Gary Manca’s link to the writer who proposed Bus Rapid Transit is very cogent.

Let’s face it. Seattle can’t build a Skytrain or a MAX for the same amount of money as YVR and PDX, respectively, did (adjusting for inflation) because of our goofy, complex geography.. which creates this side effect of the city being so immediately pretty and quaint that we so love.

We can’t just pave the water with cement. This is my main beef with people who just say “Shuh! just BUILD it.” You try it, then. If we can’t stop people from expressing frustration at a drawbridge going up, how are we going to solve building road-free transit cheaply? Adjacent bodies of water make that a bit difficult. Portland has one river. Vancouver has a “false creek.” Both cities are generally flat in the urban centers. Seattle has many hills everywhere in its urban centers.

“But look what San Francisco did!”

San Francisco’s BART only runs on a sliver of the city itself - the least hill-y parts. Granted, it took a lot of money to make it go underwater, underneath the Oakland/Bay bridge - I won’t deny that feat. But the rest of BART runs throughout the Bay Area to the East Bay and further on, you guessed it, flat areas.

Seattle lacks much flat areas in its urban centers.. in fact, the flattest areas are outside the main urban centers here.

Am I saying that the monorail budget costs were justified? Heck no! On the other hand, it’s naive to think that any large rapid-transit project in Seattle is just a piece of financial cake you can get from K-mart.

However, this was all a bit of a digression to my main point, which is: while there’s always room for improvement, and while there are many projects underway that have temporarily closed certain thoroughfares like the downtown bus tunnel, there has been fixing of the transportation “problem” in town. Between Sound Transit, Community Transit, and King County Metro, there have been a lot of positive changes to the bus system. Buses run more often, and they are running smarter routes than ever before.

I can’t stress enough that America has this fixation on “bus” being a dirty word, and that buses can never be “real” public transit. Having been able to traverse Seattle - to even out-of-the-way places - using the Seattle bus authorities, I have to laugh at the people who forgo buses because they’re not some form of magical public transit that looks really neat.

My other main point is: a monorail would be more a city development rather than a solution to a transportation problem. I supported the Monorail, fully knowing that it wouldn’t have solved any transportation issues—at least right away. However, a well-planned monorail, with hopes of a feasable budget would have made for a great city development that would have improved the morale and economy of the city. So, for those latter reasons alone, it’s too bad the project died.

But as for a monorail fixing any transportation problems? That was just stuff made of dreams.