Good news: The guy brought in to salvage the Seattle monorail's finances says there's a way to cut costs by 3 or 4 billion dollars.

That's right — up to $4 billion in savings. And he thinks he can do it without shortening the proposed 14-mile Green Line, though the outer ends could be delayed by five or more years. "I'm more optimistic today than when I started four weeks ago," said Kevin Phelps, a no-nonsense fiscal expert hired to rework the disastrous financing plan shelved in June.

Phelps says rearranging the borrowing schedule could save a couple billion alone.

So maybe we can build this thing after all?

That's what I thought when I first heard about Phelps' work. I had one of those delusional monorail moments, in which I imagined bringing you the glad tidings: "Seattle, your monorail is saved!"

But gloom always cloaks the rosiest monorail news.

Even if Phelps is right — and to his credit, he cautions it's too soon to tell — it won't be near enough to save the train.

It would turn an $11.4 billion project with tax payments over 50 years into, at best, a delayed $7.4 billion project paid off over 40 years.

That's going from a groundbreakingly bad deal to one that's just conventionally bad.

The whole thing ought to cost around $4 billion, interest included, if it could qualify for more typical 30-year loans.

"I'm very upbeat we're going to put out a plan that is a vast improvement over the old one," he says, "but I don't know whether it'll be good enough."

I don't think it will. The monorail has less than three weeks to right itself. By Sept. 15, it must adopt a sensible survival plan or Mayor Greg Nickels says he'll try to kill it off.

With all respect to Phelps, who should have been hired two years ago, and to monorail-board members, who are struggling to recover from their debacle, there's only one honest way out of this mess.

It's the one way the agency refuses to take: To ask the voters for more money.

There's no way to nip and tuck and scrimp this monorail into a good deal that also works as mass transit. Shortening the line doesn't do it. Amazingly, saving $4 billion doesn't do it.

The agency needs more money, up front, from taxpayers. Yet this is the one idea that's off the table. Everyone assumes voters will say no.

So what if they do? At least we'd be done with it. The voters say yes, we build the full system for $4 billion, interest included. They say no, the monorail is canceled.

I spent the first two years of this project in denial about the revenue shortfall. I know what that denial feels like. I can see it creeping back among the monorail faithful, including board members.

It's a sense that the merit of the mission will somehow triumph over the meagerness of the money.

It won't. There are less than three weeks left to face up to that and ask voters for help, one last time.

Danny Westneat's column appears Wednesday and Friday. Reach him at 206-464-2086 or dwestneat@seattletimes.com.