A few years ago, we had this crazy idea to build a monorail, that would start in downtown and brtanch out to two of Seattle’s far flung neighborhoods, Ballard and Seattle.

By most accounts, the whole plan was run by the guys who drive clown cars, and the money guys needed an abacus to count sea shells on the beach.  It was the little engine that couldn’t even though all of us have spent about $1500 in taxes for the train that never ran.

But is it time to dust off the powerpoint, and re-run the Excel spreadsheet with new numbers?  Interest rates have never been lower, so the money would be cheaper.  Gas prices have never been hire, but will be tomorrow (and the day after, and the day after that, etc…), so you can assume ridership will skyrocket.   And now we have a real crisis, and you see how civic leaders (i.e. Steve Ballmer) suddenly appear in times of crisis.

Sometimes great ideas have terrible execution, or poor timing, and all it takes is a different team on a diferent day to turn a dud into nirvana.  Think the Smarte Car, which 25 years ago was a dog called the Yugo.  Or the iPod, which in 1997 was a dorky thing called Diamond Rio.  The Newton never made it, but pieces of it came back into every PDA sold from 2003-2007. 

So, what do you think?  Why not revisit this whole monorail thing, with a new team driving the project?