It's time to end this bad trip

Bruce Ramsey of the Seattle Times lays out some compelling reasons to vote YES to recall the Monorail "The bad hallucination that was the monorail"

The original hallucination was that the monorail would be built by private investors. That was discarded. By the third vote, taxpayers were on the hook, but for the construction only. The operating costs would be covered entirely by fares, advertising and a gaseous thing called "entrepreneurial revenues."

The hallucinations continued with the forecast of tax revenues, which started off 30 percent short. Seattle financial analyst Ben Porter, who does due diligence on rail-project finances for the Federal Transit Administration, says there is a substantial risk revenues will remain short and that the agency will have to be bailed out by city taxpayers. (Think property taxes.) A review done for the Municipal League, which yesterday recommended recall, notes that monorail has announced no provision for students, seniors and the disabled to have a reduced fare, or for bus riders to transfer free.

Read the whole thing.

Posted by Stefan Sharkansky at October 20, 2004 09:32 AM | Email This