Team Monorail: F*ck Yeah!

Team Monorail backed out of the SMP bidding process last year, leaving their competitor, Cascadia Monorail Co., alone in the field, winning the contract by default. Now Team Monorail wants to get back in the action, and thinks they have a better plan than Cascadia

Team Monorail, led by Montreal-based Bombardier Inc., has been saying since January that it wants another chance to bid on the monorail project.

"In feature after feature the Team Monorail offering is clearly superior to the current Cascadia proposal," the team's Web site says. For example, Team Monorail says it would offer 22 trains rather than the 13 proposed by Cascadia, meaning a higher train frequency and larger system capacity.

Team Monorail also says its system would cost significantly less, listing a total construction and operations cost of $1.3 billion compared to the more than $2 billion cost of a Cascadia bid. According to Team Monorail, that would mean the SMP would have to borrow between $1.7 billion and $1.8 billion.

via washington state political report