
In Seattle, 22 Years to Get Light Rail from Downtown to Ballard - jseliger
http://seattletransitblog.com/2016/04/13/22-years-to-ballard/
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curtis
The first line of the now infamous Seattle Monorail Project [1] would have
provided a downtown to Ballard link as well as downtown to West Seattle.

The final project proposal was clearly not workable, but instead of revamping
the project, the city chose not just to pull the plug, but to (in my own
humble opinion) drive a stake through its heart. I suspect that this might
have been at least partly because the city leaders only had enough political
capital for one major transportation project and at that time there was a
desperate need for the SR99 viaduct replacement [2]. The latter is of course
where we're having all the trouble with the tunnel boring machine.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seattle_Monorail_Project](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seattle_Monorail_Project)

[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alaskan_Way_Viaduct_replacemen...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alaskan_Way_Viaduct_replacement_tunnel)

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johngossman
Another irony to this is that both this and the new university line run north
and south. It is relatively easy to go north-south in Seattle, the hard part
is going east-west because of the way the hills and lakes are arranged. But
for the same reasons, it is also harder to get a rail line built going east-
west.

