Dreaming of a better way
The monorail is dead, light rail is still years off, and gas prices are likely to go through the roof again this summer. What’s a public transit fan to do?
Here’s a thing to dream about: the Personal Rapid Transit (PRT) system. It involves a large fleet of small, taxi-like cabs that run on an elevated network of “low profile monorail beams.”
The guys pushing this proposal have been trying to sell it to Microsoft for awhile. Their demo movie is pretty sweet.
Hey, if New York can have a gondola, why can’t Seattle have our fun too?
I remember reading about this system sometime last year. It’s a clever concept, but the economics are seriously dicey. One trivial example from the SkyWeb Express site: the installation costs per mile cited for the Skyweb system look like they will be 1/2 to 1/3 that of light rail, but the SkyWeb system is predicated on having many more miles of track in a typical installation than a light rail system (like Vancouver’s SkyTrain) would use to cover the same region.
All this, wrapped up in an untried technology that is dependent on running a very high car count, too. It’s intriguing, but I distrust most of the numbers.
Unfortunately, this has the same problem as all other rapid transit proposals for Seattle: the population density is too low in many parts of the area to make it work, and the political will is too weak to build first and then create density around the system.
This proposal strikes me as nearly equivalent to the construction of a second parallel road system.
I have a suggestion for 520: turn the westbound left lane into a segregated express lane (open to SOV and HOV), with no exits between 405 and the bridge, and only three access routes: 520 east of 405, and interchange ramps from 405 North and South.