Since 1892, Rapid Transit
Plans Have Been Up in the Air
 The
first proposal for a rapid transit system connecting Puget Sound
communities was made more than a century ago.
In
the summer of 1892 Lucien F. Cook, a Tacoma real estate dealer and
inventor, set up a miniature working model of an elevated,
electric-powered railroad. He invited visitors and especially
investors to see the big toy in the Tacoma Post Office building at
1016 Pacific Ave.
Cook's
contraption had two narrow tracks, one above the other, suspended
from poles on a single line of piers. The car was designed to be
suspended from the upper track and stabilized by horizontal wheels
at the bottom of the car, bearing against the lower rail. The car
would be very light and extremely narrow, only three feet wide
with passengers in single file, one behind the other.
Cars
would be constructed in varied length to seat from eight to 30
riders. Cook estimated that it would cost about $15,000 a mile to
construct a track from Tacoma's Commencement Bay to Seattle's
Elliott Bay, and that the trip would take 20 minutes.
Cook
found enough support to be able to build a full-sized model, about
a quarter-mile long, on the waterfront below the Tacoma Hotel,
which stood on A Street Between 10th and 11th.
Test
runs were conducted on the afternoon of Friday, Nov. 26. The first
runs were made with an empty car. Those runs went so well that as
many as 10 volunteers at a time risked the trip in the flimsy
cars. There was no regulator to adjust the flow of power so the
train's starts and stops were emphatically abrupt, but no one was
hurt.
Civil
engineer Henry Shaw, who served as motorman, said he would not be
afraid to run a train at 100 miles an hour. Promoter Cook thought
the upper limit would be 200 mph and spoke of the possibility of a
transcontinental train that would deliver the New York morning
papers to Tacoma at 1 p.m.
But
the Panic of '93 struck a few months later. Investment capital
disappeared, as did all mention in the papers of Lucien Cook and
the overhead rapid transit system.
In
July of 1895 the Tacoma Daily Ledger carried a one-paragraph item
on page 2 that said Henry Bucey of Buena was visiting town to
raise funds for "an air line steam railroad" to run
between Tacoma and Seattle. The subject never again came up in
print.
In
1900 a conventional light rail service between Tacoma and Seattle
began with electric engines drawing power from a third rail. It
lasted more than 30 years before giving way to the automobile and
the bus.
But
even with the Interurban offering 70-minute trips between the two
cities there were still those who dreamed of faster
transportation, among them William H. Boyes.
In
1910 Boyes and two other men, all residents in a First Avenue
hotel in Seattle, signed papers incorporating the Seattle-Tacoma
Monorail Co., which proposed to offer high-speed rail service
between Puget Sound cities.
They
circulated a photo, supposedly taken somewhere on the Tacoma
Tideflats, showing a futuristic car, remarkably like the present
Seattle monorail cars.
It
appears to be perhaps 25 feet long. Men in business clothes peer
from the side windows. An engineer in hat, tie and vest sits in
the drivers seat. The car rests on a single rail supported by a
dozen closely spaced pillars. To one of the pillars two large
signs are fastened. "Wm. H. Boyes," says one. "Monorail"
says the other.
No
contemporary story has been found in any Tacoma paper about the
construction of the model. But in the spring of 1911 a man
representing himself as G.E. Boyes, president of Boyes Monorail
Edmonds Co. obtained a 25-year franchise from the Edmonds City
Council to provide 10-minute monorail service between Edmonds and
Seattle at 10 cents a ride.
According
to Kay V. Cloud's "Edmonds, The Gem of Puget Sound," the
town held a civic celebration on May 2, 1911, when the first
support post for the monorail was put in place. "Hopeful
speeches were made."
A
week later, a "penetrating odor" emanating from the
monorail site was traced to a dead skunk that had fallen into an
open post hole. The skunk's demise was an ill omen. The timbers
and steel for the monorail track and the experimental cars that
were supposed to arrive within days never showed up.
On
Oct. 21 of 1911 Harry Habey, J.L. Larimer and Royal A. McClure
procured an order from a Judge Tallman requiring the Pacific
Railway Co. (monorail) and W.H. Boyes, president, to show cause
why a receiver should not be appointed. Boyes was ordered to allow
stockholders to inspect the company books or show cause for his
refusal. The stockholders charged that $15,000 worth of stock had
been sold and that $10,000 had been used by Boyes for his personal
requirements. It is not known if anyone got money back.
Not
until Seattle's Century 21 Exposition in 1962 was a working
monorail built. The Alweg Rapid Transit Systems built a $3.5
million line to carry cars designed by an Italian
automobile-building firm and manufactured in Germany.
The
line runs from the downtown business district to the former
exposition grounds, now the Seattle Center. There was talk of
extending it to Boeing's Duwamish plant, or even running it to
Tacoma.
That
didn't happen, but the monorail still serves an estimated 400,000
passengers a year, gliding quietly over the street traffic.
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