The Seattle Center monorail is having problems getting up and running again. It is amazing that in less than two years Seattle has gone from dreams of monorail service throughout the city to having difficulty keeping a short track tourist attraction running.

You would think that this would serve as a sobering caution for proponents of light rail and other centralized transit solutions. Whether it is trains, monorails, ferries, subways, or street cars, centralized transit is always vulnerable to sudden and complete failure. I remember there was ferry strike in the early 80s that stranded many commuters in Seattle who just wanted to go home to Bainbridge or Vashon Islands. Similar strikes have crippled transit grids in other cities, most recently in New York City. This is one reason that public employee unions love centralized transit – it gives them enormous leverage at contract negotiation time.

Furthermore, as the Seattle Center monorail has shown, it is not only labor strikes that can shut down a transit service – mechanical and infrastructure failures cana lso cause a collapse of the service.

The tunnel collapse in Boston’s highway tunnel, (“The Big Dig”) ironically shows the strength of a decentralized transit system. Undoubtedly the shut down of Boston’s tunnel severely affected the commute, but drivers were still able to get home – road networks are for the most part greatly redundant. If the Boston tunnel had been for trains, however, it would be very doubtful that the trains would be able to run for several weeks. It is far cheaper to build multiple roads than it is to build multiple train lines.

Unfortunately, I doubt the current local leadership will learn this lesson – they seem stuck on rail of one form or another.
- posted by Thomas @ 11:18 AM