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SEATTLE -- People here love the idea of the monorail.
A single-track electric train running above cars and pedestrians' heads has been a part of Seattle's self-image since the early 1960s, when a one-mile stretch of last century's transit-system-of-the-future was erected for the World's Fair.
Still, the promise of a citywide monorail system had been a dream deferred, until Tuesday's election.
A narrow majority of Seattle voters appear to have agreed to tax themselves to the tune of $1.7 billion over the next 25 years to make the dream come true. With more than a third of Washingtonians casting absentee ballots, the final results may not be known for weeks, but the overnight vote count pointed to a positive outcome for the monorail.
Unlike light rail, essentially an updated version of the trolleys that crisscrossed American cities before World War II, the monorail tracks will stand 30 feet in the air, supported by steel poles. Instead of building on the existing single line, the new system will rely on quieter, more efficient and far less bulky and visually intrusive designs than the 40-year-old World's Fair line.
Proponents promise the 14-mile-long Green Line will be up and running within five years, well ahead of the long-promised light rail line approved by area voters in 1996. It is the first phase of a 58-mile, five-line system the quasi-public Elevated Transportation company has planned to stitch together Seattle's neighborhoods. If it comes to pass, the city's system will measure twice as long as Miami-Dade County's 21-mile Metrorail.
Citizens Against the Monorail argued unsuccessfully that the monorail limits the number of riders too much to become the backbone of a regional mass transit system.
Jud Marquart, a Seattle architect associated with the antimonorail group, also objected to the aesthetics of the tracks and stations towering over the streets. The switching mechanisms between the outbound and inbound tracks, Marquart said, will be "enormous" and "extraordinarily cumbersome."
The very latest technology is the Maglev monorail, which follows guideways like a conventional monorail, but powerful magnets replace both the wheels and the motor. North or south poles face each other on the cars and track and keep the train "afloat" above the track's surface; continuously reversing the polarity pulls the train forward. A 1.5-kilometer test track in Nagoya, Japan, has been running a Maglev monorail since 1989, and a commercial system spanning six miles is scheduled to be built in time for the 2005 expo there.
Not wanting to take a risk on brand new technologies, however, Seattle has opted for a system based on the same basic technology used in the 1962 World's Fair monorail: electric motors running rubber-wheeled trains on a concrete track. But, according to former Elevated Transportation Vice President Walt Crowley, new construction materials and techniques will allow the new system to use fewer and thinner pillars, as well as lighter beams.
Monorails in varying forms have been around for 100 years. In the last decade, Las Vegas, Indianapolis and Jacksonville, Florida, have all built monorails, but they consist of one-to-five-mile loops usually running through central business districts.
Elevated Transportation chairman Tom Weeks said monorails have proved popular in Asia, with five Japanese cities already running extensive systems and new ones being built in Okinawa and Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
"For reasons I don't understand, the technology hasn't taken off in the U.S.," Weeks said. "It doesn't get stuck in traffic, it doesn't have to stop for stoplights or accidents, so it's on-time all the time. My hope is that once we prove this is successful, other cities will emulate it."
