2005-09-24 - 12:07 p.m.

Please excuse the double negative but the Seattle monorail ain�t going nowhere.

For those outside Seattle, the city has been �trying� to build a monorail since 1997 when it was voter approved for the first of four times. Since then it appears the board governing this project has done nothing but gather millions of taxpayer dollars to sit and stare at each in a really cool building on Third Avenue. I have forgiven this sin many times and approved the hike in my car tabs ($127 for a Ford Escort?) to build this thing, all the time saying, just build it already, we really need it.

Things got bad again this past week and Seattle�s mayor has come out against the project. After reading a P-I story this morning, I also think it is a crock of shit. No public body should get away with the planning mishaps the Monorail board has. I will accept that public bodies take on the financial projects the private sector never would and shouldn�t be held, exactly, to the same expectations for solvency. But this appears to be planning with the idea that Seattle voters will keep coming back to give them more money.

Also, even in the hay days of this thing when there were multiple lines planned, there was never a line planned, ever, for Rainer Valley. Sorry to get all proletariat on you but this makes no sense. Why is there no line to a neighborhood with one, horrible arterial road (Rainier Ave.) that serves a poor community that has problems getting and keeping cars? The line also doesn�t go to the airport.

The present, drastically reduced, plan goes from Magnolia to West Seattle. Huh? This is going to help nobody. This is a train for rich people who can go from their homes in Magnolia to Alki Beach with a stop at Macy�s. No Capital Hill stop. No U-District stop. No Queen Anne stop. No Beacon Hill stop. These are neighborhoods teeming with people in apartments who don�t have or can�t afford a car. They are the ones packing buses. Public transit is not used by bank presidents. It is used by tourists, service professionals and temps, and they don�t live in Magnolia.

Perhaps I shouldn�t have an opinion on this since I now live in Issaquah, but Seattle needs to get this thing worked out before it becomes a parking lot. Denver could do it. Seattle should be able to.

I am willing to heard arguments to the contrary (for some reason I think Robert Cantoni would be knowledgeable on this. Perhaps I should stop by www.irobert.org).

Also, all I want to read are magazine articles and Internet stories. I think I have lost my ability to invest in a book. This is sad. Bethany keeps prodding me to read �All The King�s Men,� which she read last year and liked very much. A movie based on it will be released this winter and I should read it before then, but I am only 15 pages into it, and it is not a book, it is a tome.

Naomi, my daughter, is doing well. She coos now. Coos is a cute word for baby babble. Or baby babel. Whatever. It is cute, though. You can check her out, unfortunately not cooing, at www.bbcape.net.

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