Orphan Road

On the river of time we sometimes paddle lustily, improving the speed with which we sweep forward, but more often- alas!- we're a woodchip, bobbing now in the eddy and then sucked into the stream.

In such a wise, Seattle, having defeated mass transit in 1970, fell into a deep slumber, and now awakens, like Cinderella, or perhaps, like Rip Van Winkle, shaking aside cobwebbed dreams of Roger Rabbit and the 1956 Alweg monorail at Disneyland.

We have a new trolley, an old trolley struggling to be reborn, a light-rail system nearing an opening, and the chance to tear down the freeway the fifties laid across the Seattle waterfront. We can confidently predict fuel prices of $5 per gallon by the time Sound Transit cuts the ribbons.

In Denver and Salt Lake City, after seeing light-rail (LRT) in action, the voters approved additions of a hundred miles of system in each city. It is tempting to let time simply sweep us forward, borrowing from Denver a plan, and from Bonn (Germany) some modern technology.

This might suit the Seattle of today, but any long-time resident who saw Tex Johnson barrel-roll a 707 over a Gold Cup race totally owned by Slo-Mo-Shun IV wants more- we want to be Leaders!

And, given the state of transit in America today, that is not an impossibility. It's time to re-think transit, not in terms of what was, but in terms of what can be. After all, it's probably coming soon, to a neighborhood near you.