SEATTLE – The City Council yanked its support for the Seattle Monorail Friday, dealing a blow that all but kills the financially troubled transit project.
The nine-member council unanimously passed a resolution saying the city will deny street-use permits for the monorail’s proposed 14-mile, $2 billion Green Line.
Hours later, in a last-ditch effort to keep the project alive, the monorail board approved a Nov. 8 ballot measure to shorten the line.
“If it doesn’t win, then at least there’s clarity,” said Kristina Hill, the board’s acting director. “I would prefer that ending to an ending where I have to sit at this table and vote to dissolve this agency without any input.”
Under the proposal city voters narrowly backed in 2002, the monorail would go from West Seattle through downtown to Ballard. On Friday, the board proposed shortening the line to 10.6 miles, from West Seattle to Interbay, a few miles south of Ballard.
Monorail spokeswoman Marjorie Skotheim could not say Friday evening how much money the new plan would save, but noted the board remains committed to building the entire 14-mile line as funding becomes available.
Without the council’s support, there’s virtually no way for the elevated train to be built.
“It was a great dream, but the facts are in, and it’s time to stop the squandering of millions on pie-in-the-sky projections. It’s over,” Councilman Richard McIver said in a statement released after the council vote.
The monorail’s latest troubles began when anticipated revenues fell short of projections. Then in June, the board revealed that building the line would cost more than $11 billion over 50 years, including more than $9 billion in interest on low-grade bonds.
Tom Weeks, the board’s chairman, and Joel Horn, the project’s director, quit days after the monorail board rejected the financing plan.
A recent revision of the financial plan, which lowered the cost estimate to $7 billion, relies on what Nickels called the risky assumption that money from the car-tab tax that funds the project will grow faster than experts predict. He said the plan also assumes the monorail would pay for itself after 2020 – something he said no transit operation in the nation has ever achieved.
A citywide monorail system has been a civic dream since a one-mile route was built for the Seattle World’s Fair in 1962. More than 40 years later, it’s still the only train in town.
In 1997, voters approved a ballot measure to set up a public development authority to build a monorail funded with private money, government grants and city funds.
The authority ran out of money before it could finish its plans or woo private investors, so in 2000 voters approved $6 million to plan a system. Voters approved the 14-mile Green Line in 2002. In 2004, they rejected a bid to derail the project.
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