Positive Signs For Seattle's Citywide Monorail

"They would pay for this expanded system -- which some see as one way to deal with increasingly snarled traffic -- with a 1.4 percent citywide motor-vehicle excise tax... If construction began next year, officials said, a system could be operating by 2007. Planners assume trains leaving stations at four-minute intervals during rush hours and at eight-minute intervals at other times. The system would cost more than $25 million a year to operate, ETC staffers estimate, and would require operating subsidies during the first few years it ran. They estimate the system could be self-sufficient by 2012 if premium fares were charged for special event trains and advertising were sold at the 19 planned stations."