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Monorail Back and Forth

I just don't see that your "arguments" for the monorail are valid. Is the light rail tunnel here deeper than BART's tunnel? The sad fact is that the monorail represents the worst aspects of Seattle. It doesn't address the fact that traffic is a regional issue. I guess the monorail will take you back and forth to your work...but it doesn't seem to do that for the majority of folks who are not served by it. What major employers are on the line? How do folks get to the monorail stations? The answers I've read are by bus. Where's the plan to increase local bus service to get to the stations? Or barring that...how much will it cost to build park and ride lots near all these stations? Will you be able to take your bike on the monorail? How much more expensive are these elevated stations than a regular ground level light rail station? Why must Seattle continue to destroy its views by erecting viaducts, highways, and now a proposed monorail? Why will the monorail be any less expensive than the light rail? Tom Week's fantasy is that the maintenance of this line will be paid for via advertising...it costs $28 million US for BC's monorail per year. That seems like a lot of advertising. What about security on the trains? That's the major concern expressed by folks in BC according to BC transit's web site.

All the monorail does is divert money from more important areas. Like a replacement for the viaduct, the 520 bridge, etc. It doesn't get anyone to the U District. It doesn't get anyone to the airport. It doesn't get anyone to Microsoft. It doesn't get anyone from Everett to Renton. It does ruin the streets that it is built on for pedestrians. It will be at least as dangerous to cross the street with a bunch of pylons on it as it would to cross a well-marked trolley intersection.

The monorail is monumentally stupid.

Geoff Kirk

Greetings,

Mainly in response to Maria Tomchick's commentary on Mind Over Matters (6/22), I have to wonder why the love fest over the monorail, when for the past six years, much of Seattle--including progressives--skewer light rail?

I heard all of Maria's reasons why it seems to be a preferable system, and I find trouble with just about every one of her criteria:

a. "It's better because it's elevated." Indeed it is preferable to fly above grade than to plunge below it, but you should realize that light rail can also be elevated. In fact going back for years before Sound Transit's founding, numerous routes for light rail have been considered that would have been elevated in all sorts of locations (attached to I-5, in the Rainier Valley, in the U-district, to name a few), and have been ruled out for a number of reasons, including cost and, most significantly, impact on the quality of the street space. I've got to believe few people prefer the feel of the portion of 5th Avenue with the existing monorail compared to those without it. The claims by the ETC that the latest technology is sleeker than circa 1962 notwithstanding, the fact remains that concrete beams with trains on them are a bit shadowy and imposing.

To take this a bit further, I urge you to look at the sketch of a station that is being published in the past few days. It shows a monorail mysteriously supported by paper-thin brackets anchored to an existing building (Newmark Tower). If you buy into the misleading, unbelievable structure they're implying, then you also have to accept that it would be a long, drawn out process to negotiate with all the various property owners, and to design a custom connection for all the myriad conditions encountered. In short, it won't happen like that, and it's a bit disingenuous for them to suggest that it would.

b. "Light rail is wrong because it uses these deep tunnels." Might I suggest you gander at a map of lower Manhattan, where you will see a convergence of snakes crossing the water from Jersey and Brooklyn. Those are tunnels, many of them older than we are, and some of them incredibly deep. If you're ever in the area, ride the elevator out of the first stop on the Brooklyn side on the RR train. Hundreds of feet deep and still hordes of people use it.

c. "Sound transit is ignoring the wishes of the Rainier Valley." Again, I point to transit in other cities, and I challenge anyone to come up with a location where a transit tunnel has been built in an area with such a low level of density. Even in NYC, the system known commonly as the "Subway" emerges to daylight in neighborhoods that are easily twice the density of Rainier. (Funny how the tunnel through Capitol Hill, one of the densest portions of Seattle, became such a lightning rod--and not just because it was woefully over budget, but because some claimed it was an unfair allocation). Besides, "Save Our Valley" is nothing but glorified nimbyism/opportunism masquerading as a grass-roots campaign, led by (ahem) white land owners looking for a little extra pork. The name they chose for their campaign evokes some sort of heartfelt effort to defend some idyllic, vulnerable place, when the reality of the Rainier Valley is something quite different (noise, traffic, crappy sidewalks, more noise, etc.) that actually stands to benefit from a little attention and pedestrian amenities that an at-grade light rail system can bring.

d. "Light rail goes nowhere". What's that supposed to mean? That Ballard and West Seattle are somewhere just because the monorail will go there, but Capitol Hill, Beacon Hill, Rainier Valley and Tukwila are not places people have any business wanting to travel to/from? Or that the Sound Transit light rail is a total failure because it doesn't go to Sea-Tac in the first phase? If the choice had been made to go all the way to Sea-Tac now, and forsake anything north and east of the Downtown core, wouldn't you likely treat that as a failure, too?

I could go on, but 'nuff said. Suffice it to say that there seems to be this perception that the monorail is the people's system, while light rail was foisted on us from above. I think part of it has to do with the romantic down-home feeling some get when they think "Monorail = old quirky Seattle." It's like some want to believe building the monorail will be just an old-fashioned barn raising. Sorry, but it's going to be pretty much the same cast of characters to choose from to design, build, and operate this thing as were available to choose from for light rail, and you're not going to get anyone to volunteer to hoist those concrete beams in place pro bono.

Once the design of the monorail system has to move closer to reality, the really tough choices will hit home and no doubt for some out there the romance will fade in the heat of escalating construction costs and missed deadlines. Probably some things will surface soon during the EIS process. And some things already have. There was at least one significant spike in projected cost (largely without notice), and one has to wonder whatever happened to this scheme of being supported by concessions and other private sources (seems to have gone the way of Boeing & high-paid Mariners). I see in their Times ad they make the claim that "fares and advertising revenue will pay operations and maintenance costs within a few years of opening." That is simply unbelievable, since typically fares cover about 20-30% of transit costs. If our local press is doing its job, ETC should be taken to task for such a brash statement. Are you going to hold ETC's feet to the same fire that Sound Transit's have been?

Believe me, I support the monorail, and all forms of auto-alternatives. I think it would be great to build the whole system they propose. If we got both this and the complementary light rail system in place, it would almost worth the decades-long wait. It's just that this "Seattle process" thing--the careful oversight of our thoughtful citizenry--has it's downside, where it can sap the life and positive energy from community-building endeavors which building a transit system should be. Hopefully Seattle lets it happen, and we don't spurn this one like some want to do with light rail.

J. Floor, Seattle

As stations have been eliminated from the light rail proposal, it has become a joke to say that it will serve Capital Hill (I oughta know, because I live there!), much of Beacon Hill, or even most of Tukwila. To blame "this Seattle process thing" for the current incarnation of light rail is too simplistic. In fact, I think the politicians should have listened more closely to the general populace in the first place on this one. We might have had an entirely different design and route--and the thing might have been half-built by now.

More About Breasts

I've just read your reply to my comment in ETS! and would like to reply once again.

You are certainly right in that women's breasts are used in commercial advertising. And that the same body type appears invariable in advertising as being the only sexy possibility. And (though you didn't explicitly add this, too) it is also true that women are often thought of as being a collection of parts having functions. And therefore, as having a functional value rather than a human value. But I do not agree with your conclusion that, I quote, "to be a woman without breasts is to be radical and anti-commercial--in fact, non-commodifiable".

When you write that, you make it sound as if being without breasts is (1) a willful ideologically-motivated act (rather than a result of removing life-threatening tumors), and that (2) to be anti-commercial we must give up being ourselves, namely by welcoming mutilation of "commercial products".

You seem willing to replace one brand of insanity with another.

Upholding one's right to reconstructive surgery is somehow not as radical and anti-commercial as being without breasts? Huh?

Your second paragraph seems to confuse being sexy (being attractive to others) with being sexual (which is part of human nature regardless of considerations of attractiveness). Hence, it mis-represents what I had written.

You wrote that "commercial culture makes us think we're weird if we're attracted to our partners' ankles, elbows, butt, or long, dangly earlobes." My comment to that is that commercial culture does not "make us think" anything unless that's all that we have in our lives. People with no meaningful inter-personal relationships (no family members, no friends, no girlfriends, no boyfriends) have nothing to draw sanity from, and may confuse commercial culture for real life. There's millions of people in that precise situation. That's the real tragedy. The breakup of social relations, the mental isolation of the individual, especially during teenage years when the body is changing and new "parts" appear for no good reason in the bodies of people who are not loved by anybody in the real world and have not understood that they are not here in order to perform functions, but that their personal well-being is an end in itself.

Building a social fabric of direct inter-personal relationships where people are known and loved for who they are and not for their "sexiness" rating is, to use the same terms you used: "radical" and "anti-commercial", because it creates a reality of "non-commodifiable" people. Which is a twisted way of saying healthy people.

Not wanting to have breasts actually implies that breasts are seen as commodifiable goods, the commercial message having been truly interiorized. I say, fuck that!

Mariza Costa-Cabral, via e-mail

If we choose to say "fuck that!" and try to enjoy our bodies as whole, human, and non-commodifiable, then why does it matter if we lose one breast, or two? What's the point in reconstructing what's gone, when there's so much more left over? Isn't the focus on rebuilding a single breast not only functionally unnecessary, but even a little strange? Why so important? Because commodity culture has us all--men and women--assuming that women's breasts are more important than any other part of a woman's body.

Depleted Uranium

Apparently he conceived of such a weapon in the early forties, wrote a story about it, and was contacted by Defense Dept. officials curious to know how he had come up with such an idea. Apparently they were convinced by his admission of creating the concept himself. I am convinced by this old story (circa 1969). (pointless aside: Heinlein and L. Ron Hubbard reportedly used to take speed and drink together, and brainstorm mightily into many nights)

The depleted uranium projectile is just that: depleted. It's the leftovers from nuke fuel, leaving only the nonradioactive stuff. Natural uranium in worldwide clays and rocks has more radiation in it than that stuff. HOWEVER... uranium toxicity is apparently a touchy subject. Even the non-radioactive stuff, although present minutely in almost every soil and drinking water, has a heavy metal toxicity ASIDE from it's radiation. It's as if there were a radioactive form of arsenic, and the purveyors tried to tell you that the non-radioactive arsenic was safer... NOT!

So the depleted uranium shells are lying there, contaminating soils with a substance that's fairly benign radiologically speaking, but leaching a pretty hefty, concentrated dose of solute into the soil that may be toxic from a purely chemical sense... for a general idea of heavy metal toxicity, research some things like chromium, antimony, beryllium, vanadium, iridium, galladium, etc. I usually type in "MSDS antimony" to get a general idea of what's going on.

Russ Newsom, via e-mail

Letters The Stranger Didn't Print

In your article "...And Pass The Ammunition" you write, "Ask yourself this question and answer it honestly: If it was within your power in August of last year to order a preemptive strike that would of prevented the attacks of September 11, would you have done it? Of course you would. That's the Bush Doctrine." Actually, I would call it the Savage Doctrine because I have no memory of your hero President Dumbo ever suggesting that U.S. military forces bomb U.S. cities to prevent terrorists attacks, as you suggest in your hypothetical situation. I don't know if you recall, your article suggests you don't, but what happened on September 11 were highjackings of a few planes,

not military assaults. Dastardly deeds they were, but not military assaults. Many of the highjackers were probably living in U.S. cities in August of 2001 so your hypothetical situation suggests that we bomb apartments and houses in U.S. cities to prevent the highjackings of September 11. I guess this means

the Savage Doctrine calls for the bombing of the flight schools they were attending, like Sorbi's down in San Diego (Of course, if you were really interested in stopping international terrorism with a military assault, I would suggest we start with bombing the School of the Americas down in Georgia, a long-time training ground for the officers of basically every Latin American military junta Washington has ever supported.).

So what if our bumbling $30 billion-per-year intelligence agencies had gotten wind of the highjacker's plot before they attempted it? How about arresting the suspects at their places of residence or as they arrive at airports from incoming international flights? It's not like these guys came

walking into Logan in Boston on September 11 armed with AK-47's. You might recall that they are alleged to have pulled off the highjackings with box cutters. What's next? An article about how Star Wars missile defense would have prevented the highjackings of September 11?

Is this the best the you can do at counter the anti-war position?

Yes, it's all clear to me now. The same Bush administration that attempted to overthrow the democratically elected government of Venezuela in April, while simultaneously supporting Pakistani dictator GENERAL Musharraf

(you refer to him as "president" in your article), is going to bring "democracy" to Iraq by conducting another murderous full-scale military assault on the Iraqi people. And let's not forget that Kuwait and Saudi Arabia (The main ideological backer of the Taliban's brand of Islamic fundamentalism) were transformed from feudal monarchies into beacons of secular democracy as a result of the Gulf War 11 years ago. I've seen the error in my arguments against President Dumbo's 50 Years War and, like Dan Rather once said, I'm ready to get in line behind our leader.

My suggestion is give your fellow laptop bombardiers Christopher Hitchens and Michael Kelly some lessons on the finer points of licking the doorknobs

of the offices of Christian right presidential candidates. At least it's something you know how to do well. I'll bet Hitchens and Kelly could be pretty good at door knob licking as well.

Rick Giombetti

Stranger:

Dan Savage says that "Peace and Patriotism" are a mutually exclusive pair post-Sept. 11 and that only the brain-dead would think otherwise. Leaving aside the question of which of the two is more important to keep if one has

to be tossed, I'd say peace and patriotism are indeed compatible and that it's the sex-columnist-turned-editor's PAP smear campaign that lacks neural

vitality.

Fortunately, Bret Fetzer comes out with neurons firing in his counterarguments on the facing page. While Savage, David Schmader, and others harp on the unremarkable assertions that there really are aspects of America worth defending, and there really are bad guys out there who really are out

to get us, Fetzer is more to the point: if the knee-jerk response of "get them before they get us" means entrusting, of all people, George W. Bush with the power to reduce other countries to rubble, killing and harming countless innocents in the process, all because the Bush administration and obsequious American media (which Savage seems to have joined) say future evildoers live there ... then that's putting our trust where it doesn't belong.

When Savage calls the Bush Doctrine ("Get them before they get us") a "necessary evil," he's got it half right. What if we applied the same doctrine to all law enforcement? The police would say, "We killed him because we believed he would kill people in the future. And we had to blow up his whole neighborhood to do it." That's how war is under the Bush Doctrine. It's still wrong.

And unnecessary. Fortunately, as Fetzer notes, there are alternatives besides war and surrender, but they mostly involve fostering greater international cooperation and America becoming a better world citizen--in other words, pretty much the opposite of what Bush & Co. are doing. Such internationalism also means getting beyond the America Uber Alles patriotism that Savage and Schmader now urge upon us.

As for Savage's destroy-and-rebuild (in-a-manner-more-to-our-liking) program, there are two problems: 1) It's easier said than done (as I think we'll continue to see in Afghanistan)--at best, it's really expensive; 2) Thinking we have the right to destroy and rebuild nations at will has a lot

to do with "why they hate us."

Lansing Scott