Hopes for a downtown Seattle streetcar find new life in Mayor Harrell

By David Kroman | The Seattle Times

SEATTLE — As he walked away from a downtown event this month, Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell pulled a folded-up map from the inside pocket of his blue suit. It was a 2018 drawing of a proposed new streetcar line along First Avenue, connecting Seattle's two existing — and underachieving — lines to First Hill and South Lake Union.

"They're good investments," Harrell said of the two isolated routes, "but I look at them as stranded investments because of the lack of connectivity."

"I want to see this connected," he said, gesturing at the dotted line on the map.

The should-we, shouldn't-we of whether and how to build a third line through downtown has dogged City Hall for close to a decade, bedeviled by changing leadership, disputes over operating costs, blown budgets and cars that turned out to be too big and heavy to fit the tracks and stations already built.

Goals to complete the new line by 2020 and then 2025 have been or will be blown. The saga has dragged out so long that a federal audit slapped the city's wrist for sitting on money for the line without spending it.

And yet the idea of a new streetcar lives on.

In fact, it has gained momentum in recent months, but with a new spin. In a draft of Harrell's grand plan for revitalizing downtown, recently circulated in public listening sessions, the streetcar plays a central role as a backbone to a new "arts, entertainment, culture district." Where the pitch for the line was once purely transit-based, its new title as a "Culture Connector" bestows a loftier purpose of injecting life into a part of town lacking it in recent years.

Greg Spotts, director of the Seattle Department of Transportation, said he takes inspiration not from other streetcar lines but from New York City's High Line.

"People are out there, that causes investment, the investment makes it more fun to be out there, and then even more investment comes," he said. "That's the kind of thing I want to see for downtown."

The First Avenue line was sold as a way to connect the two existing trains, creating a logical u-route through the city's busiest neighborhoods and boosting ridership on all three links. Unlike the first two lines, it would have its own lane.

Those goals still exist, but now with the extra carrot of — as Spotts says — a "virtuous cycle" of cultural vibrancy.

Whether it works, or ends up as more showpiece than workhorse, is another question. There are skeptics.

"It's impossible to sort out cause and effect," Jarrett Walker, a well-known public transit consultant, said of whether streetcars can attract new vibrancy.

It's a big bet. Despite years of technical planning, exhuming the streetcar is more complicated than dusting off old plans. A briefing document provided to then-Mayor-elect Harrell in 2021 warned it would mean hiring consultants, reevaluating environmental conditions, finding new vehicles and working closely with the operator, King County Metro.

All of this adds to a cost for the 1.3-mile connecting stretch that, at nearly $300 million in 2019, already was double initial estimates. It would almost certainly be higher today. For some, it's too much.

For a city that needs to tighten its budget, "you don't add to the deficit by chasing a mobile money pit," said Seattle City Councilmember Alex Pedersen, who chairs the council's Transportation and Utilities Committee.

Great expectations

Spotts was sworn in for SDOT's top job in September and began thinking about the streetcar.

"We walked along First Avenue as a team on a beautiful, sunny, warm afternoon and at the end, I said to them, you know, I just feel like I saw something," he said. "I saw the potential for this linear entertainment district that could tie together the best of Seattle."

At the center of that district was a streetcar with stops along the way where riders could hop off for dim sum in the Chinatown International District, then a drink in Pioneer Square and then dessert at Pike Place Market.

By October, a mere month into the job, Spotts was promoting Harrell on the idea, then downtown interest groups.

"That narrative resonates with a lot of folks," said Jon Scholes, executive director of the Downtown Seattle Association, which has long backed a streetcar line. "There were some streetcar skeptics in that boardroom that I think were engaged and enthusiastic about how he positioned it."

Spotts came to Seattle from the Los Angeles Bureau of Street Services — StreetsLA for short — where he gained a reputation as being involved with projects in a granular way, responding to complaints and walking streets with community groups.

His disposition is rosy, a levity that may stand in contrast to the prototypical image of a high-level bureaucrat. It's also what makes him relentlessly pro-streetcar, despite its years of baggage and flagging ridership on the cars now in use.

"I'm an eternal optimist," he said. "I choose to lead joyfully. And, you know, I wouldn't be promoting it if I didn't think it could be transformative for Seattle in an era of remote work."

The downtown car was supposed to open in 2020 and cost $150 million. Expectations were gargantuan. SDOT predicted revenues would cover more than half of the operating costs — far higher than any other mode in the Seattle area, especially considering streetcars cost more to run than most other forms of transit.

In early 2018, then-Mayor Jenny Durkan ordered a halt on the project as costs to build it jumped to $200 million. SDOT and King Country Metro, which would drive the cars, disagreed on operating costs and there were questions about whether the 10 new cars ordered by the city would fit the existing tracks and stations.

In early 2019, Durkan announced she wanted the project to advance, but it would cost $285 million, including nearly $80 million in utility work — nearly double the original estimate. The project again was halted in 2020 when the pandemic tanked the city's budget as well as expected tax revenue from a new tax on Uber and Lyft that would have helped pay for the line.

Since then, the streetcar has lived in purgatory — neither canceled nor greenlighted. It's a state that displeased auditors with the U.S. Department of Transportation, who scolded the city for not spending $7.4 million in transit grants.

Transit advocates still want it to move forward.

"What we know is that streetcar projects tend to be really user friendly and legible to tourists and daily transit users alike," said Kelsey Mesher, interim director of the Transportation Choices Coalition.

Scholes of the Downtown Seattle Association said he would love to see it built by 2026, in time for the World Cup. He acknowledged such a timeline might be impossible but said that speed would align with Harrell's objective of inspiring "new Space Needle" thinking for downtown.

"Sometimes Seattle gets stuck overthinking everything," Scholes said.

Councilmember Pedersen has long opposed the streetcar, arguing the city has higher priorities.

"I think it's well-documented that this project has been cursed because it's been over budget, it's expensive both to build and to operate, and it's redundant when we should be supporting our existing robust transit system like light rail and bus system that run along a similar path to get people from point A to point B just fine," he said.

Taking stock

The two existing streetcars have consistently underperformed. The city estimated the First Hill line, built as a consolation prize for Sound Transit's canceling a light-rail station in the neighborhood, would attract 1.24 million rides in 2016 but it only got 840,000. In 2019, both lines combined had fewer boardings than the monorail.

A line connecting the two was projected in 2017 to quadruple ridership on the whole system. Without that ridership, the cars become expensive to operate — as much as $240 an hour, higher than a bus.

"When people talk about transportation projects as amenities, as a thing that you build in order to trigger some kind of economic development to trigger some outcome, you have to remember that your cost is not just the capital cost of construction," Walker said. "You have to justify the eternal operating cost."

For Walker, cities must look seriously at what they're hoping to accomplish with a streetcar and whether that's more valuable than a bus. Some cities, like Kansas City, Mo., have done it right with long routes that move through the city, he said. Fragmented lines are less useful because, unlike a bus, the tracks end and people have to get off.

SDOT is now updating cost estimates for the line. Whether the streetcar ever leaves the station depends on what federal grant money the city can win, which Spotts was confident could be done, despite the recent admonishment.

Already, the city is advertising two positions related to the new streetcar, an engineer and a program manager. The latter is tasked with building support for the new line.

Asked for the clearest answer to the question of whether Seattle will or is already in the process of building a streetcar, Spotts offered this:

"It's my plan to get to the point where we have the financing and the political will to build the streetcar."

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