Monowail

Seattle's Professional Pooh-Bahs of the Press are whining and wailing about the Monorail Recall vote. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer: "Can we build anything"

The people of Seattle face yet another round in the battle to build an innovative transportation system. Having three times overcome resistance from City Hall and others, the monorail movement faces a recall effort largely financed by wealthy downtown property owners.

First of all, the goal is not to build an "innovative" transportation system, but a transportation system that can effectively move large numbers of people at a cost that is reasonable when compared with the alternatives. The Monorail has failed to make its case. Second, you'll notice that the P-I only mentions the source of a campaign's funds when they don't like the campaign to begin with. But at least the P-I, most of whose editorial board members live outside of Seattle and don't have to pay the Monorail car tax, is honest about its immovable biases:

This newspaper supported the Seattle Monorail Project, and so far we've yet to see a convincing argument for reconsidering -- let alone abandoning -- the project.

Q: What does "Post-Intelligencer" mean, anyway?
A: "Post-Intelligencer" is to "Intelligence" as "Post-Coital" is to "Coitus"

The Times Danny Westneat's wailing is even sillier "Monorail vote fault of judges"

I only partially blame the people pushing the recall. Yes, it's lame the campaign is financed by a single downtown real-estate developer, Martin Selig. [Not true!] But 37,000 people signed petitions to cancel this project. Their concerns can't simply be cast aside.

No, the lion's share of the blame goes to a group of judges. ... "There is insufficient time to engage in the deliberations that a case of this magnitude demands," the [state Supreme Court] said.

That's a fancy way of saying they've punted this complicated legal matter to you.

The nerve of those judges to let the people decide! What will our democracy lead to next?

I do support the Monorail Recall Initiative. But I don't like the fact that we have to have it in the first place. For that I blame the process which enabled the Seattle Monorail Project to go forward in November 2002 when only 22% of the registered voters bothered to affirmatively vote for the Project. That should have been a clue that the other 78% of the city didn't really want the Monorail, even if the other side managed to get a few hundred more people to the polls on that particular day. Yes, the Monorail won the 2002 contest fair and square. But such a tiny base of support does not translate into the broad political legitimacy that is necessary to sustain such an expensive and high-impact project indefinitely. The Monorail people had the right to move forward on the basis of the 2002 election. But they should also have understood that with such narrow support, they would either have to win over many more residents of the city, or be prepared to defend their project again. As it appears, the Monopeople have lost more friends in the last two years than they've won. Tough going.

Maybe in the future we can tighten the rules so a tiny band of fanatics can't so easily abuse the democratic process to foist another stupid and expensive project on an entire city that is overwhelmingly indifferent to it.

Posted by Stefan Sharkansky at September 19, 2004 04:48 PM | Email This