Again with the monrail: Yesterday being the first Monday of the month, there was another board meeting of the ETC, progressing along on the Seattle monorail. Some highlights:
- Senate Bill 6464 is moving through the legislature very quickly. This is the bill that grants municipalities the power to raise money for public transport systems and is required before the monorail could even be voted on. It passed the Senate and last night passed the House transportation committee on a strong 20-2 vote. Next hurdles are the rules committee and the full House--presumable Govenor Locke will sign it if it reaches him.
- A list of design guidelines is being prepared. Currently this in only in text form, so it is little help to citizens wanting to understand how the monorail would actually look. Joel Horn mentioned that there is a group at the University of Washington working on producing illustrations from the guidelines--I would very much like to see the results.
- Preliminary revenue and operation cost projections were presented. From these, I'm guessing that the board will ultimately not ask the voters for a subsidy for operating the monorail, or for a small subsidy that is phased out after a few years. I hope these projections turn out to be accurate: a monorail with operating self-sufficiency would be morally equivalent of roadways, in that the infrastructure is paid for by the state, but the users pay themselves for the usage.
Posted by awm at March 5, 2002 05:44 PM