Magnolia resident and political activist Elizabeth Campbell has announced that she wants to revive the plan for an extensive monorail system that would reach from Ballard through downtown and on to West Seattle.
She is launching a campaign to create a public transportation authority to build the approximately 16-mile monorail/high capacity personal transit system along the west side transportation corridor of Seattle.
Campbell chose the 50th anniversary of the Seattle Center Monorail to announce her plan, which calls for a monorail or some other form of high-capacity personal transit system to travel from Ballard to downtown Seattle and then on to West Seattle. It is essentially much the same plan as offered up by others in the past.
She announced that an organization called the Century Transportation Company will gather 3,600 valid signatures on a petition to authorize a public vote to be taken on the formation of the authority, along with the authorization for initial funding for the planning, design and engineering of the transportation system.
Campbell estimates the cost of the completed would be between $1.5 billion and $2 billion for the 16-mile, 18-station system.
Campbell wrote in a press release that “Following a[n] authorizing vote in August, 2012, it is estimated that the planning and design phase will take one year, followed by two years to complete the environmental review and permitting processes. During this time another public vote will be held to authorize the funding and construction of the system. Construction then is estimated to commence in 2016, followed by completion and operation of the complete system by December, 2018.
The system being proposed would be fully grade-separated, will utilize public right-of-ways where feasible, and serve major destination points that are most likely to produce the highest ridership volumes.
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