John S.
They are becoming more popular.
In a series of four votes from 1997 to 2002, Seattle voters directed the creation of a public monorail authority, which would have paralleled I-5 and WA-99 to the east.
Unfortunately the fools in charge of authoring the fourth ballot measure (2002) underestimated the tax rate that would be necessary to fund the system's construction, estimated at just under $2 billion. The result was that as the Seattle Monorail Project began collecting tax revenues in 2003, it was clear that they were getting only 2-3 of the projected revenue.
At this point it would have been smart to return to voters, admit the mistake, and ask for a higher tax rate. There was still a good amount of public support for the project. But those in charge of the project, in their hubris and incompetence, pooh-poohed the problem and insisted they could find a way out of it. One solution was to finance the construction with high-interest bonds, totaling $11 billion (including interest). At this point public opinion began to sour, led by a media attack on the project as incompetent. Seattle city officials, never totally fond of a project outside their control (the monorail was the result of grbuttroots organizing and never quite had insbreastutional political blessing), turned on the monorail, and put a measure on the November 2005 ballot to deny it access to right of way on Seattle city streets - effectively killing the project. Seattle voters approved the measure, and the monorail is now dead.
I hope that, in a few years' time, cooler heads will prevail and the project will be resurrected. It was a good idea, and few in the city have questioned its technology or its usefulness in helping relieve traffic.
Commuting to NYCWhy not - lots of people do. Actually it's common shorthand and quite useful when parties to a conversation know which city is...
-- Robert I. Cruickshank roadgeek, historian, progressive
