Tom Gibbs sends along this article from Crosscut:
“The question is no longer whether we will grow, but only how we will grow.”
“So said attorney and civic leader Jim Ellis, in a speech at the Seattle Rotary Club. As the region expands, “even a second freeway could not carry the traffic,” he predicted to the crowd of politicians, civic leaders and other Seattle movers and shakers. “Rapid transit is the essential link in a balanced transportation system, which is missing in Seattle.”
Ellis’s speech sounds like a pitch for Sound Transit 3 (ST3), the $54 billion proposal on the November ballot that would quintuple the size of the region’s light rail system over the next 25 years. But these statements were delivered Nov. 3, 1965. They served as Ellis’ public announcement of an ambitious vision to remake Seattle and King County with a dozen capital infrastructure projects, a package dubbed Forward Thrust.”