The future has become even bleaker for the low-ridership South Lake Union (“SLU”) Streetcar line as Transportation Committee Chair Rob Saka has proposed funding a plan for how to wind down and end service on the line. The budget changes would no actually end service, but they set the stage to do so as early as next year’s budget. The action could set up the city to finally make a decision about the streetcar once and for all.

As Seattle Bike Blog argued in August, Seattle decided in 2015 to make the SLU streetcar a dead end when SDOT chose RapidRide bus service on the Fairview/Eastlake/Roosevelt corridor rather than a streetcar extension. The streetcar line’s operating budget sits at $4.4 million per year to serve about 500 weekday trips on average. Ridership peaked in 2017 before SDOT added transit-only lanes to Westlake Ave to coincide with expanded King County Metro bus service along much of the streetcar’s route. In my previous post, several SLU transit riders said they just hop on whatever comes first, a bus or the streetcar. The under-construction RapidRide J line will further improve bus transit service in the SLU neighborhood when it begins operations as early as 2027. So even those 500 daily riders would likely not be stranded without the streetcar. Metro just deleted the Route 20 bus with little fanfare, for example, and that deletion (as well as other bus route changes and deletions) had a bigger negative impact on access to transit than closing the SLU Streetcar would.

Additionally, construction for the South Lake Union light rail station is expected to shut down SLU Streetcar service for eight years, so it makes sense for Seattle to decide sooner than later whether the city sees a future for the streetcar beyond that construction. If the city wants to preserve service they could build 2,000 feet of additional track to bypass the Link station closure, but that would only make sense if we are committing to this thing long-term. If not, then we may as well get the tracks out of the roadway and focus on creating efficient bus pathways. Removing or covering the tracks would also eliminate major hazards for people riding bicycles around the neighborhood, preventing injuries and improving bike circulation within the neighborhood. Removing the tracks may even lead to more new bike trips per day than the streetcar would carry if it kept operating in its current state.

The only possible future for the SLU streetcar line would be to connect to the planned Center City Connector streetcar (AKA “Culture Connector”) through downtown along 1st Avenue and Stewart Street. However, construction on that line remains stalled, and it has a huge funding gap. Seattle Bike Blog has also voiced serious concerns about bike safety along the planned route. As Councilmember Saka noted in an interview with the Seattle Times, “The only viable path I see for ever doing that one would be to create a public-private partnership at some point.” Councilmember Bob Kettle has proposed removing the Center City Connector from SDOT’s capital improvements list, an amendment Saka supports.

The Downtown Seattle Association (“DSA”) pushed back against the proposal to kill the SLU Streetcar line, arguing to the Urbanist, “We’re seeing more residents, workers and visitors in downtown and now is not the time to take existing mobility options off the table. […] With looming major transportation projects like Revive I-5 impacting our network’s capacity, we need to ensure the transit modes we already have downtown are functioning optimally, safely and a providing great experience.”

Seattle Subway has also created an online petition to save the streetcar, arguing:

While the SLU Streetcar suffers from low ridership, it is widely attributed to the lack of connectivity rather than anything inherent to streetcars. We cannot fix the design mistakes of the past, but we can certainly make improvements. SDOT ridership figures for 2022 put SLU streetcar at 500 daily riders and First Hill streetcar at 2,500 daily riders, with ridership trending upwards since the pandemic. By SDOT’s own estimate, the proposed Culture Connector extension would attract 28,000 daily riders, making it more popular than the busiest bus line in the city. This city council also called out the Culture Connector as a key improvement in their own Seattle Transportation Plan which they passed in April. Rob Saka himself said at the time, “It’s time we commit to our transportation goals and give them [SDOT] the resources they need to succeed. That’s what this plan is all about.” They are now prepared to go back on that commitment.

The SLU Streetcar was initially funded by a LID in the area as a way to encourage development of the area into the business and tech hub it is today. So from that perspective, it was a huge success. But as a transit service, not so much. I worry about transit supporters taking the L off someone else’s forehead and putting on their own. Providing effective transit service was not the primary force behind this particular streetcar, so transit folks should not feel like this is something they need to own. The SLU Streetcar is a simulacra of a good transit system, but Metro’s bus system is an actual good transit system. The most important transit priority is to make sure the city builds more bus priority improvements in the area, preserving and improving on the bus-only lanes created when the RapidRide C extended into the area. Perhaps Metro buses could even reuse of some of the streetcar infrastructure like the transit-only pathway along Valley Street. The worst case scenario would be for the streetcar to be removed without any effort to improve bus service.

While the SLU Streetcar’s future certainly hinges on the Center City Streetcar, is the inverse also true? The city’s 20-year plan for transit calls for a 1st Ave Streetcar that connects Seattle Center/Lower Queen Anne to Pioneer Square and the First Hill Streetcar on Jackson Street as well as a 1st Ave extension into SoDo. Would some or all of this line be viable without the SLU connection? Perhaps rather than removing the Center City Streetcar from the capital projects list, Council could add questions to its request for a SLU Streetcar wind down plan about what impact such an action would have on a possible Center City line. This would give the city one more year to give the Center City Streetcar the proper public debate it deserves. Let’s lay out all the facts and options, and then make a damn decision.

If businesses and developers want to foot the bill for both the Center City and South Lake Union streetcar lines, then I’m sure city leaders will shift to support them. Otherwise, well, you may want to make an effort to go out of your way to ride the thing at least once before it is shut down so you can say you did it and buy that clever t-shirt on sale at Pike Place Market.