Seattleites should already be zipping around in light rail cars and really cool buses. Instead, many cling to their cars, not liking public transportation's meager alternatives.

At long last, those alternatives are about to expand by giant steps, and with them come Sound Transit's phenomenally effective art program. At 1 percent of the cost of project construction, art will transform Sound Transit from a transportation necessity to an expression of the city's core identity.

In the 1970s, Seattle led the country in rethinking what art means in a public space. Artists such as Buster Simpson proposed the design team approach. Instead of artists coming in after a building is finished and placing art in the courtyard, design teams involve artists in construction from the start, linking art with architecture, and art with city streets and public squares.

The art tends to be intimate, part of the fabric of daily life. Design team art connects people with the particular place in which they live. To this day, the best way to get a sense of what artists have brought to the city is to walk through the neighborhoods with a sharp eye. There's art in the sidewalks, on light fixtures, in bus shelters and park benches, playgrounds, libraries, police and fire stations, everywhere you might encounter it by surprise.

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This approach has limitations. It tends to lack the wow factor. And if administrators of public art programs chose artists who are better at selling a committee than delivering the product, art tends to recede into civic decoration. It isn't going to upset anybody, but it won't change lives, either.

Enter Sound Transit's STart program, administered by Barbara Luecke. There are design team artists involved in creation of the rails, stations and miniparks, but there are also artists anchoring central stops with major works of art.

Besides the permanent projects, there are temporary ones, for few things are as desolate in a city as blocks of businesses left vacant as a transportation system moves in to take their place.

Here, too, STart shines. Instead of plywood and chain link marking Broadway on Capitol Hill from East Olive Way past East Denny Way to Nagle Place, there are dozens of projects that have turned those blocks into an open-air gallery, best seen at night, coordinated by artist Christian French.

Even when it rains, people are making a night of it strolling by the sculptures, videos and installations inside the windows of what used to be stores and on boarded-up exteriors.

Not everything has gone smoothly. John Berry painted the exterior of what was formerly Twice Sold Tales and twice had his stenciled abstractions painted over by somebody who presumably didn't like what he/she mistook for graffiti. (The city's Graffiti Rangers deny involvement.) The third time was a charm, however. It's still there.

Besides vandalism, there's theft. Last June, a group called Friends of the Nib put up a dozen vinyl banners across the exterior of the old Jack in the Box on Broadway. They were immediately stolen.

New versions are back, screwed into boards that nobody has managed to pry loose.

Those who take the STart stroll along Broadway can see, among other notable projects, Evan Blackwell's giant meteorological balloons rising and falling; Jennifer Carroll and Steve Walker's luridly colored tutus and toe shoes tapping out a mad beat; Christian French's gleaming trophy wall, praising spiritual enlightenment instead of consumerism; Tomiko Jones' lovely video of her cutting her hair, and Jason Puccinelli's three-dimensional, floating portrait of his dad as a sad young man.

It's early days for STart, but among the significant permanent artworks already installed along the Martin Luther King corridor, two sculptures stand out: Roger Shimomura's "Rainier Valley Haiku" on the Myrtle plaza across from the Othello Street Station, and Buster Simpson's "Parable," in the plaza of the Rainier Beach Station.

Shimomura's sculpture was not an easy sell in the neighborhood. It's a 20-foot totem that satirizes an Asian-American version of the American dream in Shimomura's distinctive brand of billboard-style, hard-edge Pop. He tells his story through objects, one on top of the other. A shiny black shoe rests on a rice bowl, which stands on a Creamsicle.

The artist's initial plan called for a banana instead of the Creamsicle, but to some Asian-Americans in the neighborhood, that insult, even as satire from a Japanese-American artist, was too much.

A banana, of course, is white inside its yellow skin. So is the Creamsicle, maybe a bit more orange, but as a compromise object, it worked. The community felt heard and Shimomura felt the piece still represents him.

Back to the piece. On top of the shiny shoe is a graduation cap. At the bottom is a traditional sandal. What does an upward-striving culture lose in the quest for academic excellence and business success? Inlaid into the sculpture's base are a series of haikus that sweeten Shimomura's pill. His pill may be bitter, but in bright primaries, it's also bracing with a wit that repeated viewings will not wear out.

Simpson's "Parable" is a heavy-metal still life, a giant bowl of pears made of recycled rails with recycled rail lights that make the piece a destination site at night. It's tough and beautiful, domestic and industrial. It joins the neighborhood's industrial base to its mixed-use future and says this place, once an eyesore, is as worthy of an admiring visit as the Olympic Sculpture Park.

Dick Elliott's "Sound of Light," a mosaic of bicycle reflectors, is another terrific project. It brings urban dazzle to the retaining wall along Martin Luther King near Huston Street.

And there's much more to come. The budgeted amount for STart works is $18 million, set 11 years ago and based on the projected cost of above-ground construction. Excluding the temporary projects, the program has involved 85 artists so far.