[Diddle E. Squat]

Oops, minor math error, looks like it will cost 5.5 times as much as what was told to the voters prior to the election. Somehow Seattle and King County always find a way to double and triple(or apparently quintuple) the cost of transportation costruction elsewhere. Can't blame it all on terrain.

[goodnesswins]

We gotta get I-912 on the Ballot.....these dufuses in Seattle are just HELPING us along!!!

[Myrddin]

Yet another stupid example of public transportation boondoggles financed on the back of taxpayers. Most of the taxpayers will never even have a need or opportunity to use the monorail boondoggle in Seattle. They will have the pleasure of paying for front end alignments made necessary by potholes that were not fixed because of money stolen by the monorail project. Just plain stupid.

[SweetPilotofCanuckistan]

Pretty expensive homeless shelter...

(who else is going to ride it??)

[Wolfie]

Unless they're actuall done, double it.

[commonasdirt]

Anyone who has ever ridden the existing monorail on a (rare)hot summer day in Seattle will tell you it is like being a bug under a magnifying glass. Hop the new one is better. They will have to run a lot of tourists on the thing to recover 11 Billion. I predict a typical unused mass transit failure

[NonValueAdded]

"This is a 100-year system we're aiming for," she said.

And there is part of the problem. Consider ... 100 years ago, where was the automobile? the airplane? Would it make sense to lock in the technology of the Model-T or the Wright flyer? When they exceed the expected technological life span to make the financing work, it is a problem. A huge one. All you have here are pigs at the public trough.

[Faraday]

~$1,000,000,000 per mile. Hmmm..... Buying chauffered limosines for all the actual users would be cheaper.

[Guillermo]

Original projected cost: $2 billion

Updated projected cost: $11 billion

Actual cost: Priceless, because the Environuts in Seattle will be assuaging their consciences by doing something for the Earth, and that can't be measured in monetary costs.

[cogitator]

Light rail, monorail, subway etc. systems are not cost-effective to build now. Express bus systems (Bus Rapid Transit) are much cheaper and they get the job done just as effectively, if not more so.

Chapter 3: Curitiba Experience

Bus Rapid Transit Policy Center

One item in a presentation about the Dulles Rail program outside of DC indicated that BRT will replace a planned monorail expansion in Las Vegas.

[Doctor Stochastic]

Railroad, Steamboat, River and Canal,
Yonder comes a sucker, and Seattle got his money.

[PatoLoco]

But on the plus side, the monorail put Ogdenville, North Haverbrook, and Brockway on the map.

[Heartofsong83]

For that $11 billion, they could rebuild and widen EVERY freeway in the metropolitan area, build a massive bus, passenger ferry and light rail network and STILL have lots of money to spare!

[RJL]

Monorail spokeswoman Natasha Jones said the $11 billion number looks big because it includes inflated future dollars.

"It does look like a big number when you get out that far," she said.

And why did financing "get out that far"? Because it's a huge number!

[vox_freedom]

Come on now folks, $900,000,000 per mile is actually cheap I tell you... //sacrasm now off

[John O]

yet further proof that no mass transit system ever makes money.

This fiasco will be in the red forever and then wehn it breaks down in two to five years (as all these things do) there will be no money to repair it.

they should have just financed it with NEA money because like most of the trash that NEA funds this will just sit there, look ugly, and be useless

[southernnorthcarolina]

Monorail, light rail, heavy rail, subway, streetcar, mag lev... they all have one fatal flaw: they're fixed. They take people, at mind-boggling expense, from where they aren't to where they don't want to go.

It is amazing that almost every wanna-be "big city" has a commuter rail system underway, or in the planning stages. For reasons which have never been satisfactorily explained to me, a city simply MUST embrace 19th-century technology to be thought of as a "World Class City." My home town (though I've had the common sense to move to the exurbs, thereby avoiding at least some of the tax burden) of Charlotte is one such city. The South Line of its light rail system has been green-lighted for the commencement of construction. Of course, its budget has more than doubled before the first shovel of dirt was turned, despite the fact that the project scope has been scaled back to avoid even more egregious cost overruns. The line was shortened, so that it will stop short of the I-485 beltline, rather than crossing it. More amazingly, each station platform has been reduced in length, and therefore will be able to accommodate trains with a maximum length of TWO cars. Add to the equation the fact that the route will have numerous grade crossings, and what you have is not mass transit, but a toy. Lionel should have been asked to bid on the project.

Of course, it's all about incrementalism. Get the first line done, no matter how puny, and then use the "we can't stop now" argument. It's happening in mid-sized cities from coast to coast. Each and every one of them will be saddled with a money-losing white elephant for decades to come. Very sad.

[ApplegateRanch]

Sometimes, it IS cheaper to pull the plug on a started project, no matter what the loss is.

[Fledermaus]

I'm not going to read the whole article so let me ask, how much federal money is involved?

Another Big Dig RIP OFF?

I'm getting so sick of paying taxes to fund all these pie-in-the-sky lies the blue city folks shove down us so they can have "public transportation" and pretty "greenways" (prediction: mental illness in Boston will skyrocket from it's even high average being left wing idiots because off all the driving and train riding they do underground).

[Conservative Firster]

Lyle Lanley

Well, sir, there's nothing on earth
Like a genuine,
Bona fide,
Electrified,
Six-car
Monorail! ...
What'd I say?
Monorail!
What's it called?
Monorail!
That's right! Monorail!
I hear those things are awfully loud...
It glides as softly as a cloud.
Is there a chance the track could break?
Not on your life, my Hindu friend.
What about us brain-dead slobs?
You'll all be given cushy jobs.
Were you sent here by the devil?
No, good sir, I'm on the level.
The ring came off my pudding can.
Take my pen knife, my good man.
I swear it's Springfield's only choice...
Throw up your hands and raise your voice!
Monorail!
What's it called?
Monorail!
Once again...
Monorail!
But Main Street's still all cracked and broken...
Sorry, Mom, the mob has spoken!
Monorail!
Monorail!
Monorail!
Monorail!
Mono... D'oh!