Seattle’s vintage streetcar line deserves to live

The waterfront today is charming in the spring sunshine, but across the street the future looks grim. Mayor Mike McGinn has been telling people we can save $1.9 billion by not building the tunnel to replace the Viaduct, but that money would be spent improving transit and other ways to deal with the people who drive on the Viaduct to reach Seattle, instead of passing Seattle.

The only way you save that money is by not doing anything to deal with the traffic changes when the Viaduct is taken down- and if the tunnel isn’t built, that will include a lot of people driving through Seattle.

In other words, you’re basically looking at a six-lane stop-and-go freeway where the Viaduct and parking are today. If you think the noise and pollution makes the area slightly unwelcoming today, think about what it will be like when it all comes down to ground level.

Of course, the chances are pretty good the tunnel will be built, and McGinn’s plan to prevent any improvements in the seawall is probably dead in the water (so to speak). We can only hope, because the waterfront McGinn has been working for would be a pretty grim place- essentially just streets behind the same type of seawall we have today.

You’ll notice there’s no trolley in this picture. McGinn has made no effort to bring back the Benson Streetcar or extend it north to the cruise ship docks, where over 800,000 people landed last year, and not one of them with a car to use.

It can be unpleasant to imagine what McGinn’s neglect and headline-grabbing might do to the waterfront, but it would be even more unpleasant to watch it happen.

It’s still a good time to wander back under the Viaduct to the buildings on the east side of the Viaduct, some of them pre-dating the highway towering above. You may find a Maritime Building there, although it is likely displaying beautiful furniture today. If so, find the elevator lobby and admire.

These were once fine buildings looking out on a fine prospect. Then the Viaduct was built and the prospect was cast in gloom and shadow. When, eventually, the Viaduct comes down, the buildings are likely to come down too, and be replaced by modern construction.

The winter can be the best time to look for the old buildings, when the sun slants low in under the Viaduct. With an unseasonably warm winter, there’s no need for delay.

And it’s a good time to reflect on how insufficient McGinn’s proposals- to route the Viaduct traffic on new streets along the waterfront and rebuild the existing seawall as it is today- really are. The new waterfront will not consist of freighters and fishboats unloading into railroad cars parked on the piers. It will need to connect the people of Seattle to their central waterfront in a meaningful way, and that’s going to take some thought and lobbying. Be there or be square!

Arriving in Seattle on the ferry recently, I paused on the footbridge overpass to contemplate the Viaduct, which will be incredibly difficult to cut into pieces and haul away in dumptrucks. Below, the tracks still passes under the footbridge, but, alas!, we no longer hear the cheery toot of the whistle or the clang of the bell.

In a recent article on Crosscut, Jordon Royer tells us 216 cruise ships brought over 875,000 passengers to Seattle in 2009. It’s a darn shame the Waterfront Streetcar wasn’t there, ready to take hundreds of thousands of boardings and help with Metro’s financial problems. I wonder just how many lines in the city have the potential for over a million boardings in a year?

Why is extending the Waterfront Streetcar not a priority? Cruise ship passengers could see it from the deck of their ship- you wouldn’t even need to advertise.

So many questions. Before departing, I had a cup of clam chowder at Ivar’s. For auld ang syne. Refreshingly, no sentimentalizing was required- a good cup of chowder, a seat viewing the bay- even on an overcast weekday, these were drawing steady business at the chowder stand.

It’s not the people of Seattle who have abandoned their waterfront.

It will come as no surprise to learn that restoring the Waterfront Streetcar will involve “agencies”- all of which will claim to have solid technical grounds for their choices. The Urbanophile, in an excellent post offers some information and ways in which to deal with “agencies”.

It’s reasonably short and to the point. Read it. You’ll thank me later.

The community of concern about the future of the central waterfront got a major jolt recently, as Mayor McGinn said he would push for an immediate vote to build a new seawall. All the vague talk about how much he valued community input and good design was exploded by a call for the bulldozers.

If you left the matter up to WSDOT you’d get a freeway on the waterfront. If you left it up to SDOT, you’d get an ‘urban arterial’- that’s a freeway with traffic lights and a speed limit of 35. What will make a difference will be the other stakeholders, ranging from environmental groups to Washington tribes- and beyond.

Bike groups, museum groups, commercial groups, neighborhood groups- many of these will be fighting for better pedestrian and people access and use on the waterfront, and they need all the help they can get. And if that help comes in the form of a person who also favors a streetcar running in the mix, so much the better.

If you’ll excuse a personal note, my biggest mistake in life was not joining and participating in more groups. Believe it, you want to be involved in this process, and will remember with pride having been involved as long as you live.

So join a group and participate. It’s crunch time.

SDOT has posted a survey to see if the public will allow them to discontinue the electric buses. I know, that sounds harsh, but if they were sure they were going to keep them, they wouldn’t post a survey. Nobody asked you or me the last time they bought some buses.

Be sure to fill it out and submit it, and there’s a space you can write in another reason to like electric buses- they don’t depend on foreign oil.

A few comments from a thread to a post by Knute Berger at Crosscut:

“a) We tried the free tourist shuttle from cruise ships to PS and to Pike Market. It bombed. Few cruises have a port-of-call in Seattle (i.e., ship comes in, passengers have X hours to go ashore before the ship leaves again.) For those that do, passengers already have their iteinerary planned before they get off the boat and they won’t board a bus they have never heard of before. And the cruise lines won’t promote a free bus because it doesn’t earn them a commission. (We couldn’t even get brochures on board.) Most Seattle cruise passengers are here the day before, or the day after, their cruise so are not interested in a shuttle that takes them to or from the ship. But…

b) Cruise tourists DID use the Waterfront Trolley. Not to get to/from the ships, but as a fun, unique, and historic adventure. The loss of the Trolley easily cut the number of summer tourists by at least 25%. Ground level retail suffered tremendously when they lost this part of their customer base. The ’shrink wrap’ Metro bus replacement did not bring back the tourists (though it is popular with workers) and I don’t think a ‘new fangled’ trolley down 1st Ave. will do so either. The level of anger and resentment the retail community feels over the killing of the Trolley is substantial and should somehow be acknowledged. Otherwise it will be that much more difficult to get folks to trust/work with the city or Metro in the future.”

And…

“Two words: BENSON TROLLEY. Before you build another streetcar in this town, make use of the money we already spent to build that line. Before it was pulled, it ran 200,000 folks on average a year. Now you have 211 cruise ships calling at Pier 91 and 66 and almost a MILLION transits… For the love of all things practical, Connect that line NORTH through Myrtle Edwards to Pier 91. Put the barn under the Magnolia Viaduct. Stops at Pier 70, and all the original stops. That line could run another 3 years before we have to interrupt it for Viaduct replacement. We own the right of way after 20 years of work, we already own the cars, and the track to Pioneer Square. We could have been earning revenue all this time we have been jabbering and instead Metro has had to SUBSIDIZE a bus for FREE.”

More good stuff there than I have room for here- go read it!

Calling your attention to the new addition on the blogroll, the Issaquah historical streetcar group. Issaquah actually should be interesting to us because of the challenges the town has faced in keeping itself loveable, and not least because the Boehm chocolate shop used to sell ‘broken’ chocolates for insanely low prices. Usually the ‘broken’ part of the chocolate was the failure of the little swirl on top to achieve perfection.

But I digress. Issaquah- click on the link.

Got to thinking last night about things that could be done to start working to restart the Waterfront Streetcar. In no particular order, I came up with-

Walk the line taking pictures of the condition of the tracks and overhead. In fact, this might be a good time to also take pictures of the businesses adjacent to the line, and make up a sort of directory of neighboring businesses. In working later with political types involved it would be handy to be able to describe the neighborhood of the line, the businesses, and potential ridership and destinations.

Finding a new location for the carbarn. This should be an interesting job! If I were doing it, I would start by looking for property about 100′ x 200′, at street level. As the early restart of the line would later be interrupted by the Viaduct teardown and seawall construction, it’s possible that the interim carbarn does not need to be permanent- IOW, could be built on a vacant lot that somebody is holding for investment purposes. Naturally, that would include most of the daytime parking lots in the area.

Find where the cars are now and talk with anyone currently involved in maintaining them. From this it might be possible to work up the organizational ladder and talk with some of the people who formerly ran the line.

Allied with this would be talking with the people at Snoqualmie, and finding out who, if anybody, out there is doing historical streetcar work, if any of the people who were once involved with the Waterfront Streetcar are out there, and get the word out a little about renewed interest in Seattle in getting the line running again.

“Inventory” the City Council and try to find out what the council members think about streetcars in general and the Waterfront streetcar in particular. The most likely- and in any case an essential- part of getting the streetcar running again will be the City Council voting an appropriation of funding with instructions to SDOT and KCMetro to make it happen.

What I’ve described is a fairly complex process that can only mature with time, so it would make sense to make one pass just hitting the high points (prominent businesses, City Council members, major problems with track) and then a second filling in more detail (inventory more businesses, learn Councilmember staff assistants, photoinventory and map the entire route). If a team of people could just keep working along at this, it would keep the idea alive and visible to people in the neighborhood, on the City Council, and Seattleites who want the trolley back.

Maybe you noticed I haven’t mentioned the incoming Mayor. Taking office, McGinn and his staff will be swamped with problems. As much as they might want to help, and as earnestly as they may promise to do so, this is going to happen when the City Council appropriates money to do it. IMHO this just isn’t a problem that McGinn can be much help with at this point.

So those are a few ideas I’ve had about how to get a start and a handle on this project. Cross-posted at Orphan Road.

This would be an excellent time for the new McGinn administration to bring back the George Benson Streetcar. It would be a valuable transit addition in a neighborhood that keeps growing and a clear signal that McGinn actually intends to put his money where his mouth has been.

What is needed is a streetcar barn, and that could be a temporary structure in a Pioneer Square neighborhood that is, by all accounts, in a mild slump at the present. It’s true that in the future the rebuilding of the seawall will interrupt the present streetcar line, but there’s no sense in just letting the line lay dormant until that distant day.

Certainly some repairs to the track and wire must be needed after several years of idleness, but this cost would be trivial compared with the cost of building a new streetcar line. It would be a bold, much welcomed, and still economical way of McGinn staking claim to the waterfront for the public and making it work for the people who are there already.

If you vote in Seattle, you should approach, not only McGinn, but also City Council members, to remind them that 95% of the line is still there, ready to be used.

In the past, to be sure, I have ruminated on what a line stretching north to Interbay would look like, and whether the waterfront were the best location for the historical streetcar. At the present time, though, it seems very clear that bringing back the George Benson Streetcar before the seawall construction begins is a good choice.