Seattle vs. Jakarta: The Monorail Challenge - Part 2

This is Part 2 of my quest to figure out why the third-world city of Jakarta is able to build a more complex, longer monorail system for a third of the cost and nearly a year faster than Seattle can.

Today, I'll look into more of the details of what's happening in Seattle.

In my last post, I didn't know yet whether construction had begun. According to this, construction will begin next year. However the end date for the project was also moved back to 2009, in order to save money by not having to plan for a partial opening.

So now, the accurate breakdown is this:

Seattle (to build 14 miles of monorail for $1.739 billion)
Length of time: 4.5 years

Jakarta (to build 16 miles of monorail for $540 million)
Length of time: 2.5 years

What is the root cause of our inefficiency? Is it bad planning? Lazy, overpaid workers? Or are we just simply living in a country of people that expect to have something for nothing all the time and whine and moan about having to pay taxes to finance something that we all need? Or is there something else in the middle of all this?

Here is a pro-monorail site.

Here is Monorail Recall site.

The Monorail Recall site has a list of 23 reasons to recall the monorail. I was going to start there and break them down, but the pro-monorail has already done this quite well.

So why is the Monorail Recall site so adamant about stopping the monorail? I noticed the list of businesses where you can pick up a petition. Here's the breakdown of their addresses (number of businesses on those addresses):

15th Ave NW - (4)
Elliott Ave - (1)
Queen Anne Ave NW - (1)
2nd Ave - (3)
1st Ave - (1)
Admiral Way - (1)
42nd Ave SW - (2)
California Ave - (5)

So let's take a quick look at the map of the proposed monorail route here.

It goes down 15th Ave, turns onto Elliott, crosses over Queen Anne Ave, goes down 2nd Ave, heads down across the West Seattle Bridge, passes the Admiral Way exit and goes down 42nd Ave and California Ave. Wouldn't it have bolstered their cause to have maybe 1 business (just 1!) that can't be accused of NIMBYism here?

There's more to discuss about the actual individuals funding this monorail recall, but I'll save that for another day. Please add a comment or send me a mail if you have any good info. I'm now on some mailing lists here, so hopefully, I'll have some more interesting updates soon.

Next, Part 3 - Jakarta. From coffee to monorails, how do they do it so cheap!