In the late 1960s, the Forward Thrust Committee put forward a ballot measure to fund a rapid transit system for the Seattle metropolitan area. One of the key components of the system was a downtown subway tunnel on 3rd Avenue terminating at Union Station, where it would split into a south branch to serve Georgetown and Renton, and an east branch to serve Bellevue. The ballot measure, requiring a supermajority to support bonding to augment $385 million in local funding with $765 million from the Urban Mass Transportation Administration, failed to reach the 60 percent threshold in 1968 and again during a second vote in 1970. The failure of the Forward Thrust ballot measures led to the creation of Metro Transit in 1972, operating bus service across King County.
