"Blah blah blah, Billionaires Tunnel!! blah blah blah Will of the voters! blah blah blah countless safety issues!! blah blah blah, I wet my pants, blah blah blah Tim Eyman is a nice guy", Will in Seattle

If there is a 2011 ballot on light rail--and boy, is that a big if--can someone explain to me what that ballot would be asking? Would we be voting to provide the funding to build a new light rail line? If this is the case, who would be doing the planning leading up to that ballot, and where would the funding come from to do that planning?

It's as if they sense the intense unpopularity of the Council's Billionaires Tunnel and how people have clued in that if we build the 520 West approach for the bridge AND the Billionaires Tunnel, there won't be funding for any transit, roads, or bike lanes for the next two decades.

Which, as anyone who can count knows, is the Truth.

oh, and Tim Eyman sucks.

Transit in this city, however ludicrous, does feature a single monorail.

*sigh* I just hope we don't become LA, with a half-dozen public transit options, none of which either connect with each other or go anywhere anyone would want to be.

Also, @4, BIG HORSE COCKS.

@ 2) If it happens, I'm guessing that the mayor and/or council would give Seattle voters the option of approving a property tax levy to pay Sound Transit to extend the light-rail line. Alternatively, maybe they'd seek a city sales tax measure, like the current light-rail funding, but I'm not sure if Seattle can afford a $500+ million light-rail line without exceeding our sales taxing authority. All that said, the folks at City Hall would probably say it's too soon to know which funding mechanism they'd use.

Last, I assume the campaign would be like any other levy (housing, parks, Pike Place Market, etc.), with leaders from a set of advocacy organizations filing a campaign to push the measure, hold fundraisers, buy mailers, etc.

Dominic @6, thanks for taking a stab at my question.

Speaking as someone for whom westside light rail would be an absolute dream come true, this timetable really freaks me out. There's an enormous public debate that has to take place before a mass transit project could reasonably go to the ballot. And that debate is over what that project will look like, where it will go, how it will get there, what it should cost, who will pay for it and how, etc. That debate takes a certain amount of time. And then there's this little thing called engineering which takes a certain amount of time.

I should remind people, before there was a vote in 2002 on whether to proceed with the monorail project, there was a vote in 2000 on whether to proceed with the monorail planning. Two years and $6 million worth of planning and public process went into that 2002 vote, and still the project ended up failing, in large part due to lack of planning.

It looks to me like Mayor McGinn is so blithely oblivious of the lessons of past failures that he wants to do things in an even more half-assed way. Then again, I wonder how serious he really is about in-city light rail to begin with when his vision for it hardly extends beyond the cocktail napkin stage.

@7: I wasn't here then (yeah, yeah, I'm not a native), but who pocketed that $6M in planning costs?

As for McGinn, I think if he could get the council past the (frankly, Palin-esque) tunnel, he'd put more into it. :)

We need an initiative to require anyone who files three or more unconstitutional state initiatives to wear a Dunce Hat while driving and have a bumper sticker that says (INSERT NAME HERE) sucks big horse cocks.

And pay $1 million for any traffic infraction per offense. Twice that if it's from an automated red light camera.

As cressona well knows, what caused the monorail project to fail was not a lack of planning, but a lack of FINANCING. (The Project was well reviewed by outside experts and teams were willing to bid on the plans.)

This is what makes a city-financed light rail line a sketchy prospect.

Maybe it would work better if it's only light rail from West Seattle or Ballard to Downtown, but not both? Maybe we gain some ground with efficiencies from the existing maintenance facility and existing agency overhead?

If not, we simply can't fund a rapid transit system with City dollars alone unless we are given access to better funding sources by the Legislature.

Mickymse @10, there are two sides to the project planning coin. One is the project itself; the other is its financing. Both take serious consideration. Mess up either one and you're screwed. That, among other things, is the hard lesson learned of the monorail project.

As much as I would love to see westside light rail happen tomorrow, I just don't see how you can rush this thing or skip critical steps in the process. I actually could see there being a vote in 2012, a presidential election year, but not if we are in such a rush to get to a 2011 ballot that we shortchange the actual decision to plan the project, and the funding for that planning, and we don't bother enlisting Sound Transit to do the planning. In the rush to make this happen sooner, we just make it happen later. And worse, once an ill-thought-out attempt to do a new light rail line fails, that just poisons the well for when there is a serious attempt.

I'm even embarrassed to give this any attention myself. Until we hear something more serious, it feels like McGinn is just messin' with us.