Miles to go

Funding from state and federal sources will be even harder to come by; even Jacobsen, a vocal supporter of the monorail, says paying for it is "going to have to be a local issue," because the state well is running dry. The ETC can't go after federal dollars until 2003, when more grants become available. That means that if the Legislature doesn't approve a local taxing option, the ETC may have nothing more than its $125 million pot of reserved bonding capacity (the use of which would have to be approved by the city), property taxes, and private-sector money to fund its billion-dollar-plus proposal. None of those sources alone will be enough to complete the system; while the ETC does plan to seek some private funding, "this will be a major public investment," Robertson says.

The City Council, which has to sign off on the plan before it can go to the ballot, can also hinder its progress toward a November ballot. Because the monorail initiative gives the ETC "up to two years" to complete its plans, City Council transportation committee chair Richard Conlin says, "it's probably still in keeping with the law" to delay the election until 2003. The problem is, the ETC is on track to spend its entire $6 million budget by November 2002; unless the council came through with additional funding—possible, though Conlin says he doesn't know where it would come from—the ETC would have no budget for an additional year of operations.

Peter Sherwin, author of the 2000 monorail initiative, says he can't understand why light-rail boosters won't consider an alternative.

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Let's assume, for the sake of argument, that a monorail plan pretty much like the one the ETC is laying out now makes it onto a fall ballot. Will the city's love affair with elevated transit translate into a decision to move forward with monorail come Nov. 5? That depends on what happens with the Legislature, the economy, and Sound Transit, which is supposed to break ground on its light-rail line sometime this coming summer. But it also depends on what monorail boosters do between now and then. Since 1997, when the first monorail initiative (I-43) passed, true believers like Peter Sherwin, I-43 author Dick Falkenbury, and former City Council candidate Grant Cogswell have done everything they could to elevate monorail in the public's mind. Now it's up to the new crew of monorail salesmen, like Jim Kelly and Harold Robertson, to close the deal.

ebarnett@seattleweekly.com