WI: Longer Seattle Monorail

What if after the expo in 1962, the monorail was extended to go all the way to SeaTac? Would it make a profit? How would Seattle be different from today?
 
At that point the monorail is large enough to serve as an actual means of transportation, rather than just a tourist attraction. It wouldn't turn a profit (mass transit pretty much never does), but after the 1970s energy crisis, you probably start to see development in the city center on the monorail's route. You might also see attempts to expand it with lines going North and East. IOTL there were attempts to create a monorail system with the existing monorail as the backbone in the 1990s-2000s, but they went overbudget pretty quickly and the city ended up building a light rail system instead.
 
800px-Seattle_monorail01_2008-02-25.jpg

One of problems that Monorail system has is higher construction cost for Rail system, it has to build from reenforced concrete on support.
A traditional build rapid transit rail service system is cheaper in construction and busses are even lower in cost.
yes system like BART or CAT or NewYork Subway system worked, but that are in Cities with Higher budget as Seattle
 
Another issue is in the 1960s cities were replacing streetcars with buses. Out with the old, in with the new. Monorail is a more expensive version of streetcars.
 

kernals12

Banned
800px-Seattle_monorail01_2008-02-25.jpg

One of problems that Monorail system has is higher construction cost for Rail system, it has to build from reenforced concrete on support.
A traditional build rapid transit rail service system is cheaper in construction and busses are even lower in cost.
yes system like BART or CAT or NewYork Subway system worked, but that are in Cities with Higher budget as Seattle
BART and the New York Subway are both normal rail.
 
Are we talking about the failed September ‘62 vote where Metro was denied their bid to build a public transit system?

BART and the New York Subway are both normal rail.

I think they were only counting the elevated sections as a cost comparison to monorail.
 

kernals12

Banned
Seattle just isn't dense enough to justify such an expensive mass transit system.

And the monorail seems to have few advantages over conventional systems besides "it looks cool".
 

kernals12

Banned
Another issue is in the 1960s cities were replacing streetcars with buses. Out with the old, in with the new. Monorail is a more expensive version of streetcars.
Not exactly, streetcars have to share the streets with automobiles, and they have to stop for red lights and so on. Monorails are really an alternative to subways and el-trains.
 
If anybody wants tons of monorail in the era think Los Angeles 1954 or 60/62/63, not Seattle 1962.

Edit: or combo up say the 1960 reduced scale LA proposal getting built to make Seattle building some more monorail seem like a good. Monorail everywhere!
 
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Remember that the World's Fair era is exactly where the 1970s subway propsal (Forward Thrust?) came from. So the question becomes what is actualyl built for the Worlds Fair, what is built immedietely after and what the public plan becomes with the (presumably still private?) monorail being more signficant... The most likely I can see (though it doesn't exactly align with the initial proposal of going all the way to Sea-Tac immedietely) would be for some kind of city investment in the initial monorail letting it build something along the lines of Worlds Fair/Seattle Centre - Westlake - Pike Place (ick, this seems likely to ram through the demolition plans given the timing) - not sure where, but another downtown station - King St. Station. With this existing and having real city involvement already Forward Thrust becomes pretty likely to reccomend re-using the technology, and it's not hard to imagine and existing line making public support easier to build.

tl;dr this could pretty easily end in Seattle getting a system that's a contemporary of BART and DC albeit with monorails.
For an illustration of the kind of thing being planned in the late 60s and early 70s:
NMqBZtr.jpg
 
If anybody wants tons of monorail in the era think Los Angeles 1954 or 60/62/63, not Seattle 1962.

Edit: or combo up say the 1960 reduced scale LA proposal getting built to make Seattle building some more monorail seem like a good. Monorail everywhere!

The edit is the way to go for lots of monorails. If gets started LA in the 50s, even reduced to something like the LAX proposal, it isn't likely to stop building altogether. That kind of precedent is going to exert real influence going forward, and I'd fully expect Seattle to have an easier time of things, BART seems very likely to go monorail (I'm not a huge fan of monorails tbh, but for the Bay Area it solves a lot of hte technological questions around the Marin line trying to use the Golden Gate Bridge; I actaully kind of like the idea of a TL that involves saving the Key System and the first new build BART line being a Golden Gate Monorail) and monorails would probably get a lot more attention come the downtown peoplemover program. At a minimum Miami seems likely to go that direction for the Mover if not all of Metro Rail. Beyond that we get into butterflies, but monorails are now a reasonably common technology in North America.
 
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