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While Central Puget Sound Regional Transit Authority (Sound Transit) has been getting its ducks back in order to move forward with its Central Link light rail plans, Seattle residents also can look forward to a monorail system designed to help improve area mobility. Elevated Transportation Co. (ETC) recently took a couple steps toward that goal. Seattle Initiative 53 in last November’s election reestablished ETC, which is charged with developing a plan to build and operate an elevated monorail system serving Seattle neighborhoods.



ETC July 2 selected the 13.7-mile West Seattle-to-downtown-to-Ballard corridor as the beginning phase of the Seattle Popular Transit Plan, also known as "The Seattle Monorail Project."



"By selecting these initial corridors we can now move on to develop plans for actual routes — identifying exactly where the monorail will go, where to place stations, honing ridership estimates and identifying the most appropriate technology," said ETC Chairman Tom Weeks in a prepared statement.



And, to help nurture those plans, ETC July 10 hired Mike Mariano as technical project manager.



Mariano brings more than 30 years’ experience in planning, design and constructing transportation projects in the Puget Sound area, honed at TranSystems Corp., CH2M Hill, Washington State Department of Transportation and the City of Seattle.



In his new post, Mariano’s responsibilities will be divided into three main areas: working with the consultant team to maintain content, schedule and budget to implement the work plan; serving as ETC’s lead and the consultant team’s point person in working with other agencies’ technical staffs; and aiding overall outreach efforts.