Unbowed by the gloomy budget news he dispensed this week, Seattle Mayor Mike McGinn is still working toward his 2009 campaign promise to offer rail transit, linking West Seattle and Ballard to downtown.

The latest strategy, outlined in a letter from McGinn to a transit advisory group, suggests asking voters this year to approve just $10 million -- enough money to complete 15 percent of the design for an 8-mile line. Taxpayers already are being asked this fall to double the Families and Education Levy right after a recession.

"The level of design work funded would allow us to seek federal grants for construction, as well as develop a timetable for a larger ballot measure to fund construction," says McGinn's message to Kate Joncas, Downtown Seattle Association director, and Ref Lindmark, a King County transit planner who helped plan the 2006 "Bridging the Gap" measure to improve city roads and bicycle-pedestrian travel.

Construction of surface rail through Interbay is relatively simple, but crossing the Lake Washington Ship Canal to Ballard and the Duwamish River to West Seattle would push costs well into the hundreds of millions of dollars -- even if tracks halted at Westlake Center and the International District, instead of remaining near the waterfront, for instance. At the time the Green Line monorail was canceled in 2005, costs of a 14-mile route would have totaled roughly $2.1 billion.

Another option, McGinn said, is to squeeze up to $1.5 million this year from existing transportation budgets, for "conceptual" design work that wouldn't attract federal aid, but would support a 2012 citywide vote.

"A third path that I hope we can all agree is off the table is doing nothing," McGinn says. "At a time when we continue to face difficult funding cuts, including potential cuts to SDOT's maintenance budget, we also have a responsibility to make the kinds of investments that will build a solid long-term foundation for Seattle's future."

Across town, Sound Transit continues to work on its 2013 First Hill Streetcar, digging its 2016 subway to Husky Stadium, and engineering a 2020 extension to Northgate and Lynnwood.