Tuesday, July 05, 2005

And you thought Metro's $2 billion plan is expensive...

I meant to pass along this article from June earlier, but it got misplaced in the chaos that is my email inbox. Just to show that everything is relative, Metro's $2B plan looks like a paragon of good sense and taxpayer stewardship in comparison to this plan by Seattle to build 14 miles of monorail. Get ready for it. $11 billion. You read that right. Read about it here.

Fun with math: divide it out and you get a staggering $149,000 per foot of monorail. Wow.

I'll pass along just one quote, from the Washington state treasurer:
"You've got to be kidding me," Murphy said yesterday. "That's ludicrous."

I think that just about sums it up.

Thanks to reader Richard Johnson for the link.

posted by Tory Gattis @ 10:30 PM

2 Comments:

At 5:52 PM, July 06, 2005, Blogger Tory Gattis said...

Looks like I sparked a Houston vs. Seattle transit debate:

http://tinyurl.com/a8htc

 
At 5:30 PM, July 10, 2005, Blogger Andrew said...

Is the 11 Billion dollars going to prevent Seattle from becoming another LA or DC with tons of traffic issues than the $$ is worth it.
If Metro had better long term plans and innovative ideas to cut down on traffic and pollution than the city would be willing to pay 11 Billion dollars.

 

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