Council Member Richard Conlin Supports Steinbrueck Resolution, Opposes Cross Center Route
Council Member Richard Conlin wrote citizens who oppose the SMP's Cross Center monorail route and added his support to keeping Seattle Center free from a destructive and inappropriate transportation system. It's a terrific and spot on essay effectively eviscerating the shallow arguments for running the monorail through the Center. We thank the Council Member for his support in preserving Seattle Center park and festival space for all Seattle citizens and future generations.
October 22, 2003
Dear Constituent:
Thank you for your letter about the monorail route across or around the Seattle Center. After reviewing the relevant information and hearing from many interested parties, I have decided to vote for the Mercer Street route and to remove the cross-Seattle Center route from consideration.
Construction of the monorail across the Center grounds is likely to be incompatible with the environment of the Center's open space. The alignment that goes around the Seattle Center on Mercer Street meets the community's interest in a station that is convenient for Uptown, offers a much more productive station on the east side of the Center, minimizes the impact on residents and businesses, and avoids conflicts on the Center grounds.
The City Council has been asked to act as expeditiously as possible to assist the Seattle Monorail Project (SMP) in planning. The Council has now had the opportunity to carefully review the Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS), listen to the comments of a wide range of people and groups, both in person at the public hearing and via email and letter, and analyze the arguments made for the two alternative routes through or around the Seattle Center. It is therefore appropriate for the Council to express a route preference at this point.
Interestingly, the SMP itself has taken a number of actions to express a preference for particular routes (well before all information is in), including advocating for the cross-Center route and carrying out station design work only on its preferred station locations - in some cases even on stations that are not identified in the DEIS! This involves a considerable expenditure of money and time, and effectively eliminates options by advancing the preferred station locations.
The Mercer Route was the original preference of the Uptown community, before the so-called Northwest Route emerged as an option, because it provides the station that best serves Uptown. While I respect the community's current expressed preference for the Northwest route, it is clear that the Mercer Route is an acceptable alternative.
The Mercer Route follows an existing transportation right-of-way, already designated for transportation purposes. In addition to supporting the station at the Northwest Rooms, it also provides the best opportunity for an eastside Seattle Center station that would provide convenient access to the Seattle Center while minimizing dangerous pedestrian street crossings. A major element of the route is adjacent to an existing parking garage, the only location on either route where the adjacency of the monorail clearly has no impact. And using the street avoids running a transportation project through an existing open space that has long been designated in the Seattle Center Master Plan.
While the SMP has now stated that the Mercer Route would be from $10 to $16 million more expensive than the route across Seattle Center, they have provided very little documentation to substantiate these numbers, which are significantly higher than the $6 million difference identified earlier. I am concerned that this revised estimate is an attempt to influence the choice of routes. If it is indeed valid, the viability of the monorail project is called into question if their cost estimates can be off by this much before even going into engineering.
Some of the arguments critical of the Mercer route are factually inaccurate, particularly in regards to the impact on traffic and performance venues. For example, the DEIS indicates that the Mercer Route will have no impact on travel times on Mercer; there would no impact from sound or vibration on the Mercer performance venues (logical, since the cross-Seattle Center route is at a similar distance); there will be no impairment of the drop off area in front of McCaw Hall.
The impacts of the monorail guideway and columns will be significant no matter where the monorail is located. Moving the architectural wall between the Queen Anne neighborhood and the public gathering space of the Seattle Center a few yards to the south is still a barrier and separation of the Queen Anne community from the rest of the Center. While the visual representations for the Mercer Route have included several measures that portray it as more unsightly than the representations for the route across Seattle Center, these representations cannot be taken as literal before engineering is completed. It should be noted that many of the organizations supporting the Northwest Route have done so because they preferred it to the Thomas Street alignment that ran past the Seattle Children's Theater, rather than in preference to the Mercer Street corridor.
Perhaps the least credible argument for running the monorail through the Seattle Center is that it would enhance it because of the views people would have from the moving trains. To borrow an analogy, it's like flooding the Sistine Chapel so that people would have a better view of the ceiling… or damming the Grand Canyon so that people could have closer views of the canyon walls.
This is a difficult issue, and there is no perfect solution. I respect the point of view of those who prefer the Seattle Center alignment, but I must disagree with them and vote for the Mercer Route as the best way to integrate good transportation planning with appropriate land use.
Best regards,
Richard Conlin
Seattle City Council