A competing proposal for a $1.7 billion monorail project may go before voters this November.
The initial 14-mile light-rail segment is expected to open by 2009, with Sound Transit estimating that ridership will reach 42,000 passengers per day within the first decade of operations. A more ambitious line, which would have been 50 percent longer, had been approved by voters in 1996. That project was shelved after it became clear that the cost of tunneling through Seattle's many hills and under Puget Sound would run more than $1 billion over budget.
"The good news is that the bad news came before we actually started digging," says Lee Somerstein, a Sound Transit spokesman. There had been several pre-dig bad vibes, however. The authority had been subject to staff shake-ups, a great deal of negative publicity and some hostile scrutiny from the U.S. Congress, which is slated to pick up part of the project's tab.
Sound Transit's mission is to provide "seamless" public transportation throughout the central Puget Sound region, but light rail, as currently envisioned, will stop a mile short of the Seattle- Tacoma International Airport. Passengers will have to take a bus from there.
Last fall's terrorist attacks made it uncertain that the airport's new north terminal, which the light-rail line would have serviced, will be built. They also raised security concerns about bringing light rail directly into the airport. Sound Transit officials nonetheless pledge to eventually extend the line south to the airport.
