This Monorail Yes! poster was part of a long campaign to expand the Seattle Monorail line, which eventually was defeated in 2005. Dick Falkenbury, a long-time political activist, led the effort to draft Initiative 41, which called for construction of a 40-mile monorail system linking Seattle's four corners to downtown Seattle to form a giant "X." The initiative also established a public development corporation, the Elevated Transportation Company (ETC), to raise private financing for the system. Initiative 41 won a 53 percent majority on November 4, 1997. In November 2002, when this poster was created, voters narrowly approved Initiative 1, which called for a 1.4 percent increase on motor-vehicle excise taxes on vehicles registered within the Seattle city limits to help raise the $1.75 billion necessary for the construction of the Green Line, and also created the Seattle Popular Monorail Authority (SPMA) to replace the ETC.

Ian Webster, a freelance digital illustrator, created this poster for the Rise Above It All / Monorail Yes! committee, headed by Patrick Kylen.

Caption information source: "Monorail (Seattle)," by Walt Crowley with Phil Dougherty, HistoryLink.org Essay 2524.
Caption information source: "Rise Above It All/ Monorail Yes!," 2002 Seattle Election Information, accessed at http://www.seattle.gov/ethics/el02a/report/filings/bi_rai/home.htm