John Haley has a been a leader for several major transportation agencies around the nation, but he says this is the first place he's been where people talk a good fight for transit, but refuse to do anything to support it and then "cherrypick" data and blow little points out of proportion.

"I never saw a place with more people in love with transit, in theory," said Haley, who took over as executive director of the Seattle Monorail Project in August. He was interviewed by the West Seattle Herald last week.

"I'm a transit guy," said Haley in his Boston accent. He was general manager of the Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority. Besides running the oldest subway system in America, the Boston-area transit system also operates light rail, commuter rail, trolley, bus and commuter boat service for 700,000 passengers a day.

Haley has been an executive with the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. He was deputy general manager of San Francisco's Bay Area Rapid Transit system. He was tapped to fix the troubled Las Vegas monorail.

At each transit agency, Haley has worked closely with elected officials, who set policy and decide how much public money transit agencies get. He's used to politicians publicly helping to win support for mass transit.

"When people in Seattle say they support something, it means something very different," Haley said. "They say, 'I'm with you,' but they won't campaign for it."

"They're Democrats with a small 'd,'" he said.

Haley questioned the timing of a consultant's report done for the Seattle City Council on the monorail's discredited and defunct $11 billion financial proposal. Even though the proposal was rejected by the monorail board and resignations were accepted from board chairman Tom Weeks as well as executive director Joel Horn in early July, the report was issued two weeks before the fifth public vote on the monorail.

Haley said he offered to be "grilled" by the City Council but got no response.

"What good does it do to analyze a dead proposal?" he asked. "It was an opportunity to take a free shot at the project."

The monorail will never get built without the support of Seattle city officials, he said.

"Somebody's gotta take a risk," Haley said.

The new executive director also is frustrated by the ongoing public discussion over the monorail.

"The level of discourse around this has been on marginal issues," he said, featuring "cherry picking of data" and "dueling economists."

"No piece of data has been too arcane to put out there and blow out of proportion," Haley said.

"It's hard for me to understand," he continued. "This project has been nicked at and nicked at."

He doesn't like the way Seattle's public discourse seems to force people to choose between building a monorail or a light-rail system. The city needs both modes, along with buses, ferries and, yes, cars. Transit systems in other cities are always a combination of transportation modes, he said.

"I don't see how buses solve transit problems for West Seattle," Haley said. Waterborne transit is sometimes mentioned too, but it would take "an armada" of ferryboats, he said.

Haley thinks a monorail would be "perfect for Seattle." City residents are into technology and city policies are designed to encourage "a smart, focused kind of growth."

Besides, monorails are cheaper to build than light rail.

He thinks Seattle's motor vehicle excise tax is an adequate source of revenue for the monorail. There are some transit projects in the nation with no dedicated revenue source at all, he said.

Haley acknowledges his pro-transit bias. After all, he's devoted his entire career to it. He takes two Metro buses every weekday commuting downtown from his Queen Anne home. As a believer, he admits it takes a leap of faith to think a monorail is feasible.

"There's only so much analysis you can do," Haley said. "You're never going to have complete certainty."

Haley's belief also convinces him that a monorail would get some cars off Seattle streets, be environmentally safe, support the city economy and run punctually 99.7 percent of the time.

"It's a 100-year asset for the city," he said. He knows of no city in America that's regretted building a mass transit system.

Rather than kill the monorail project, Haley suggested it would be better to turn it over to Sound Transit if people don't like the way the project is being run.

"I don't believe you walk away," Haley said.

He was at a loss for words to explain how Seattle voters could say yes to a monorail four straight times and possibly still not get one, if "no" votes are the majority on Nov. 8.

"People here have got to be the biggest cynics," Haley said.

Tim St. Clair can be reached at tstclair@robinsonnews.com or 932-0300.