OnTrack
Broadacres
Building
1601 Second
Avenue, Suite 410
Seattle, WA 98101-3617
(206) 686-3830
January 15, 2004
Seattle Popular Monorail Authority
Board of Directors
The Securities Building
3rd & Stewart
1904 3rd Avenue, Suite 105
Seattle, WA 98101
Dear Board Members:
We are Seattle residents and businesspeople concerned about the increasing gap between the monorail project approved by Seattle voters and the project being developed by the Seattle Monorail staff. Toward the singular end of closing this gap, we have formed “OnTrack,” a group dedicated to ensuring that the Monorail Authority delivers the project that the voters of Seattle approved, in the manner and for the price that was presented to them.
Our group consists of a broad range of concerned citizens from across the city, including individuals and representatives from neighborhoods, businesses, historic preservation organizations, and other community groups. It includes monorail supporters as well as former opponents.
We look to you, the Monorail Board of Directors, to hold the Seattle Monorail Project staff and vendors accountable for closing this gap. We urge you to exercise your fiduciary responsibility on behalf of Seattle citizens. This responsibility should take precedence over any self-imposed timetable. It is a responsibility that mandates completion of important steps before awarding contracts, including meaningful reviews by the Monorail Review Panel, mile-by-mile independent estimate of the costs of mitigation based on the final alignment which you have yet to select, and significant progress in reaching agreement with Metro on feeder bus services. To award contracts before these are accomplished - and related fundamental information has been acquired and evaluated - will expose your agency and the City to unacceptable risks, to the detriment of all Seattle citizens.
The ballot title on which Seattle voters cast their votes stated that the monorail system would be developed “pursuant to the plan adopted by the Elevated Transportation Company [ETC] on August 5, 2002.” The monorail is an investment that taxpayers agreed to make, based on our understanding of that plan. Now it is only responsible that we take whatever steps are necessary to ensure that this investment results in what voters were led to expect.
The plan promised to build the Green Line as part of “a new citywide monorail system serving five corridors that would eventually cover the city” (p. 10). The Green Line was projected to be financially self-supporting for its operations, with fares and advertising revenues that “could be equal to operating and maintenance costs by the year 2015” (p. 39), with no provision for subsidy after 2015 should this projection prove incorrect.
The Seattle Monorail Project further committed to building “a first-rate transit system that serves 20 million passengers a year (69,000 per day) by the year 2020, provides excellent service, uses the latest technology, meets the toughest safety standards, and can be expanded beyond the Green Line in a way that is thoughtfully integrated with the city’s transportation network” (Seattle Monorail Project Single Beam Guideway paper, 12/16/2003, p. 1).
These are immensely appealing promises. Yet, there are a number of indications that they may not come to fruition and that the project is already being pared down or, worse yet, that we could spend hundreds of millions of dollars and not be able to finish what we have started. For these reasons, we would like to present some of our specific concerns.
Because of revenue shortfalls of more than 30 percent, the Seattle Monorail Project staff has begun to make recommendations to reduce the cost of the project by whittling away facilities and services. This approach would effectively abandon many of the representations that were made to voters about the system. Two glaring examples include the switch to single rail “guideways” and the substitution of elevators for escalators at stations.
Although a study released in December asserted that tax revenues would grow fast enough to provide funds for the monorail, that study - performed by then-monorail Finance Director Daniel Malarkey’s former firm - relied on a growth rate in the motor vehicle excise tax of 6.1 percent. The four leading economists who reviewed the study said 4.8 percent would be a more cautious estimate. The higher rate assumes that both Seattle’s population and number of households will not only grow significantly but that residents will buy more – and more expensive – cars. Given the experience of the unexpected revenue shortfalls and the fact that we’re spending billions (monorail, light rail, etc.) to enable Seattleites to drive less, wouldn’t it be more sensible to use the cautious growth rate?
A number of other questions have arisen about the monorail’s projected finances. Staff ridership projections, upon which self-sustaining revenue assumptions are based, build on facility and service assumptions described in the ETC plan. However if these facilities or services are scaled back, as currently recommended by staff to offset the revenue shortfall, ridership figures and fare revenues must also be revised. We think it is self-evident that any change which has the potential to alter baseline assumptions should be accompanied by professional, independent, detailed revised revenue and ridership studies. Absent such independent studies, staff recommended reductions in facilities and services further call into question the monorail’s ability to be self-sufficient.
The SMP failure to adopt a fare structure to date further undermines the reliability of SMP revenue projections. If SMP adopts a fare policy consistent with the Regional Reduced Fare Permit, with reduced fares for seniors, youth and persons with disabilities, and a sharing of a common fares, the result would be a significant reduction in fare revenues. If a policy for reduced fares and common revenues is not adopted, transit agencies upon which the SMP depends for riders (50% are projected to transfer to or from Metro buses) will most probably not enter into fare agreements with the SMP, thereby significantly raising the costs for transferring riders, an event which will most probably result in significantly reduced riders and fares. In sum, too little information presently exists to make reliable fare revenue projections.
The shift from a two-beam guideway to a one-beam guideway system in Ballard, West Seattle and elsewhere is a fundamental departure from what voters approved. The ETC plan stated, “The beams are laid out in pairs so that two trains traveling in the opposite direction can pass each other” (p. 33).
A one-beam system would decrease the number of trains that can use the line , resulting in fewer riders and thus lower fare revenues. Because of this reduced capacity expansion of the Green Line would be infeasible, contradicting the ETC plan’s statement: “The Green Line could eventually be extended from Ballard to the Northgate Transit Center and Lake City to the North; and from West Seattle to the Fauntleroy Ferry Terminal to the South (p. 12).”
This change alone requires further analysis of capacity, ridership, and revenue projections. It also raises safety concerns – a train on a parallel track was recently used to evacuate passengers from a stalled train on the existing monorail system. This would not be possible on a one-track system. This would be a particularly vexing and potentially dangerous problem if it were to happen high above the West Seattle Bridge.
More importantly, the switch to a one-rail system would also abandon a fundamental premise of the proposed Green Line because it would eliminate the possibility of an integrated citywide monorail system promised in the ETC monorail plan. The Green Line has never been presented as a single-corridor solution. Rather, it has been consistently presented as the first in a series of monorail lines that would provide integrated city-wide service. If this goal is to be abandoned then the public should be fully aware now of the reasons why such a significant change has been made.
Monorail staff are reported to be considering extending the period in which we must pay the Green Line tax to 40 years from the 25-30 years projected during the campaign. This would not only effectively end the hope of building a complete citywide system at any time in the foreseeable future (again abandoning a fundamental aspect of the plan that was presented to the voters), it would also dramatically increase the cost of the Green Line to the taxpayers of Seattle. For example, the owner of a $20,000 car would pay $4,500 more over the additional 15-year period.
The ETC plan promised the monorail would be part of an “integrated transportation system” built upon “bus feeder service to monorail stations.” It is important to note that the monorail’s ridership figures depend heavily on using Metro to provide this feeder system. Since no park-and-ride lots are planned, most passengers would need to use the bus to access the system or the neighborhoods would become unacceptably congested.
In recognition of this, the ETC plan stated: “The ETC and King County Metro have developed a set of basic principles that would result in Metro redirecting some bus routes to serve monorail stations, increasing to the extent possible the frequency of bus lines heading to monorail stations, and truncating bus routes along the Green Line that continue to Downtown Seattle” (p. 17). Despite this statement, there is no plan or agreement with Metro to reprogram the bus system. And, because of the many complicated issues that are associated with any large-scale revisions to bus service (not to mention the financial costs of providing such services), ridership and revenue projections based upon a non-existent agreement are highly doubtful.
The aggressive feeder bus service assumptions made by the Monorail staff would inevitably require additional hours of service or take away from services to other neighborhoods. In some cases, these changes would cause an inconvenience to current bus riders as they must cope with reduced service or be forced to transfer between bus and monorail. Many commuters may even find that their commute is both longer and more expensive because they need to use both a bus and the monorail to complete their commute. Metro would also lose ridership along the Green Line corridor, affecting its bottom line.
The Seattle Monorail Project has yet to say how these changes will be financed and how much it will have to pay to Metro to provide the bus service that is essential to the successful operation of the Green Line. Redistribution of bus routes is subject to Metro service allocation guidelines and annual budget approval by the King County Council. All these factors raise substantial questions on the feasibility and, more importantly on the specific terms of the essential Monorail Authority-Metro agreement.
According to the Seattle Planning Commission, in its comments on the monorail’s Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS), “The consequences of failing to enact these bus service changes would be enormous and would result in significantly different project characteristics than those represented in the DEIS.”
An agreement with Metro must be in place before the Monorail Authority can determine the true impacts of this project on Metro and on the public that now uses Metro services along the corridor to be served by the Green Line. The need to meet a self-imposed deadline is not a sufficient reason to proceed in the absence certainty on such an important aspect of the project. The ETC’s haste to meet its own deadlines is largely responsible for the current fiscal crisis that the Monorail Authority is now attempting to deal with. We urge you to require such an agreement be reached, thereby permitting you to have increased confidence in staff projections before other details of the Green Line are finalized.
It is becoming increasingly evident that the revenue shortfall may require further compromises. The draft Request for Proposals that outlines expectations for the monorail design and construction teams raises further potential departures from the plan approved by voters, including:
· What neighborhood impacts will the monorail pay to mitigate and how much will it cost to mitigate such impacts such as parking and traffic congestion?
· How will the monorail mitigate the impacts on historic buildings?
· What impact will shifting from escalators to elevators at the stations have on ridership, passenger flow, passenger safety and revenues?
· If the Green Line issues bonds repayable over 40 years, what is the source of revenues to fund the citywide system?
· Will the Seattle Monorail Project be able to build all 19 stations presented in the plan, including the ones at Safeco Field and Madison Street? If these stations are not opened at the projected date of completion, what effect will delay have on ridership and revenues for each month/year of delay?
· The ETC made a commitment to those attending an American Institute of Architects presentation prior to the election that the stations would not be included in the design, build, operate and maintain (DBOM) contract but rather that construction and design considerations would be controlled by the SMP in partnership with local communities. This approach has been abandoned. What are the guarantees to Seattle communities that the stations will be “designed with accessibility, attractiveness, ease of use, and safety in mind” (ETC plan, p. 34) given the fact that control will be ceded to the successful DBOM contractor and that projected revenues are considerably lower than projected?
· No transportation system in the United States operates anywhere near breakeven. (Metro recovers approximately 22-23% of its costs at the fare box and through advertising.) How will the monorail achieve what no other transportation system has done and, if it’s not able to do so, how will service be financed? What plans has the SMP made in the event the Green Line does not break even by the date projected by staff?
In sum, if the SMP is to be credible, the City, the County and the taxpayers need be assured that they will not be left holding the tab for costs arising from but not provided for by the SMP.
OnTrack was formed to add independent scrutiny over the implementation of the monorail plan, starting with the Final Environmental Impact Statement and the City “transit way” agreement, as well as the shaping of the critically important RFP. We intend to play a constructive role, and we will not hesitate to raise concerns and questions needed to ensure accountability.
While we don’t want to see a long drawn-out process in the so-called “Seattle way,” it is obvious that actions taken in a rush have had unfortunate consequences. The miscalculation on tax revenues by the ETC, the Monorail Authority’s predecessor, is clear proof of this. With so many uncertainties still up in the air, it is vital that we ask the hard questions and get the complete answers now.
Everyone wants Seattle to have a first-class transportation system that supports vital job development, makes the most efficient use of our limited tax dollars, and provides residents and visitors alike with desirable choices for getting around. The monorail is the largest single public project ever undertaken in Seattle and will have a tremendous impact on our city and our region. This makes accountability vital. We look to you, the Seattle Popular Monorail Authority Board of Directors, to protect the interests of the citizens of Seattle. For this reason, we request that you schedule a time on your agenda at your next meeting for us to more fully communicate our concerns to you. We will be contacting you to determine an appropriate time for this discussion.
Sincerely,
Faye Garneau Arthur Wahl Donald Wise
Co-chair Co-chair Co-chair
Advisory Committee Advisory Committee Advisory Committee
OnTrack OnTrack OnTrack