That is the question, according to local politicians. But it doesn't have to be.

In early September, a group of 100 activists and community leaders signed a letter demanding an independent audit of Sound Transit's light rail plan. The group proposed that a panel of three people--one of whom would be from Sound Transit itself--review the cost of the plan (particularly of the Capitol Hill/U-District tunnel section) over the course of three months. Sound Transit rejected the proposal out of hand as an attempt to "kill light rail." The signers, however, should not be ignored; they include a number of environmentalists, former director of Metro Transit Chuck Collins, Tom Albro (chairman of the Municipal League), former Gov. Booth Gardner, several city council members, and two county council members (Maggi Fimia and Rob McKenna).

These folks have a point. Sound Transit has already increased its own projections by $500 million over the initial budget. Experts have pointed out that other federally funded rail projects around the country have come in with average cost overruns of 33.5%--much higher than the 10% cost overrun built into Sound Transit's budget.

The big-ticket item, and the part that will generate the biggest cost overruns, is the Capitol Hill/U-District tunnel. Sound Transit has taken bids on the tunnel from contractors, but has slyly refused to announce the actual amounts, for fear of public backlash against the project. Fortunately, the contractors have spilled the beans: the bids came in at $800 and $900 million respectively. The lower bid is $243 million higher than Sound Transit's budgeted figure for the tunnel.

Sound Transit is poised to accept $500 million in federal money for the project as soon as Congress approves it. This will put a requirement on the local region to finish the project, regardless of the cost. Local governments will have to cover the cost overruns. Obviously, an outside audit is long overdue.

Sound Transit supporters, including county councilmember and would-be mayor Greg Nickels, city councilmember Richard McIver, Mayor Paul Schell, and County Executive Ron Sims, have objected to the audit and referred critics to the Citizen Oversight group that has supposedly been keeping Sound Transit honest for the past four years. It took less than 24 hours after the signed letter reached their desk for the Citizen Oversight panel to announce that yes, indeed, Sound Transit is grossly underestimating the cost of the project. Why they didn't speak up sooner is anybody's guess. My guess is that the vaunted Citizen Oversight panel is composed of yes-men and cheerleaders for light rail.

In mid-September Ron Sims tried to sneak more money into light rail coffers by proposing a 0.3% increase in the county sales tax. County councilmembers dumped his plan and settled on a 0.2% increase that would provide money for buses, but not a dime for light rail. The debate hinged mostly on ridership. Sound Transit swears that it can attract new transit riders to a combined bus and rail system. Critics claim that light rail will only draw people who already ride the bus.

Their argument is reasonable. When Sound Transit recently unveiled its new commuter rail service between Tacoma, Seattle, and Everett, a survey of riders showed that most were folks who usually ride the bus. This should come as no surprise. To get suburbanites and long-distance commuters out of their cars and into mass transit will take a combination of incentives (sleek trains and spiffy commuter buses) and disincentives to driving. Like a really big gas tax, for example. Or exorbitant parking rates. Or banning single passenger automobiles from a portion of downtown Seattle. Or perhaps all three. We virtuous bus riders can dream, can't we?

Those of us who ride in-city buses are used to seeing half-empty express buses running out of downtown for the suburbs. Yet we continue to pile onto cramped, crowded, aging in-city trolley buses. We know that we're doing the right thing in riding transit, yet we feel we're being punished. A fifteen minute in-city bus ride during rush hour now easily stretches to an hour-and-a-half. We can only feel anger and frustration in the morning when our bus speeds past our stop packed to overflowing--unable to pick us up because there's no room for any more people on the bus.

Our current mass transit system is run by the county and not the city, which is why Metro emphasizes serving the suburbs and the eastside. Sound Transit, too, is a regional body, with an emphasis on moving people around the region.

The greatest need for more, efficient mass transit is within the Seattle city limits. This is what drives the monorail initiative. In the face of city bureaucrats who want to forever shirk responsibility for transit and dump that whole dilemma on the county and Sound Transit, Seattle citizens have responded with Initiative 53.

In 1997, a year after voters approved the light rail plan, city residents overwhelmingly voted in favor of an in-city monorail. The city has ignored the monorail plan, hoping that it will die from neglect. Monorail supporters sued the city, and a recent court decision ruled that the city council had to either fund the monorail or kill it for good. Councilmembers narrowly voted against putting their own initiative on the ballot to fund a monorail study. Mayor Schell and his cronies on the council (Drago, Pageler, McIver, et al.) decided to wait for a group commissioned by the city to study transportation solutions to make its recommendations first. In the meantime, Mayor Schell has suggested that the city build trolley lines, bus-only lanes, or subsidize private shuttle services--anything but build a monorail.

The transportation study group, however, recently came forward and said that, while a monorail may be more expensive than buses and trolleys, it's a hell of a lot more efficient in moving people around. It may, indeed, be the very thing that we need. For example, building a trolley line from West Seattle to downtown would cost around $465 million. Building a bus-only lane over the same distance would cost only $87 million. But building a monorail over that distance would cost just over $500 million--and it would carry five times more people than either the trolley system or the bus-only lane. It would also be faster, it wouldn't have to stop for traffic, and it would remove five times more commuters from the roads.

In short, it wouldn't punish us mass transit riders. It would reward us for our virtue, for a change.

While the mayor and city council continue to waffle, Initiative 53 will go on the ballot in November. It would require the city to give $6 million to the Elevated Transportation Co. to draw up a plan to construct a monorail system. Then the city would have to place the plan on the ballot for voters to approve or reject, and set aside $200 million in the city's borrowing capacity to fund the project. In other words, the city would have to pay for an in-city transit system, instead of throwing a little cash into a regional transit system (that may not be financially viable--or solve our local transit problems).

In the meantime, Mayor Schell, Ron Sims, and city councilmembers Jan Drago and Richard McIver are all aghast at the prospect of a monorail. The usual refrain is "we don't have the money for it." Yet we have the money for a lavish new city hall, a new downtown library (that resembles a deformed chain-link fence), and a new stadium with a defective roof. We have so much money in the coffers that Paul Schell can give away the old PacMed Building to Wright Runstad for a measly $1 million. There's enough money around for bus-only lanes or trolley lines that would only contribute to traffic congestion, not alleviate it (like a monorail would).

Don't let them tell you it's a choice between one rail or two. We can have both. We might have to give up a tunnel under Capitol Hill, but so what? The Sound Transit planning process has taught us that there are always alternative routes.