to try and fix the long running problem with Seattle's lack of a high capacity transit system. While this was the case unfortunately transit advocates had been blind sighted by a more or less impracticable transit technology just as problematic as the solution to fix the problem was. Like Australian and NZ cities - Seattle was desperately playing catch up due to decades of under investment. Ironic as economically Seattle is considered a desirable US metropolitan area. As cities in the US grow the transit problem will only get worse due to the detrimental polarization of society (thanks to Trump), lack of funding (thanks to US style capitalism) and high costs of construction these days (a global phenomenon). Importantly Seattle over the past decade has been attempting to deal with this problem of public transit deficiency - this said the cost of construction is mind mindbogglingly expensive. Monorail networks are not the answer when dealing with a large metropolitan area's transport solutions. Their capacity is just way behind what heavy rail rapid transit can deliver. This said the original monorail system built in the early 1960s is indeed an historic relic worth preserving.
The Disneyland Monorail actually opened with a funny story....Walt abducted then Vice President Nixon without Nixon's security! The monorail was designed by famed Imagineer Bob Gurr (who designed most of Disneyland's ride vehicles like Haunted Mansion and Autopia). Up until opening day, the monorail would not cooperate with them. Gurr and a German engineer worked tirelessly each night on sketching replacement parts and rushing them to Burbank so they could be built. The day before on June 13, 1959, the monorail ran as intended for the first time, but they were still worried for opening day on the 14th. Gurr was in the pilot's seat, with Nixon's family and Walt on board, but the secret service agents didn't get on board as Gurr left the moment Walt told him to. He was worried, with Walt staring at him, that the monorail would break down and he accidentally kidnapped Nixon. Thankfully, it ran as intended. More on the Space Needle: At one point in time, the Space Needle was the tallest structure west of the Mississippi River! It was built to withstand up to 200 mph (320 km per hour) winds and earthquakes up to a magnitude of 9! It took 400 days to build it, 74,000 bolts to hold it together, and 5,600 tons of concrete poured into the Needle’s foundation! It was designed by John Graham & Company. The idea for a tower with a restaurant at the top came from Edward E. Carlson, chairman of the exposition, after he visited the Fernsehturm Stuttgart. After local John Graham designed the Northgate Mall in 1950, he got involved. Graham altered the restaurant to be a revolving one, based off another he was designing in Honolulu around the same time. Graham patented a gearing system that allowed you to turn the entire restaurant of 250 people with a one-horsepower motor for the original turntable. The new turntable uses 12 motors. Graham wanted a flying saucer design for the fair's Space Age theme. Architect Victor Steinbrueck was a consultant to John Graham's firm, and Victor came up with the wasp-waisted tower shape based on an abstract wooden sculpture in his home of a dancer by David Lemon called "The Feminine One", a sculpture inspired by Syvilla Fort. Syvilla Fort was a pioneer in dancing from Seattle, and she knew Lemon and Steinbrueck while at the Cornish School of Allied Arts in the 1930s. There is a bronze replica of this sculpture right outside the Space Needle.
An hour long documentary made on my favorite method of transportation around the downtown Seattle area is not what I expected to see but damnit I’m glad I have
A failure to collaborate literally killed the Seattle monorail. The ungenerous temperaments of Tom Weeks and Joel Horn should be remembered as the kind of leadership that is to be strenuously avoided.
@@tarstarkusz Took me a bit to figure out EL is shorthand for elevated railway. My guess is that an elevator rail would have required more construction, and look less flashy than the "futuristic" monorail. But, yeah, something like the Chicago L would have been way better and probably been more successful. Hopefully the Seattle Link Light Rail will succeed where the Monorail failed.
@@Jian13 Philadelphia and NYC both also have an el and I'm pretty sure there are others in the US. In my mind, there is really nothing futuristic about a monorail.
@@tarstarkuszthey have a subway system. Some of the track Is above ground, some below, some Elevated. Most cities don't call their light rail system an “EL”
I look forward to every documentary you post, Peter. (I can't call them 'videos,' they're so much better than that!) They're so well researched, the footage and images you use are beautiful, and the stories you tell are so interesting and historic. I love them. I'm already looking forward to the next one!
Love the video. For the time being your channel is a hidden gem. As someone who lived in the Seattle area for 7 years, going downtown fairly often, I love learning the history. Fun fact, My first time riding a monorail was in Las Vegas as a kid to see Star Trek the Experience at the Hilton, as pictured in the video at 31:43.
There’s a lesson we transportation planner follow: don’t start with a solution and look for a problem. Identify the need for transit improvement and then evaluate when modes and options would address them.
I've always been kinda split on the monorail. On one hand, if we did build it, it would've resulted in Seattle getting a good transit system a lot earlier. But on the other hand, traditional rail transit is so much more practical and flexible than monorail transit.
Now that Las Vegas is contemplating decommissioning its monorail as well, there's a good chance that even if it was built, it may not have lasted. That being said, hands down the Forward Thrust should have been built - the the quality of the MARTA is sadly not appreciated in such a sprawling region.
As time goes on and systems mature the need arises for maintenance and ultimately vehicle replacement. I can think of numerous light transit, heavy transit and heavy rail suppliers (and may have worked for over the years). The same cannot be said for monorail which is more of a niche.
@@stereomachineAnd that’s honestly 100% expected. It’s a short line with two stations only; you have to either work or live near either of those stops to find it useful.
Monorails are practical they're just quite niche. If your building an all elevated line it's going to be cheaper than conventional rail and if you buy decent rolling stock it's not gonna have capacity of speed issues. But if a lot of the project can be ground level or it needs to be tunneled conventional rail will still work better. That's largely why Japan and Germany's monorails work, because they understood the limitations, didn't try to force them to do things they couldn't, and bought appropriate monorails for the lines. And Chongqing in china has a massive amount of monorail due to how mountainous the place is. The Mumbai and Bangkok Monorails are also going quite well. Although Bombardier monorails are generally shitty
Great info! As a MAX/Trimet rider, I can tell you that there is downfalls of the system but it is much more efficient than when I was having to ride the bus downtown.
Uh, don't see why they couldn't extend the EXISTING MONORAIL incrementally station-by-new-station, like a Heritage Streetcar line, they failed in part trying to be too ambitious, if they had just done a modest extension, they would have gained experience in planning, building, and financing that could have lead to a longer line.
The PATCO Speedline between South Jersey and Philadelphia was the first in the US to use Automatic Train Operation/ATO as it opened in 1969 before BART did in 1972, though of course BART took it to another level by building a bigger system from the ground up! The Transbay Tube that opened in 1974 is an engineering feat! Something to mention regarding the Link light-rail is that after the rapid transit plan was rejected in 1970, they still wanted to build a sort of subway, so they opted to build a downtown bus tunnel that could be converted to light-rail, and this was proposed as the Downtown Seattle Transit Tunnel in 1974, approved in 1983, construction began in 1987, and opened in 1990. When the bus tunnel was opened in 1990, they already installed light-rail tracks in anticipation, however they had to be replaced when the tracks were later found to be poorly insulated and unusable. And there was a scandal during the tunnel's construction when it was discovered in 1989 that the granite was quarried in South Africa (but was cut and finished in Italy) despite a boycott of South African goods by the King County Metro Council at the time. For several years, service in the tunnel was provided exclusively by dual-mode buses, which ran as trolleybuses in the tunnel and diesel buses on city streets. Putting buses in the tunnel meant less traffic on city streets! The dual-mode trolleybuses were replaced by hybrid electric buses to prepare for the light-rail as the overhead wire was replaced for light-rail. And when the light-rail opened in 2009, the tunnel had unique operations where buses and the light-rail shared it, just like Pittsburgh's Mount Washington Transit Tunnel! That is until 2019 when Convention Place station was sold to the Washington State Convention Center for redevelopment, closing the tunnel to buses two years earlier than the scheduled closure of 2021 (which was meant to coincide with the Northgate Link expansion). Making the tunnel light-rail only.
Yes! This was a big part of transit history for Seattle. Not only was it great for the buses (at the time) but it influenced Sound Transit and their light rail. Without it, they would have been in deep trouble. They would have either had to pay for a downtown tunnel (which is really expensive) or run on the surface. Running on the surface is fine (Portland does it) but this would have greatly reduced the value of their initial line, especially compared to the monorail. The people in charge could have easily given up and just put it into bus service (and they almost did anyway). That likely would have opened the door wide open for the monorail. It is ironic that the monorail couldn't use the existing monorail tracks, while the light rail owes its existence in large part to leveraging the existing transit tunnel (that only carried buses when it was built).
Truly fascinating video. It's a real shame how when it all came together, things began to fall apart to actually make this happen. While we can only wonder what could've been, it's interesting to see that all that chaos and failures at Sound Transit made them not only more successful with building the Link Light Rail system but also making them the model for public transit projects nationwide, especially with their almost accurate estimated time of completion schedules.
@@harlander-harpy no it is not the line one is already overcrowded in the downtown area. The tunnel cannot support any more trains per hour, and length of consist and on top of that they’re thinking on convert it to heavy rail but that’ll become too costly because it’s tunnel is only for low floor vehicles so the clearance won’t add up this is the problem with light rail. Once you build it, you cannot get rid of it. Like the highway only if you had subways in mind when building a light rails, which Seattle did not, they just built them because it was something to keep the pressure off the highways. without no critical, thinking that it was gonna grow in the upcoming years.people don’t understand when you built subway or heavy dense transit people moved to those areas because it’s easier to move around especially when you get to an old age that’s why a lot of people don’t like living out here and just sprawled empty space because it’s nothing especially young people who are the backbones of the city’s when people see you light rail they see Shanky dinky town they don’t see big metropolitan areas like New York, San Francisco, Atlanta, DC Philadelphia I didn’t see Las Vegas, which I’m living in right now as a big sprawl until I got here and I seen the entire skyline of just lights The light rail was built to basically keep people from building other really well good mode to transportation all because of cost and they don’t have to use it now look I’m a person who lives completely in a different area and knows that sound transit is going through chaos right now with its line one they took something that was supposed to become a part of Seattle only and that would’ve been the light rail system and expensive fleet of cars built in the 70s would’ve looked amazing. Now it’s sprawled with light rails that can’t even do their job right? It’s in the light rail. Subways are called heavy rail. The reason why I say that is because now in Los Angeles they’re planning on building a monorail through the San Fernando Valley & Hollywood and they have light rails too
@@skydiamond8705 The 1 Line is not overcrowded in downtown unless there’s a sports game going on. The tunnels are nowhere near capacity yet and literally next year the amount of trains going through it will double which is how I already know your comment is going to be total BS but I’m gonna keep going because you don’t deserve the spotlight. There has not been a single proposal to convert any part of Link to heavy rail so please quit making stuff up. Even if they did convert it to heavy rail (which again, nobody ever proposed that because it’s stupid) the tunnels are indeed large enough for typical subway trains because our trains are quite literally bigger than subway trains. The trains in many parts of the line are quicker than cars so I enjoy flipping off the traffic as I speed by it (you should try it, it may help with your anger and supremacy issues). Link is going to be able to handle growth very well, and certain boundaries that exist right now which may limit trains on an individual line to every 6 minutes are frankly going to be obliterated when we destroy everything in the train’s path and make cars deal with the consequences just to speed the trains up, easy peasy. We definitely do consider ridership growing in the coming years which is why we are building so much Transit Oriented Development and Affordable Housing near stations. In terms of perceiving light rail as “shanky dinky town” it’s quite the opposite as we’ve got nice bright trains which constant fresh and clean interiors and spotless stations unlike the literal pipes they call trains running around NYC. Yes, there is plenty of sprawl in the suburbs of many cities including your drunk hobo land, thanks for inviting me to your ted talk that you’re going to forget you had when you wake up with a hangover in a few hours. Sound Transit is NOT in chaos right now, they are VERY stable with extremely modern trains (may more advanced then yours) made by Kinkisharyo and Siemens, and the light rail system is doing its job perfectly. You really don’t know a thing about our system but you’ve come here to pretend we’re every other light rail system when the truth is we’re just a metro with pretty trains and catenary. Anyways, you’re wrong, but this was a fun challenge to try to respond to your incoherent gobbled mess of unwarranted hate for pretty trains. Please for your sake just go back to bed and don’t respond until you actually know what you’re talking about, but you’re gonna be way more late and overbudget on that than Sound Transit’s every been on anything. Don’t drive for a while, peace.
Wow!- what a great documentary! PBS needs to pick up your documentaries for the interesting subjects and high quality production values. Thank you for your vision and work!!
I remember watching promo videos for the new monorail as a kid. So happy to finally have an explanation behind it! Also low-key I was going to make this exact video for my channel, but you beat me to it and you probably did it better than I would :) amazing show!
@@realquadmoo But as good as salesman Lyle Lanley’s systems? Don’t think so! 😂 I was referencing the Simpsons episode with those places, but yes, the plan did actually look good of course, and this was so interesting to watch
These documentaries are great! Thank-you. If you want to find plenty of arrogance and incompetence, but no vision, look no further than politics. To paraphrase Thoreau, the only way government furthers an enterprise is by quickly getting out of the way.
Does monorail offer any advantages over elevated light rail? Switching lines is problematic for monorails and there are a few operational headaches. Monorail is easier to put in high places since it is easier to make a monorail than a viaduct with a trail line on it, but I can't really think of a reason why operating a monorail would be any better than an elevated rail platform.
It has been about 50 years since I have been on the Monorail. I found it to be a very enjoyable ride. The area around the World's Fair is very impressive. Taking a trip up the Space Needle was a breath taking view of Seattle and the Puget Sound. I have been at assemblies in the Coliseum where the Seattle Supersonics used to play. And have gone through the Science Center Buildings. The Space Needle always reminded me of the Jetsons Residence.
Hats off to you and your team. I watched this last night, and it was an incredible documentary. Great images, videos, quotes, and maps. Some of these UA-cam documentaries do not show you the visuals and representation you used. 10/10 keep them up!
Ahh the main monorail, takes you from the mall to the space needle. A route I almost never found useful. Heck it's close enough to walk if you are in the mood
I have lived in Seattle almost 30 years, having moved here in January 1995. The light rail system opened in July of 2009- 15 years ago. Really, for the cost of the thing, it should be more extensive by now. Southbound, the line ends at Angle Lake, in the city of SeaTac. Northbound, it ends at Northgate but will be extended to Lynnwood August 30th. By contrast, San Diego,where I grew up, opened their light rail system in 1981, and they didn't get any federal money. I lived there again, briefly, in 1993. In the ensuing 12 years, it went all around the city and the county,at least 30 miles of track. It has expanded even more in the last few years. People from Seattle love to put down California- a woman once said to me that she couldn't believe I was from SD because she had never before met anyone from the city that was intelligent! Seattle just can't seem to do anything right.
Being from the area from back in the 70's, as a kid I would ride sometimes. From where we lived 144 South between Military Way and Old 99 Riverton Heights. From there I would ride the bus to down Seattle to a restaurant named Fransisco's cool place down by the carwash with the pink elephant spraying it's self sign. Seattle was a cool city to grow up near as kid no worries not like today poor city is not be looked after like it should be.Anyway great presentation well put together and informative. The gentleman doing the voice over good you kept interested some people try to do voice over on documentary's and more or fall flat boring the listener to sleep or sound like finger nails on a chalkboard. Over on the Eastside of Washington we don't need light rail just less people moving the Tri-Cities no one from the wet side likes it anyway,I remember as kid how it looked down at. Not as Cultured as the Puget Sound area was the thinking well been here since the summer of 1980 moved her from Kenmore at the end of my Freshman year. Would run in to a couple class mates from my elementary school days at Cascade View Elementary school. We have a little taste of city life that's all we need not too much.
Nothing has made me angrier in politics than the death of this project. Anything subjected to 5 votes is going to fail at one point or another. The slightest bit of political will at any point to help overcome the problems they were facing would've saved the project. Sound Transit delivered way less for way more money, and the politicians bent over backwards to prevent the people from killing it. Now we're going to pay upwards of ten times as much for Sound Transit to build something similar and have it open 30 years later. By far the biggest mistake this city has ever made.
@@TimeLemur6 it is the role of government to fund roads. Not the role of government to build a monorail. The taxes we pay on gasoline pays for roads. This is all public information.
Would be interesting to know more about the monorail support (or lack there of) from unions and construction firms. Also, who proposed the long-term high yield bonds that inflated the cost? Who on the board were supporting this idea, and did they have a financial incentive to do so? What were the motives behind the myriad of city employees and board members to undo the will of the Seattle voters, repeatedly? Lower taxes? Fear of the spread of crime? So many questions after watching this informative video!
But it's not like MARTA has in any way maximized what the system does. They built a moderate number of extremely expensive stations and then stopped cold, with no expansion for a couple decades now. Voters have repeatedly approved and funded and begged for badly needed in-fill options, like the Clifton Road rail, only to be told it costs too much, have a bus instead. MARTA has made no effort to consider any service options except heavy rail, which they then say is too expensive. They got Clayton County aboard and could have implemented commuter rail as used in many other cities, tied into stations already stubbed out for exactly that purpose decades ago. They refuse. It's their heavy rail or nothing. The streetcar wasn't their idea and they didn't want it. But they had to accept running it or make a lot of stupid people look stupid, and now they dangle it as a carrot because the public thinks it wants light rail everywhere. Don't worry. They know it will end up costing too much and has no risk of actually being built.
@@LatitudeSky the biggest obstacle the commuter rail is facing is that Norfolk Southern has been reluctant to share their right of way. They would need additional trackage to deal with the increased traffic...
Hey, I don’t know if you would be interested in making this kind of video but I think a history of the Himalayan Blackberry’s introduction to the Pacific Northwest would be really cool in your style!
Sometimes during rush hour at the corner of First Street and Trimble Road in San Jose, one can sit for several minutes waiting for light rail to get out of the way. It doesn’t even seem like many people use it. There’s no official figures on cost per ride, but my back of the envelope calculation came up with a cost of more than $10 a ride. Of course, it would get a lot more use if we paid for road use, with higher prices at rush hour. A lot of mass transit would work if the real cost of driving wasn’t hidden. I was a contractor at Apple for many months and took advantage of their bus system to get to work. So much easier than rush hour driving.
My uncle was brought in to repair and modernize the Seattle Monorail following the last accident. I was treated to a tour of the shop while one of them was under repair. Fascinating technology! My uncle is a train buff and told me the history of the Seattle Monorail and it’s operation since the 60’s.
I haven't lived in Washington since 1990. Back in the early 80's I lived in Renton moving from the Yakima Valley. The area needed a rapid transit system into Seattle and connecting to the rest of the cities around the greater Seattle area. The traffic was horrible especially traveling on the 405 loop going into I-5. The Highway Department was trying to widen the 405 loop and it was a nightmare. The Monorail would have been perfect for the area.
Another fantastic documentary from PD. As always I wasn't disappointed, and was able to learn so much history The sad fact is that I now have to brave the long months ahead until the next video is released.
Great video! I love that you included Sound Transit information in the video as well. My favorite part, which I was hoping was included, was the information about Seattle losing federal funds and being diverted to Atlanta for their Marta creation. Being a couple of hours away from Atlanta, it's a little bit of history I always love to share.
As an 8 year old kid, I attended the “Worlds Fair”. Rode the monorail, went to the top of the Space Needle, and enjoyed the “wild Mouse” rollercoaster. Thanks for the memories. 10 years later, I started a career in transportation that lasted for 48 years.
How I would love to go back in time and visit the Seattle World’s Fair. Looked so exciting and fun. God, these videos are fascinating and so well done. Worth the wait Peter. Thank you!
10:42 I love that you inserted that end result of the funds going to MARTA and i believe that your next video should be on MARTA and its challenges in modernizing and expansions up to today.
The lack of development planning around those MARTA stations are the leading cause to inferior ridership. Buckhead & Sandy Spring... maybe Decatur are the outliers but the rest?... 🤐
Moved to Seattle 2 years ago and still can’t take rail to work (I work on the east side). Maybe next year… in the mean time, King Stroad aka 99 aka Aurora Ave has dedicated bus/right turn only lanes. Coincidentally my wife is Japanese and I absolutely love the Tokyo rail system.
I live about 1.5 hours away from Seattle. They leech the fuck out of everyone in the state and have tax surpluses year after year then ask for even more taxes AND still don't have this shit done. Reduce politician pay
I voted for the monorail at each opportunity and remember feeling devastated and betrayed when SMP was disbanded. The Link light rail system has some serious capacity limitations and a lot of those issues are due to running at grade with traffic in the Rainier Valley - something that would not have been an issue with the monorail. Also, it should be noted the Tacoma Link system is not true light rail - it's a low-speed streetcar stuck in traffic.
Yes, it’s a shame that ST didn’t build a heavy rail metro like proposed during forward thrust, or at least high floor light rail to give it higher capacity and higher speeds. Light rail should be limited within the city limits, it’s not designed to carry suburban commuters, it’s too slow for that. The only remedy at this point is if ST can figure out a way to buy out the rails for the current south sounder commuter line, electrify it and convert it to regional rail. Kent/Des Moines to downtown Seattle is projected to be a 42 minute ride. Currently Kent to King station on the sounder takes 20 minutes.
For anyone who has taken the Seattle Underground Tour, which highlights the silly mismatch between maintaining lower tidelands as real estate and building a properly graded city (at Pioneer Square), the mindset hasn't changed for Seattle in a hundred years! There is something most peculiar about this municipal financing and development. Anywhere else it happens pretty well as expected, but Seattle has all kinds of bizarre issues. Maybe it is related to Vancouver's weird rejection of being integrated into Portland's light rail system? It needn't have cost that much and would have provided an alternative to the Interstate Bridge congestion which has been going on for fifty years (at congestion hours) at least!
The only thing close is the Light Rail System together with the Sounder Commuter train. Which have problems including reliability and just being on time.
Excellent documentary. Well explained about a transit system which Seattle fortunately never built. LRT has the potential to transform the metro area, although cost is an issue particulary for Seattle's case. Monorails are really a relic of paleo futurism...
Good video. The real tragedy isn't the loss of the monorail. It really wasn't a great idea--many neighborhoods through which it would have passed would have objected pretty strenuously. Who really wants the elevated line like down Fifth Avenue down the middle of California Avenue SW? The sad tale is the failure of rapid transit to get approved during the first Forward Thrust votes. The person in the video praising highways and cars was, I imagine, taken by surprise when Seattleites rose up against more freeways. Seattle could have avoided a fair bit of agony had it built a sound rapid transit system in the 1970s when land and labor was a lot cheaper.
I'm not a supporter of monorails in general, but I feel like the city management pulled all stops to hold this back, plus the lack of transparency didn't help. If the board of directors were allowed in on discussion, this would have resolved plenty of issues and maybe delivered a downscaled project.
Fantastic job! You continue to produce fascinating content, each video better than the last. I'm grateful for your return to UA-cam and I hope your break was refreshing and invigorating!
I always knew there was a push to go with monorail in Seattle, but I had no idea how far they got. Being on a county's citizens advisory council for transit and development myself, it's amazing how far they got and in how short a time frame.
24:23 Monorail costs $35-50M per mile 34:38 14 miles of monorail costs $1.7B, or $121M/mile Don't say inflation, inflation doesn't more than double in 10 years
Seattle could have had a great system, if it had been expanded on, in the mid 60's, but money or pesky politicians ...for the most part, who don't envision the future. When you mentioned Dick Falkenbury, I remembered Kim Pederson and the Monorail Society, now there was insight. At least we have a few systems now., we just need to expand on them.
Over planning, under developing. It’s too bad. The existing Link Light rail is the lone reason I moved here. After living in NYC and Japan, I realize how the transportation system in the US is very underwhelming. I wish there were more cities that had these systems. I think Seattle will get it right. We definitely do not need anymore pollution promoting suburban decay in this country. And I love how the state of Washington clearly shows this.
Speaking as one who was deeply involved in the monorail effort from 1998 to 2004 (and seen waving signs at 36:42 in the video), this is a well-produced and quite accurate documentary. Well done. Bittersweet...though I admit, I'm still mostly just bitter. But thank you, Peter, for producing this story.
LVT might've solved this, if it really came down to the funding. Otherwise, it's a prime example of how the people we elect can actively work against what we have decided and overtly expressed on multiple occassions should be done. Many of those shenanigans should've been illegal, yet a lot of those characters moved onward and upward in the system -- to be even better empowered to sabatoge the project.
Sad story of corruption.
@@janningc The whole thing was rather frustrating. I voted for the monorail during the elections where I was allowed to vote. But, I don't remember the people in opposition having an alternative for grade separated transit to help deal with the massive traffic problems that were already a common occurrence at that time. Let alone the ones that were expected to come due to population growth.
Hard to imagine living in a time with so much hope & optimism for the future.
thank you for documenting the fight, i remember being so mad that we kept approving mass transit plans and the state and city would just not do it
Like New York City whose traffic abatement plans get shot down by the suburban dominated state govt
Only first-generation Alweg monorail still in operation using its original period equipment. It started out being futuristic and is now historical!
I'm still mad.
I'm still "non-plussed" by this as well.
And for having twice! voted down a new stadium and (in the end) finding 2 new stadiums instead.
#ripkingdom
@@kickinghorse2405 Yes, it was deeply problematic that we had to keep voting on these matters until an acceptable result was reached. I do think that it was a mistake to not include more monorails as part of the overall transit system. Yes, there are issues, for example it's one of the hardest types of transit to change routes on, but it's also above the ground, looks cool and is relatively quiet. It's also a great option as they can climb up and down things that other options really can't handle without a great deal of problems. Also, a short monorail through downtown could help a lot with the problem of being largely maxed out under ground.
You know what? These hyper local histories are so great. I love youtube.
I rode the monorail a few years ago, still smells like the 1960s in there, worth the short round trip, only wish the ride was longer
They (city) seemed to just like taking/having “info gathering/ vacations” to Japan, Vegas 2x, San Francisco, etc…😅
To come to conclusions like…”they seem to take passengers from place to place”
Wow….i think my dead for 30 yrs dog named Milo knew tht fact❤
Form the old world fair site to the city, aka we could opt,ise it more to link to several areas of the city+
Monorails are somewhat problematic in some ways, hence why they haven't really caught on. However, I do think there's a case for having them in a few strategic locations where it's hard to run other transit options, or like along the water front where it's just cool.
Great informative video and very well produced. Thanks.
The fatal flaw was the original funding. It should have been an increase to the sales tax, not an increase in the vehicle registration fee. Why? Because the more public transit that gets built going forward, the less number of cars you would have and therefore less funding in the future. I can't believe no one saw the irony in that funding scheme.
Had they gone with a sales tax increase, they would be enjoying a comprehensive monorail system today instead of the 1 mile tourist attraction.
The idea is sound, if you can finish a project fast enough that people don't vote to lower registration fees.
Cars more expensive, rail gets built, rail cheaper than car, fewer cars, then rail sustains itself.
Generally, you only get one election cycle to get all of that done, unless you start drafting laws to compel later Administrations to progress your own projects.
I'm p
No. The fatal flaw is public transportation. City bureaucrats who drive BMWs love to dream up multibillion dollar projects (boondoggles) for the "little people" to stand outside in the rain/snow/blazing heat/ freezing cold waiting for the transit to come along which almost never on time.
What is up with monorail?
My city has an elevated train line (it's actually both an elevated train and a subway) which is commonly called "the el" or the M-F (Market Frankford line) which runs from Northeast Philadelphia to West Philadelphia via center city. It was built a 120 years ago and was rebuilt about 25 years ago. Despite how old it is, it isn't profitable.
How is a monorail any better?
Sounds completely indicative of the nonsensical liberal mindset, demonstrated time and time again.
We FINALLY have a light rail.. close to 50 years later.. still not finished though..
Lived here 30 years. Still can't get from Kirkland to West Seattle on any kind of mass transit, short of a very slow sequence of very slow busses.... c'est la vie.
3:53 Seeing so much sky in these old pictures of Seattle, like this one, is amazing--nothing but tall buildings, now.
Thank you for collating and presenting this. As someone whose interest in a Seattle came from a syndicated TV show to Australia, to finally being able to visit in 2018, learning more and more about the trouble past and history has been incredible. I sincerely appreciate it.
Gray's Anatomy?
@@ct6852Frasier
it’s a beautiful and special city! hello from a seattlite who dreams of visiting aus and nz someday :)
@@mxandrew There's this family on UA-cam from NZ that is traveling all over the US as we speak and they said Seattle most reminded them of Auckland.
@@ct6852 ive heard similar things!!!!!!!!!!!! ❤️ ❤️ ❤️
I was a huge supporter of the Monorail Project, and kept voting for it over and over. I began to have doubts when I read about the single-tracking. What made me finally vote No was that 50-year bond. I still think it was a good idea, but planned out terribly.
I think the mistake more than anything else was that it was too focused on monorails when there should have been light rail and other grade separated components as well. There definitely are locations where alternative modes of transportation would be appropriate. There needs to be a better way of getting up and down Queen Anne Hill, especially during snow. I've thought for quite some time that having a Gondola option for just getting from the top to a small transit station would add so much to the area, and solve the problem of access during snow storms.
I went to the opening of the 2 Line ("Short line") a couple weeks ago, it was an excellent event. Every time I learn more about the history of Seattle public transit it's disappointing; we should be so much further along with more connectivity. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't stop trying, and the energy behind the movement is stronger than ever. Our governor and both senators were at the opening, and it was so crowded I had to wait for the third train despite being there an hour and a half before the first departure.
Wonderful video once again, I'm glad to see one featuring an area I know so intimately now!
Thank you for coming!
I hear that the Link light rail folks are learning from their failures on the original line and improving the design, which is definitely good. Paying subway / metro prices for slow light rail service sure was rough. Here's hoping the at-grade crossings can be upgraded, and speed / frequency increased! Yay for mass transit, let's make it awesome!
You are not mentioning the opening day for crossing from Seattle to Mercer Island?
Oh yeah, right.
@@cr-pol next year
@@bjf10the light rail is anything but slow.. north gate to sea-tac in less than 40 minutes
I was born in 95 in Seattle so I never got to have adult thoughts and feelings about it when it was still relevant, but I remember as a child how people talked about it. It was about hope at the end of the day. It’s one of the reasons I love Seattle still. It’s a very special place and I never want to leave.
It’s people like Falkenbury that make me love living here.
Probably the most frustrating part of seeing these chains of events end in failure is that oftentimes, preventing only a few of the bad decisions might have changed the fate of the project. Seems like that was especially the case here, given the fairly strong public support for the project until the hidden costs came out.
The storry of missmanaging project that have a really good potential to be semi revolutionary is way to common.
its almost as its sabotage every single time.
Agreed. But the critical flaw was the original funding scheme. They should have gone with an increase to the sales tax. Had they done that, it would have prevented most, if not all, of the worse issues later on with this project. It would have been built.
I live in the Seattle area and learned a few things in this video. Thank you!
An hour long Peter Dribble video on the Seattle monorail? Well hell I’m dropping what I’m doing for the day and watching this.
Basically me
I didn't realize it was so long until nearly 40 minutes in 😂
Or even Dibble...
@@carlgemlich1657 it was dribble to me, I live in NYC
I only wish the Spruce Goose video was longer. However, it was an exceptional video.
These videos are incredibly valuable. Thanks Peter
"Easier to build over challenging terrain" at 15:52, exactly, that's a big factor you can justify building an elevated system like a monorail system for, because using monorails leverages the ability to negotiate steep grades and tight curves and rapid transit capacity, like Chongqing's Lines 2 and 3! Chongqing, China is a huge densely populated but mountainous city, with multiple river valleys, so using monorail or an elevated metro is the best option, and Chongqing's monorails are capable of transporting 32,000 passengers per hour per direction! A cool fact about Chongqing's monorail is Liziba station on Line 2 where the monorail goes through a 19-story residential building, the station and the building were constructed together, so it's transit-oriented development to the max! The station uses specialized noise reduction equipment to isolate station noise from the surrounding residences! You can't plan a system without considering geography (whether it's rivers, mountains, soil, etc), transit isn't a one size fits all, and so in mountainous cities or mountainous neighborhoods of cities, or using cable cars, funiculars, elevated metro, or a monorail may be the best option! And geography aside, building elevated transit in general like Vancouver's SkyTrain, Miami Metrorail, Medellín Metro, or the Chicago L is great for grade-separation and thus great frequencies without having to build a whole underground system.
Geography is the reason why the iconic Wuppertal Schwebebahn or Wuppertal Suspension Railway in Germany is the way it is! They ended up building a suspended monorail because Wuppertal is located in a river valley (that's what Wuppertal means; Wupper Valley), and because of steep slopes, the original towns that now makes up Wuppertal expanded lengthwise (resulting in the thin shape of Wuppertal today). It wasn't suitable to build a tram nor a subway, so as a way to both unify the valley and find a place for transit to solve congestion, they built a suspended monorail that followed the Wupper River. It is the oldest electric elevated railway with hanging cars in the world as it opened in 1901!
Pittsburgh would really benefit from a Chongqing style system, both share similar terrain challenges
YOU'RE HERE TOO?
A big thank you to Peter from the members of The Monorail Society for producing this documentary! It seems to me that the mismanagement and secrecy by directors is what killed it. The board and all of its supporters were enthusiastic for monorail, but not the leadership who were poor communicators. How utterly heartbreaking, a loss for Seattle and American history.
Any system is good, on UA-cam you get hits with monorail !
light rail fanboys won ?
The leadership's poor communication wasn't the only issue. They made some very poor decisions with their planning as well.
Single-tracking instead of reusing the existing monorail alignment or shortening the route is probably the one that stands out most, but also trying to force monorail into being a metro substitute connecting parts of the city to downtown, which is not what it's good at. Look at what Tokyo did with theirs: the monorails largely serve the dense inner city, where space for regular railways isn't available, and the heavier rail systems feed it. Had Seattle followed the Japanese example more closely, or even just had Sound Transit and ETC/SMP actually come together and developed a single master plan, things could've been much better, and both projects would've been all the more likely to survive for it.
Had the leadership communicated better, the project might've been saved, sure. But that would just mean a poorly-planned system actually got built, at greater overall cost to the taxpayer, especially after 2003 when parts of the line were going to be single-track and they started cutting stations.
No, what killed it was the funding scheme. It should have been an increase to the sales tax and not the vehicle registration fee. The irony is that the more public transit is built, the less vehicle registration fee funding there would be. I can't believe no one saw the irony in the funding scheme. Had they used an increase in the sales tax, it would have been built because most of the mismanagement and secrecy were due to the lack of projected funding and the need for the high interest bonds.
A "what-if:" had the initial proposal been a shorter, less costly "starter system," might it have succeeded?
It was an unfortunate conundrum where sincere and decent citizens were advocating together to try and fix the long running problem with Seattle's lack of a high capacity transit system. While this was the case unfortunately transit advocates had been blind sighted by a more or less impracticable transit technology just as problematic as the solution to fix the problem was. Like Australian and NZ cities - Seattle was desperately playing catch up due to decades of under investment. Ironic as economically Seattle is considered a desirable US metropolitan area. As cities in the US grow the transit problem will only get worse due to the detrimental polarization of society (thanks to Trump), lack of funding (thanks to US style capitalism) and high costs of construction these days (a global phenomenon). Importantly Seattle over the past decade has been attempting to deal with this problem of public transit deficiency - this said the cost of construction is mind mindbogglingly expensive. Monorail networks are not the answer when dealing with a large metropolitan area's transport solutions. Their capacity is just way behind what heavy rail rapid transit can deliver. This said the original monorail system built in the early 1960s is indeed an historic relic worth preserving.
The Disneyland Monorail actually opened with a funny story....Walt abducted then Vice President Nixon without Nixon's security! The monorail was designed by famed Imagineer Bob Gurr (who designed most of Disneyland's ride vehicles like Haunted Mansion and Autopia). Up until opening day, the monorail would not cooperate with them. Gurr and a German engineer worked tirelessly each night on sketching replacement parts and rushing them to Burbank so they could be built. The day before on June 13, 1959, the monorail ran as intended for the first time, but they were still worried for opening day on the 14th. Gurr was in the pilot's seat, with Nixon's family and Walt on board, but the secret service agents didn't get on board as Gurr left the moment Walt told him to. He was worried, with Walt staring at him, that the monorail would break down and he accidentally kidnapped Nixon. Thankfully, it ran as intended.
More on the Space Needle: At one point in time, the Space Needle was the tallest structure west of the Mississippi River! It was built to withstand up to 200 mph (320 km per hour) winds and earthquakes up to a magnitude of 9! It took 400 days to build it, 74,000 bolts to hold it together, and 5,600 tons of concrete poured into the Needle’s foundation! It was designed by John Graham & Company. The idea for a tower with a restaurant at the top came from Edward E. Carlson, chairman of the exposition, after he visited the Fernsehturm Stuttgart. After local John Graham designed the Northgate Mall in 1950, he got involved. Graham altered the restaurant to be a revolving one, based off another he was designing in Honolulu around the same time. Graham patented a gearing system that allowed you to turn the entire restaurant of 250 people with a one-horsepower motor for the original turntable. The new turntable uses 12 motors. Graham wanted a flying saucer design for the fair's Space Age theme. Architect Victor Steinbrueck was a consultant to John Graham's firm, and Victor came up with the wasp-waisted tower shape based on an abstract wooden sculpture in his home of a dancer by David Lemon called "The Feminine One", a sculpture inspired by Syvilla Fort. Syvilla Fort was a pioneer in dancing from Seattle, and she knew Lemon and Steinbrueck while at the Cornish School of Allied Arts in the 1930s. There is a bronze replica of this sculpture right outside the Space Needle.
Sad that Graham's revolving resturaunt in Hawaii was welded in place in the 90's.
The Space Needle is designed to look like a UFO sitting on top of a Champaign glass stem.
An hour long documentary made on my favorite method of transportation around the downtown Seattle area is not what I expected to see but damnit I’m glad I have
Another great video as always! Thank you for putting these together.
A failure to collaborate literally killed the Seattle monorail. The ungenerous temperaments of Tom Weeks and Joel Horn should be remembered as the kind of leadership that is to be strenuously avoided.
Nah. It was a bad idea in the first place. For all the pain of making a monorail, why not just make an el?
@@tarstarkusz Took me a bit to figure out EL is shorthand for elevated railway. My guess is that an elevator rail would have required more construction, and look less flashy than the "futuristic" monorail. But, yeah, something like the Chicago L would have been way better and probably been more successful. Hopefully the Seattle Link Light Rail will succeed where the Monorail failed.
@@Jian13 Philadelphia and NYC both also have an el and I'm pretty sure there are others in the US. In my mind, there is really nothing futuristic about a monorail.
@@tarstarkuszthey have a subway system. Some of the track
Is above ground, some below, some
Elevated. Most cities don't call their light rail system an “EL”
@@tarstarkuszi can only assume you're not from here, as lost of
Cities Have light rail public transportation.
This channel should have millions of subscribers! At least I think so.
I look forward to every documentary you post, Peter. (I can't call them 'videos,' they're so much better than that!) They're so well researched, the footage and images you use are beautiful, and the stories you tell are so interesting and historic. I love them. I'm already looking forward to the next one!
Glad you are back. Your story telling is outstanding! Combined with the great visuals and beautiful music, it's simply stunning
Love the video. For the time being your channel is a hidden gem. As someone who lived in the Seattle area for 7 years, going downtown fairly often, I love learning the history. Fun fact, My first time riding a monorail was in Las Vegas as a kid to see Star Trek the Experience at the Hilton, as pictured in the video at 31:43.
There’s a lesson we transportation planner follow: don’t start with a solution and look for a problem. Identify the need for transit improvement and then evaluate when modes and options would address them.
I've always been kinda split on the monorail.
On one hand, if we did build it, it would've resulted in Seattle getting a good transit system a lot earlier.
But on the other hand, traditional rail transit is so much more practical and flexible than monorail transit.
Now that Las Vegas is contemplating decommissioning its monorail as well, there's a good chance that even if it was built, it may not have lasted. That being said, hands down the Forward Thrust should have been built - the the quality of the MARTA is sadly not appreciated in such a sprawling region.
As time goes on and systems mature the need arises for maintenance and ultimately vehicle replacement. I can think of numerous light transit, heavy transit and heavy rail suppliers (and may have worked for over the years). The same cannot be said for monorail which is more of a niche.
@@stereomachineAnd that’s honestly 100% expected. It’s a short line with two stations only; you have to either work or live near either of those stops to find it useful.
Monorails are practical they're just quite niche. If your building an all elevated line it's going to be cheaper than conventional rail and if you buy decent rolling stock it's not gonna have capacity of speed issues.
But if a lot of the project can be ground level or it needs to be tunneled conventional rail will still work better.
That's largely why Japan and Germany's monorails work, because they understood the limitations, didn't try to force them to do things they couldn't, and bought appropriate monorails for the lines. And Chongqing in china has a massive amount of monorail due to how mountainous the place is. The Mumbai and Bangkok Monorails are also going quite well.
Although Bombardier monorails are generally shitty
@@maestromecanico597 CRRC, Alstom and Hitachi are the big 3 monorail vehicle suppliers.
Great info! As a MAX/Trimet rider, I can tell you that there is downfalls of the system but it is much more efficient than when I was having to ride the bus downtown.
Loved this film Peter! THANKS! ❤❤❤❤
Uh, don't see why they couldn't extend the EXISTING MONORAIL incrementally station-by-new-station, like a Heritage Streetcar line, they failed in part trying to be too ambitious, if they had just done a modest extension, they would have gained experience in planning, building, and financing that could have lead to a longer line.
Everything is always on point. Can't get enough!
A more accurate title is how Seattle accepted the Monorail 4 times and never built it.
The PATCO Speedline between South Jersey and Philadelphia was the first in the US to use Automatic Train Operation/ATO as it opened in 1969 before BART did in 1972, though of course BART took it to another level by building a bigger system from the ground up! The Transbay Tube that opened in 1974 is an engineering feat! Something to mention regarding the Link light-rail is that after the rapid transit plan was rejected in 1970, they still wanted to build a sort of subway, so they opted to build a downtown bus tunnel that could be converted to light-rail, and this was proposed as the Downtown Seattle Transit Tunnel in 1974, approved in 1983, construction began in 1987, and opened in 1990. When the bus tunnel was opened in 1990, they already installed light-rail tracks in anticipation, however they had to be replaced when the tracks were later found to be poorly insulated and unusable. And there was a scandal during the tunnel's construction when it was discovered in 1989 that the granite was quarried in South Africa (but was cut and finished in Italy) despite a boycott of South African goods by the King County Metro Council at the time.
For several years, service in the tunnel was provided exclusively by dual-mode buses, which ran as trolleybuses in the tunnel and diesel buses on city streets. Putting buses in the tunnel meant less traffic on city streets! The dual-mode trolleybuses were replaced by hybrid electric buses to prepare for the light-rail as the overhead wire was replaced for light-rail. And when the light-rail opened in 2009, the tunnel had unique operations where buses and the light-rail shared it, just like Pittsburgh's Mount Washington Transit Tunnel! That is until 2019 when Convention Place station was sold to the Washington State Convention Center for redevelopment, closing the tunnel to buses two years earlier than the scheduled closure of 2021 (which was meant to coincide with the Northgate Link expansion). Making the tunnel light-rail only.
Yes! This was a big part of transit history for Seattle. Not only was it great for the buses (at the time) but it influenced Sound Transit and their light rail. Without it, they would have been in deep trouble. They would have either had to pay for a downtown tunnel (which is really expensive) or run on the surface. Running on the surface is fine (Portland does it) but this would have greatly reduced the value of their initial line, especially compared to the monorail. The people in charge could have easily given up and just put it into bus service (and they almost did anyway). That likely would have opened the door wide open for the monorail. It is ironic that the monorail couldn't use the existing monorail tracks, while the light rail owes its existence in large part to leveraging the existing transit tunnel (that only carried buses when it was built).
Truly fascinating video. It's a real shame how when it all came together, things began to fall apart to actually make this happen. While we can only wonder what could've been, it's interesting to see that all that chaos and failures at Sound Transit made them not only more successful with building the Link Light Rail system but also making them the model for public transit projects nationwide, especially with their almost accurate estimated time of completion schedules.
Went on the mono rail just recently with my kids and oh it was everything I ever thought it would be!! Wish it was longer
1970
Seattle MSA - 1,556,000
Atlanta MSA - 1,182,000
2020
Seattle MSA - 4,018,762
Atlanta MSA - 6,930,423
Thanks for the trains!
No problem, our new metro system is much better than Forward Thrust was going to be
@@harlander-harpy no it is not the line one is already overcrowded in the downtown area. The tunnel cannot support any more trains per hour, and length of consist and on top of that they’re thinking on convert it to heavy rail but that’ll become too costly because it’s tunnel is only for low floor vehicles so the clearance won’t add up this is the problem with light rail. Once you build it, you cannot get rid of it. Like the highway only if you had subways in mind when building a light rails, which Seattle did not, they just built them because it was something to keep the pressure off the highways. without no critical, thinking that it was gonna grow in the upcoming years.people don’t understand when you built subway or heavy dense transit people moved to those areas because it’s easier to move around especially when you get to an old age that’s why a lot of people don’t like living out here and just sprawled empty space because it’s nothing especially young people who are the backbones of the city’s when people see you light rail they see Shanky dinky town they don’t see big metropolitan areas like New York, San Francisco, Atlanta, DC Philadelphia I didn’t see Las Vegas, which I’m living in right now as a big sprawl until I got here and I seen the entire skyline of just lights The light rail was built to basically keep people from building other really well good mode to transportation all because of cost and they don’t have to use it now look I’m a person who lives completely in a different area and knows that sound transit is going through chaos right now with its line one they took something that was supposed to become a part of Seattle only and that would’ve been the light rail system and expensive fleet of cars built in the 70s would’ve looked amazing. Now it’s sprawled with light rails that can’t even do their job right? It’s in the light rail. Subways are called heavy rail. The reason why I say that is because now in Los Angeles they’re planning on building a monorail through the San Fernando Valley & Hollywood and they have light rails too
@@harlander-harpyit definitely isn’t lol. Don’t delude yourself, the mlk at grade should be evidence of that
Hahaha you’re welcome for the funding but we’ve got it from here 😉 we’re gonna get ya back
@@skydiamond8705 The 1 Line is not overcrowded in downtown unless there’s a sports game going on. The tunnels are nowhere near capacity yet and literally next year the amount of trains going through it will double which is how I already know your comment is going to be total BS but I’m gonna keep going because you don’t deserve the spotlight. There has not been a single proposal to convert any part of Link to heavy rail so please quit making stuff up. Even if they did convert it to heavy rail (which again, nobody ever proposed that because it’s stupid) the tunnels are indeed large enough for typical subway trains because our trains are quite literally bigger than subway trains. The trains in many parts of the line are quicker than cars so I enjoy flipping off the traffic as I speed by it (you should try it, it may help with your anger and supremacy issues). Link is going to be able to handle growth very well, and certain boundaries that exist right now which may limit trains on an individual line to every 6 minutes are frankly going to be obliterated when we destroy everything in the train’s path and make cars deal with the consequences just to speed the trains up, easy peasy. We definitely do consider ridership growing in the coming years which is why we are building so much Transit Oriented Development and Affordable Housing near stations. In terms of perceiving light rail as “shanky dinky town” it’s quite the opposite as we’ve got nice bright trains which constant fresh and clean interiors and spotless stations unlike the literal pipes they call trains running around NYC. Yes, there is plenty of sprawl in the suburbs of many cities including your drunk hobo land, thanks for inviting me to your ted talk that you’re going to forget you had when you wake up with a hangover in a few hours. Sound Transit is NOT in chaos right now, they are VERY stable with extremely modern trains (may more advanced then yours) made by Kinkisharyo and Siemens, and the light rail system is doing its job perfectly. You really don’t know a thing about our system but you’ve come here to pretend we’re every other light rail system when the truth is we’re just a metro with pretty trains and catenary.
Anyways, you’re wrong, but this was a fun challenge to try to respond to your incoherent gobbled mess of unwarranted hate for pretty trains. Please for your sake just go back to bed and don’t respond until you actually know what you’re talking about, but you’re gonna be way more late and overbudget on that than Sound Transit’s every been on anything. Don’t drive for a while, peace.
Wow!- what a great documentary!
PBS needs to pick up your documentaries for the interesting subjects and high quality production values.
Thank you for your vision and work!!
They should have just expanded the old monorail. It was literally right there.
as a frequent rider of Bart, in visitor to Seattle
it said that neither of these have ever been fully completed to stay what was originally promised
I remember watching promo videos for the new monorail as a kid. So happy to finally have an explanation behind it!
Also low-key I was going to make this exact video for my channel, but you beat me to it and you probably did it better than I would :) amazing show!
Clearly the system was never gonna be as good as the monorail systems in Brockway, Ogdenville, and North Haverbrook!
@@AverytheCubanAmericanWell the plans looked pretty good
@@realquadmoo But as good as salesman Lyle Lanley’s systems? Don’t think so! 😂
I was referencing the Simpsons episode with those places, but yes, the plan did actually look good of course, and this was so interesting to watch
@@AverytheCubanAmerican and boy that sure put them on the map!
These documentaries are great! Thank-you. If you want to find plenty of arrogance and incompetence, but no vision, look no further than politics. To paraphrase Thoreau, the only way government furthers an enterprise is by quickly getting out of the way.
I loved that Alweg monorail as a kid. It was like an amusement park ride.
Does monorail offer any advantages over elevated light rail? Switching lines is problematic for monorails and there are a few operational headaches. Monorail is easier to put in high places since it is easier to make a monorail than a viaduct with a trail line on it, but I can't really think of a reason why operating a monorail would be any better than an elevated rail platform.
It has been about 50 years since I have been on the Monorail. I found it to be a very enjoyable ride. The area around the World's Fair is very impressive. Taking a trip up the Space Needle was a breath taking view of Seattle and the Puget Sound. I have been at assemblies in the Coliseum where the Seattle Supersonics used to play. And have gone through the Science Center Buildings. The Space Needle always reminded me of the Jetsons Residence.
Hats off to you and your team. I watched this last night, and it was an incredible documentary. Great images, videos, quotes, and maps. Some of these UA-cam documentaries do not show you the visuals and representation you used. 10/10 keep them up!
I love your productions, keep them going!
I lived through all this. A really well done historical document. Peter is a real gem of the PNW history.
Another excellent video. And great selection of contemporary video, I had forgotten how much of the city you used to be able to see from the Monorail.
Ahh the main monorail, takes you from the mall to the space needle. A route I almost never found useful. Heck it's close enough to walk if you are in the mood
I have lived in Seattle almost 30 years, having moved here in January 1995.
The light rail system opened in July of 2009- 15 years ago. Really, for the cost of the thing, it should be more extensive by now. Southbound, the line ends at Angle Lake, in the city of SeaTac. Northbound, it ends at Northgate but will be extended to Lynnwood August 30th.
By contrast, San Diego,where I grew up, opened their light rail system in 1981, and they didn't get any federal money. I lived there again, briefly, in 1993. In the ensuing 12 years, it went all around the city and the county,at least 30 miles of track. It has expanded even more in the last few years.
People from Seattle love to put down California- a woman once said to me that she couldn't believe I was from SD because she had never before met anyone from the city that was intelligent!
Seattle just can't seem to do anything right.
Being from the area from back in the 70's, as a kid I would ride sometimes. From where we lived 144 South between Military Way and Old 99 Riverton Heights. From there I would ride the bus to down Seattle to a restaurant named Fransisco's cool place down by the carwash with the pink elephant spraying it's self sign. Seattle was a cool city to grow up near as kid no worries not like today poor city is not be looked after like it should be.Anyway great presentation well put together and informative. The gentleman doing the voice over good you kept interested some people try to do voice over on documentary's and more or fall flat boring the listener to sleep or sound like finger nails on a chalkboard. Over on the Eastside of Washington we don't need light rail just less people moving the Tri-Cities no one from the wet side likes it anyway,I remember as kid how it looked down at. Not as Cultured as the Puget Sound area was the thinking well been here since the summer of 1980 moved her from Kenmore at the end of my Freshman year. Would run in to a couple class mates from my elementary school days at Cascade View Elementary school. We have a little taste of city life that's all we need not too much.
Oh yeah, Peter dropped a new documentary, I am looking forward to this evening.
About 45 years ago I worked down the hill from the fair site. Every now and then I would take the monorail. It was free and comfortable.
Nothing has made me angrier in politics than the death of this project. Anything subjected to 5 votes is going to fail at one point or another. The slightest bit of political will at any point to help overcome the problems they were facing would've saved the project. Sound Transit delivered way less for way more money, and the politicians bent over backwards to prevent the people from killing it. Now we're going to pay upwards of ten times as much for Sound Transit to build something similar and have it open 30 years later. By far the biggest mistake this city has ever made.
Not the role of government to build monorail. If it’s such a good idea private industry would build it. See the Brightline in Florida as an example.
To go with all the highways built and maintained by private firms, right? God forbid the government do things for the public good.
@@TimeLemur6 it is the role of government to fund roads. Not the role of government to build a monorail. The taxes we pay on gasoline pays for roads. This is all public information.
@jasoncrandall The taxes we pay on gas doesn't come close to maintaining our roads, let alone building new roads. This is all public information.
Would be interesting to know more about the monorail support (or lack there of) from unions and construction firms.
Also, who proposed the long-term high yield bonds that inflated the cost? Who on the board were supporting this idea, and did they have a financial incentive to do so?
What were the motives behind the myriad of city employees and board members to undo the will of the Seattle voters, repeatedly? Lower taxes? Fear of the spread of crime?
So many questions after watching this informative video!
Seattle, as an Atlanta resident, we thank you.
But it's not like MARTA has in any way maximized what the system does. They built a moderate number of extremely expensive stations and then stopped cold, with no expansion for a couple decades now. Voters have repeatedly approved and funded and begged for badly needed in-fill options, like the Clifton Road rail, only to be told it costs too much, have a bus instead. MARTA has made no effort to consider any service options except heavy rail, which they then say is too expensive. They got Clayton County aboard and could have implemented commuter rail as used in many other cities, tied into stations already stubbed out for exactly that purpose decades ago. They refuse. It's their heavy rail or nothing. The streetcar wasn't their idea and they didn't want it. But they had to accept running it or make a lot of stupid people look stupid, and now they dangle it as a carrot because the public thinks it wants light rail everywhere. Don't worry. They know it will end up costing too much and has no risk of actually being built.
@@LatitudeSky the biggest obstacle the commuter rail is facing is that Norfolk Southern has been reluctant to share their right of way. They would need additional trackage to deal with the increased traffic...
Hey, I don’t know if you would be interested in making this kind of video but I think a history of the Himalayan Blackberry’s introduction to the Pacific Northwest would be really cool in your style!
jesus christ that hit unexpectedly hard
Sometimes during rush hour at the corner of First Street and Trimble Road in San Jose, one can sit for several minutes waiting for light rail to get out of the way.
It doesn’t even seem like many people use it.
There’s no official figures on cost per ride, but my back of the envelope calculation came up with a cost of more than $10 a ride.
Of course, it would get a lot more use if we paid for road use, with higher prices at rush hour. A lot of mass transit would work if the real cost of driving wasn’t hidden.
I was a contractor at Apple for many months and took advantage of their bus system to get to work. So much easier than rush hour driving.
My uncle was brought in to repair and modernize the Seattle Monorail following the last accident. I was treated to a tour of the shop while one of them was under repair. Fascinating technology! My uncle is a train buff and told me the history of the Seattle Monorail and it’s operation since the 60’s.
I haven't lived in Washington since 1990. Back in the early 80's I lived in Renton moving from the Yakima Valley. The area needed a rapid transit system into Seattle and connecting to the rest of the cities around the greater Seattle area. The traffic was horrible especially traveling on the 405 loop going into I-5. The Highway Department was trying to widen the 405 loop and it was a nightmare. The Monorail would have been perfect for the area.
Another fantastic documentary from PD. As always I wasn't disappointed, and was able to learn so much history
The sad fact is that I now have to brave the long months ahead until the next video is released.
Is there a chance the track could bend?
Great episode - thanks for your efforts!
Great video! I love that you included Sound Transit information in the video as well. My favorite part, which I was hoping was included, was the information about Seattle losing federal funds and being diverted to Atlanta for their Marta creation. Being a couple of hours away from Atlanta, it's a little bit of history I always love to share.
As an 8 year old kid, I attended the “Worlds Fair”. Rode the monorail, went to the top of the Space Needle, and enjoyed the “wild Mouse” rollercoaster. Thanks for the memories.
10 years later, I started a career in transportation that lasted for 48 years.
that's actually very inspiring! The World's Fair & the monorail did leave a ever lasting impression on you!
A great documentary
How I would love to go back in time and visit the Seattle World’s Fair. Looked so exciting and fun.
God, these videos are fascinating and so well done.
Worth the wait Peter.
Thank you!
10:42 I love that you inserted that end result of the funds going to MARTA and i believe that your next video should be on MARTA and its challenges in modernizing and expansions up to today.
I live in Seattle and everytime I'm reminded of that fact I groan in agony lol
The lack of development planning around those MARTA stations are the leading cause to inferior ridership.
Buckhead & Sandy Spring... maybe Decatur are the outliers but the rest?... 🤐
Bruh this is a whole ass documentary! Good job my dude!
Another terrific video! Always excited to see what you come up with bext
Moved to Seattle 2 years ago and still can’t take rail to work (I work on the east side). Maybe next year… in the mean time, King Stroad aka 99 aka Aurora Ave has dedicated bus/right turn only lanes.
Coincidentally my wife is Japanese and I absolutely love the Tokyo rail system.
Great documentary! Loved it. Always high-quality work from Peter on this channel 🙌😎
thank you
"Future Foreskin" is what I saw before I clicked and still stayed. This is a compliment. I am working on my compliments.
I live about 1.5 hours away from Seattle. They leech the fuck out of everyone in the state and have tax surpluses year after year then ask for even more taxes AND still don't have this shit done. Reduce politician pay
I voted for the monorail at each opportunity and remember feeling devastated and betrayed when SMP was disbanded. The Link light rail system has some serious capacity limitations and a lot of those issues are due to running at grade with traffic in the Rainier Valley - something that would not have been an issue with the monorail. Also, it should be noted the Tacoma Link system is not true light rail - it's a low-speed streetcar stuck in traffic.
Yes, it’s a shame that ST didn’t build a heavy rail metro like proposed during forward thrust, or at least high floor light rail to give it higher capacity and higher speeds. Light rail should be limited within the city limits, it’s not designed to carry suburban commuters, it’s too slow for that. The only remedy at this point is if ST can figure out a way to buy out the rails for the current south sounder commuter line, electrify it and convert it to regional rail.
Kent/Des Moines to downtown Seattle is projected to be a 42 minute ride. Currently Kent to King station on the sounder takes 20 minutes.
The monorail would’ve been even worse than Link. Both in capacity and cost.
Seattle traffic is outrageous as is Vancouver but I’m glad rapid transit gets us downtown Seattle needs it
Great video-so well thought out and well referenced.
For anyone who has taken the Seattle Underground Tour, which highlights the silly mismatch between maintaining lower tidelands as real estate and building a properly graded city (at Pioneer Square), the mindset hasn't changed for Seattle in a hundred years!
There is something most peculiar about this municipal financing and development. Anywhere else it happens pretty well as expected, but Seattle has all kinds of bizarre issues. Maybe it is related to Vancouver's weird rejection of being integrated into Portland's light rail system? It needn't have cost that much and would have provided an alternative to the Interstate Bridge congestion which has been going on for fifty years (at congestion hours) at least!
The Northwest is Just Like That I guess.
Should have included some Almost Live footage re: monorail -- e.g. Christmas Carol "Hell Yes we want the monorail"!
The only thing close is the Light Rail System together with the Sounder Commuter train. Which have problems including reliability and just being on time.
Excellent documentary. Well explained about a transit system which Seattle fortunately never built. LRT has the potential to transform the metro area, although cost is an issue particulary for Seattle's case. Monorails are really a relic of paleo futurism...
Good video. The real tragedy isn't the loss of the monorail. It really wasn't a great idea--many neighborhoods through which it would have passed would have objected pretty strenuously. Who really wants the elevated line like down Fifth Avenue down the middle of California Avenue SW? The sad tale is the failure of rapid transit to get approved during the first Forward Thrust votes. The person in the video praising highways and cars was, I imagine, taken by surprise when Seattleites rose up against more freeways. Seattle could have avoided a fair bit of agony had it built a sound rapid transit system in the 1970s when land and labor was a lot cheaper.
I'm not a supporter of monorails in general, but I feel like the city management pulled all stops to hold this back, plus the lack of transparency didn't help. If the board of directors were allowed in on discussion, this would have resolved plenty of issues and maybe delivered a downscaled project.
Great video! Just found your channel and so many wonderful videos, keep up the great work!!
Fantastic job! You continue to produce fascinating content, each video better than the last. I'm grateful for your return to UA-cam and I hope your break was refreshing and invigorating!
Lived in western washington my entire 49 years, and think I only rode the monorail once, back in the 80's, for a school field trip, or something.
I always knew there was a push to go with monorail in Seattle, but I had no idea how far they got. Being on a county's citizens advisory council for transit and development myself, it's amazing how far they got and in how short a time frame.
We all know that the best mass transit concept is the Wedway PeopleMover.
Such quality work
24:23 Monorail costs $35-50M per mile
34:38 14 miles of monorail costs $1.7B, or $121M/mile
Don't say inflation, inflation doesn't more than double in 10 years
Seattle could have had a great system, if it had been expanded on, in the mid 60's, but money or pesky politicians ...for the most part, who don't envision the future. When you mentioned Dick Falkenbury, I remembered Kim Pederson and the Monorail Society, now there was insight. At least we have a few systems now., we just need to expand on them.
CHEERS from AUSTRALIA
Over planning, under developing. It’s too bad. The existing Link Light rail is the lone reason I moved here. After living in NYC and Japan, I realize how the transportation system in the US is very underwhelming. I wish there were more cities that had these systems. I think Seattle will get it right. We definitely do not need anymore pollution promoting suburban decay in this country. And I love how the state of Washington clearly shows this.
Another extraordinarily thorough - and fascinating - documentary!
57:53 where did you find that animation??
I’m always so happy when a new Peter Dibble video drops!
Fantastic!!! Thanks so much for your hard work Peter!!! 👍