Seattle’s vintage streetcar line deserves to live

It’s becoming obvious that the George Benson Streetcar will not return in its former form. Because of seawall repair and the removal of the Viaduct, waterfront streetcar rebuilding cannot begin for at least four years. In the interim potential ridership will have grown well beyond the ability of a historical streetcar to serve the need.

There is additionally the question of platform height. In practice, the waterfront line could be extended to the south end of the Ballard Bridge using all high platforms. In theory, not so much, because there will be very little (if any) high-platform development in future streetcars. For example, you would want a line that reached the south end of the Ballard Bridge to be able to extend into Ballard, where high platforms just won’t fit.

Of course, the easy way to handle all of this is to terminate the waterfront route at Pier 91, or use a flyover just north of there to move the route west of the BNSF Interbay yards, where an old street-running trolley boulevard will be found, running along the north side of Magnolia to an old Fort Lawton trolley stop.

A line from Pioneer Square to Pier 91 could handle the traffic by using ‘heritage’ cars, which are new streetcars manufactured on the lines of historical streetcars. With the improvements that can be applied to the track, the signaling, and station loading, there is no reason for heritage cars not to be as comfortable or as fast as modern styles of equipment.

Left to itself, the Seattle DOT would not include any vintage stock in plans for a waterfront streetcar, or any high-platform boarding. Considering that there is virtually no street life along the trolley ROW on the waterfront, high-platform boarding is as feasible as any other. In some areas it would be a welcome refuge for pedestrians in a sea of confused traffic. North of the Sculpture Park it is probably the best way to deal with the issues of the BNSF main stem, on which, basically, the entire transportation strategy of Seattle rides.

In short, the George Benson Streetcar will not return in its previous form, and the question becomes, in what form should it return?

This isn’t about the waterfront, but about how transit service disappears. The disappearance of the George Benson Streetcar was a sobering reminder of how fast the public will can be thwarted, if ‘the fix is in’. If all you can see are vague shapes, it may not be so crazy to shy at them.

There’s been no public discussion of replacing electric trolley buses with diesels- and I would be surprised if there were, as the public would ‘go ballistic’ at the thought of more sound and pollution. But where is the budgetary or institutional dedication to maintaining and upgrading the electric trolley bus (ETB) service in Seattle?

I’m not saying it isn’t there- I just don’t know. In a recent Seattle Transit Blog post, King County Executive Kurt Triplett was quoted as saying we had “3 years left” to make a decision about buying more ETBs. That isn’t very much time, especially considering that this is a total no-brainer. Never since the coming of the trolley have the stars so comprehensively aligned to say “Buy transit that runs on overhead electrical wires”.

Yet, as I write, the Puget Sound Regional Council is consulting projections that the next 30 years will be very much like the past 50 years- fuel for cars will remain fairly cheap and freeways will be built or improved to “ease congestion” for the 95% of the region’s transportation that will still be traveling in private cars. This is the mental equivalent of the British government deciding in 1933 that they had enough airplanes, because the Versailles Treaty forbade the Germans to have an air force.

This is a waterfront streetcar blog, so I’ll mainly post about the ETBs at Orphan Road, where y’all are invited to click often anyway for our goofy transit musings. But remember how suddenly the streetcar disappeared, and how little say the public had in it. Don’t let that happen to the ETBs.

Well, it’s an ill wind that blows no one good, and, if Nickels concedes this morning as expected, Seattle will end up with a Mayor who doesn’t intend to build any new streetcar lines- and the George Benson Streetcar will be back in the running for restoration!

Aren’t you glad you can’t actually die from irony?

Even better, as there is no chance that the waterfront trolley can be restored in either McGinn’s or Mallahan’s political lifetimes, they can both be pressed for public support of restoring the George Benson Streetcar in 2017. And, even better, they will both be inclined to voice that support as a cheap way of showing they really do care about transit. They can both take a long-term look, and any long-term look at the waterfront will show many more riders and a much stronger necessity.

Clutch this silver lining to your heart and make it yours, as you won’t get much else out of the pair of contenders left in the race.

The ‘wall of sound’ was Phil Spector’s contribution to the recording industry, and, as we now know, he eventually became criminally insane.

Arriving at the Colman Dock yesterday it was hard not to imagine a connection. The Viaduct and city as a whole pulsated with an amount of sound that went beyond what you could hear- quite literally. The effect on the civic psyche is about the same as putting a bucket on your head and hitting it repeatedly with a hammer.

In spite of an astounding amount of development, the ground-level Alaskan Way is almost devoid of people. Being almost in the center of a city, there are people who must be there, and they look it, as they jog past or ride tourist buses through, or stroll in a dazed way with their families, quite obviously wondering what was supposed to be fun or interesting about this waterfront.

When the Viaduct comes down, there’ll be a demand for streetcars. You may have avoided the waterfront because of the noise and traffic, but drive through once in a while to see how much pent-up demand is there already. Maybe wearing earplugs will help with the vision thing.

…there was the streetcar. Many systems kept ‘convertible’ cars which could have windows removed (or dropped into sash pockets in the sides) for summer use. Many riders paid a nickel to enjoy the mild breeze created by the movement of the car; others paid to get to an amusement park, swimming beach, or dance pavilion for some cooler summer evening entertainment.

The follow-on to the trolley was the air-conditioned movie theater, often the only haven of cool air in towns of the 30s. With the advent of television and residential air-conditioning, the communities of the trolley, the front porch, and the movie theater were doomed.

Seattle could still recreate the cool evenings of the trolley, though, as the waterfront will always be cool in the evenings and after sundown. Hopefully the George Benson Streetcar will return, again to carry riders to a cool view and breeze on hot summer nights.

When we look back a century at the horse and wagon, we can see that the horses and wagons were much improved by better wagon-making and better feeding for the horses. We can also see that the horses created immense amounts of horse dung and consumed a third of the grain grown in the US at that time.

Fifty years from now people will look back and consider our lifestyle today to be as wasteful and inefficient as the horse and wagon. Cars and trucks will be as rare as horses and wagons are today. The car was not an enduring improvement.

Except the streetcar, which is so largely unchanged from the streetcars of 1900, and will probably be little different (to the eye) fifty years from now. The streetcar was an enduring improvement.

Heritage and historic streetcars are and will be valuable as a memory of simpler times with different textures to the riding experience, not for the daily rider, who treasures the improvements that have happened, but for the day-tripper who wants to improve their day like an ice-cream eater at a do-it-yourself sundae bar. At the Seattle waterfront the streetcar is a wonderful addition to an eclectic array of choices- an enduring addition.

King County, as is well known, has a “1% for Art” program that funds art in public places. Well, why not fund some “kinetic art” that the public can ride and feel?

In reality, it’s been a sad devolution. A hundred years ago the structures of daily life were artistic, and the railroad cars and streetcars were the most artistic among them. Everything curved, and for a reason, not randomly and drunkenly as a stunt, but to improve drainage, provide clearance, build in strength, and draw things together.

By the middle of the century, the art was something designed to cover the structure. Then, even that degree of artfulness fell away, leaving us with design so bereft of charm that most of it has been replaced long before wearing out. The fine arts arguably got much the better of this period, as the ruling class absent-mindedly chose the cheapest designs for public buildings and then guiltily over-subscribed to art foundations and museums as penance. Ironically, the Seattle Art Museum, which demanded the removal of the carbarn because it demeaned their Sculpture Park, has subsequently displayed ceramicized public waste cans and benches as fine art in that same park.

As art, streetcars have some very interesting properties. For example, they constantly change perspective and focal point for a non-moving observer. They may be seen as a changing element in a scene, or the scene may be seen to change from inside the streetcar. They are disciplined art, with ellipses, circles, and straight lines.

But most of all, they are accessible. People like streetcars so much that counterfeit streetcars are built on bus chassis. And people are entitled to occasionally see simple beauty in the nuts-and-bolts of urbanity that surround them.

Spend some of that “1% for Art” bringing the streetcar back. Make sure there’s a stop at the Sculpture Park for people who are too high-toned to see art in ordinary life.

Many years ago, on a bitterly cold day with snow squalls, I stood on the Seattle waterfront, looking down on the Wawona. In fact, I got on board and walked around in history, slowly bobbing in the snow, in slow keeping with purse seiners unloading fish at adjacent wharves. The waterfront was cold and lonely but not dead yet, with ship chandlers still supplying fish boats and ships, the Olde Curiousity Shoppe a door to a musty past, and sailors from Bremerton in blues looking for tattoos and burlesque on First Avenue where the Shore Patrol still walked in pairs. It didn’t feel cold and lonely, it felt like hot clam chowder from Ivar’s and the romance of the sea.

Today, not so much. The Aquarium survives, but barely. The ship chandlers are gone, as is the Wawona. The Ferry Terminal is more parking lot than terminal, and even the Russian submarine has sought more lively circumstances. A thousand units of single room occupancy on First Avenue have been replaced by makeshift homes of cardboard under the Viaduct.

Who cares? Apparently, nobody. None of our prosperous citizens have any interest in making our central waterfront a civic jewel, and, in a sense, who can blame them? Why stick your neck out like Paul Allen or Bill Gates to become the object of a dozen wacky conspiracy theories?

And that’s where we need the public investment to make the waterfront accessible to the public for the public benefit- or, not to put too fine a point on it, we need a streetcar running the length of the waterfront, so children of all ages can enjoy the park at the north end and the historical outlook at the south end, without dragging a car down there with them to park among the homeless.

The First Avenue Streetcar won’t do this job. The Aquarium, the restaurants, the harbor tours, the goofy shops, the ferry terminal that can give a visitor a short cruise every hour, the parks- they all need public transit. Bring that back and people will make their own magic.

…only the trolley is new. It’s not too soon to start planning to attend the summer festivities at the Center for Wooden Boats on Lake Union. This is a lot easier to get to now that the South Lake Union Streetcar runs right past the Center.

The Center is a world-class museum of old wooden boats that you can actually rent and use on Lake Union, as well as holding numerous classes on the woodworking skills needed to build stuff “the old way”. The Festival on July Fourth and Fifth, however, is also just a lot of fun, with old boats from around Puget Sound, many of them holding open houses for visitors who may be seeing an old boat for the first time.

Be there or be square!

Quick now, what’s the first thing you think when you’re in a strange city and you see a bus painted to resemble a streetcar?

That’s right, you think “Advertising gimmick by big and probably overpriced hotel”. And probably the last thing you would think would be “If I get on that it will be like riding a streetcar and probably take me where the streetcar used to go”. In fact, the goofy caricature is the antithesis of an honest bus with places to go and riders who want to go there.

Only the very young-at-heart are fooled by the bus-streetcar running on the waterfront. A streetcar is an experience, inside and out, that a bus just isn’t. Especially a historical streetcar where you can look and understand “This is the way it was”.

Replacing the George Benson Streetcar with an historical bus might have made a sort of sense, tinged, it is true, with sadness, but still a touchable excursion into history. Taking just any old bus and rebuilding it into do-I-look-like-a-streetcar makes no sense at all.

There’s a lot not to like about the waterfront that greets you when you step off the ferry in Seattle. The tourist bus dressed like a streetcar is adding insult to injury.