Vote!!

No matter what your personal views on the monorail, don't forget to vote tomorrow! On the eve of election day, the PI has a great overview of Seattle's monorail history, starting with the 1962 World's Fair, and taking us right up to tomorrow's crucial vote on Proposition 1.

The article ends with an interesting comment by John Haley, SMP's executive director, and a mass-transit veteran who worked on projects in Boston, New York and the San Francisco Bay Area before that.

Haley said he's never been involved with a project [that] didn't draw opposition, but has never seen critics at such an early stage so focused on things like total financing costs, ridership projections and the amount of space on the trains.

"There's a certain level of risk aversion that exists here that I've never encountered before," he said. "Other cities would say, 'Getting this infrastructure done is worth it to us, so let's get it done.'"

Does that make Seattleites anal, or people who pay attention to detail?