Monorail Trains Collide In Downtown Seattle

Monorail Trains Collide In Downtown Seattle

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Story Published: Nov 26, 2005 at 5:45 PM PDT

Story Updated: Aug 31, 2006 at 2:08 AM PDT

By KOMO Staff & News Services

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SEATTLE - Two monorail trains clipped each other on a curve in the tracks Saturday evening in the heart of Seattle. Two people with minor injuries were taken to local hospitals, fire officials said.

Seattle firefighters helped a total of 84 passengers off the elevated train near Westlake Center, said Helen Fitzpatrick, Seattle Fire Department spokeswoman.

A passenger on the northbound train, which had left the Westlake station minutes before the accident, said the crash "wasn't real violent."

"The scariest thing was coming down the ladder," said John Gahagan, 50, of Mukilteo, Wash., who was riding the monorail with his wife and two children.

"We heard a screeching sound - metal on metal - and glass breaking," he said, adding that the sliding door on his car was ripped off, a window was broken and his kids, Sean, 15, and Genevieve, 11, were showered in glass. Gahagan said several people slid off their seats.

"We're fine. Everybody in the car was fine," he said about an hour and a half after the accident.

"A rough moment, then a couple people started screaming, and we looked up and we saw that on the other train there was some broken glass and some doors kind of flying ajar," said another passenger.

"Obviously something was going wrong and that the front end of the trains started leaning to the one side. We didn't know if we were going off or what at that point, so it was a little scary. We just kind of hung on and everything came to a halt," he said.

The one-mile monorail system - which has only the two trains - was built for the Seattle World's Fair in 1962 and has been popular with tourists, drawing as many as 23,000 riders a day.

The line was shut down for more than six months last year, after a smoky fire stranded about 100 riders. No one was seriously hurt.

A years-long fight to expand the system met with a sound rejection this month.

Voters had approved a 14-mile system in 2002, but opposition grew after the estimated price more than quadrupled to $11.4 billion. On Nov. 8 voters junked the project entirely, rejecting a 10.6-mile, $4.9 billion alternative monorail proponents had offered.

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