Going on for easily the past thirty years now, Seattle has needed to upgrade its transit system. Three times now, the voters have voted for a monorail system. Not just the iconic Seattle monorail that runs from Westlake Square downtown the mile-and-a-half to the Seattle Center, but one that serves the entire city and nearby communities.

One of the many advantages of a monorail is that existing streets are usable even when the pylons and overhead tracks are being put in. And when it's finished, rather than buses or surface rail taking up space and adding to the street congestion, the monorail trains run overhead, above the street traffic. And monorails cost the taxpayers a mere fraction of what surface rail systems cost, both to install and to maintain, especially if the surface rail system involves any tunnels.

Another advantage of a monorail system is that, if it is eventually found that it doesn't serve commuters all that well, the overhead rails can be remove and the pylons dug up (with minimum impact on the surrounding area while it is being done), and they can be moved and installed somewhere else. If a surface light rail system complete with subways doesn't do what it's supposed to do (as is the case with such a system in Los Angeles), you're just bloody well stuck with it!

And three times now, the will of the voters has been ignored. Currently being built is a combination surface and subway system, involving digging a tunnel under the Lake Washington ship canal and under Capitol Hill. This involves building subway stations along the way. And not more than a half-dozen city blocks from where I live, a two block area, the former site of several businesses that served the neighborhood, has been condemned. There is currently a massive hole there where a subway station, complete with elevators to the tunnel below, is being built. $$$$$$ and more $$$$$$!!

There's one helluva lot of corruption in there somewhere!!

Now, while all this is going on, there is a big dispute over replacing the I-90 waterfront viaduct, which was damaged in the Nisqually earthquake nine-and-a-half years ago. Although it is still being used, it's deemed unsafe. And God help anyone driving on it should another earthquake hit, which in this seismically active zone, is sure to happen sooner or later.

Rebuild the viaduct? Tear it down and replace it with 1) a surface highway along the waterfront? Or 2) a tunnel, which would allow free access to all the shops, restaurants, and other facilities on the shores of Elliot Bay? But this tunnel would require building a new sea wall. And suppose you're driving through the tunnel when that inevitable earthquake occurs and a fractured sea wall allows Elliot Bay to come roaring in?

All of these options, except for the surface highway, which is currently being ignored, involve, to quote the late Carl Sagan, "billions and billions" of taxpayer dollars.

In the meantime Seattle and environs is frequently in the throes of massive traffic gridlock.

Any solution is going to impact the taxpayers severely.

And Seattle is not the only city to experience problems of this nature. Or unique problems of their own that involve massive amounts of funding to solve.

And you will note that I'm not even mentioning the national budget. And the Military. . . .

I wouldn't mind seeing a bit of FDR-style "socialist" regulation being applied to the miscreants, both in the legislatures (both local and national), and in business, who push for the most expensive systems they can peddle so they can line their pockets with taxpayer's money.

This is why, if Emilio and Maria Rodriquez, unregistered immigrants, have to take their eight-year-old daughter, Teresa, to a hospital emergency room because their worried about her sore throat, and Medicare has to pick up the tab because they don't have insurance and they don't make that much (he's a gardener and she cleans houses), I don't really sweat it all that much.

Concentrating one's complaints on little folks like this is a bit like spending one's time and energy swatting at flies while lions and tigers and bears (oh, my!) are raging throughout the land!

Don Firth