Seattle Center City Connector (Cultural Connector) Streetcar

https://www.seattle.gov/transportation/ ... -connector

Seattle Streetcar/Culture Connector

What's Happening Now?

In late 2023, we completed the Culture Connector Delivery Assessment. The goal of the assessment was to confirm and update assumptions from the 2018 design, address changing conditions and requirements, and map out a new timeline and cost estimate for the project. A ridership analysis [link to ridership memo] was also conducted to provide an updated travel forecast for the Seattle Streetcar network with the inclusion of the Culture Connector line.

Culture Connector

The Culture Connector streetcar is uniquely poised to be a catalyst for economic vitality in Downtown. This project was formerly called the Center City Connector. The name-change reflects how this new line could connect people from Downtown to Seattle’s cultural offerings in surrounding neighborhoods. Destinations like restaurants, bars, museums, entertainment venues, retail spaces, services, and diverse places to live would be even more accessible. And it would empower locals and visitors to explore our city without a car.



...

...

More: TheUrbanist.org

First Avenue Streetcar Cost Estimates Soar to $410 Million

Connecting Seattle’s two existing streetcar lines could cost the City $410 million dollars and take a full seven years, according to a newly released consultant’s report on the long-dormant Center City Connector project, rebranded the Cultural Connector. That new cost estimate represents a 43% increase compared to the previous estimate of $286 million the City produced in 2019. With no funding identified for most of the project’s costs, the new report paints a dire picture for the future of the project, which has been moving forward in fits and starts since 2012.
...

The Culture Connector streetcar is uniquely poised to be a catalyst for economic vitality in Downtown

I fail to see how a Streetcar can do what dozens and dozens of bus lines can't do, not to mention a light rail line, a monorail, a generally pedestrian friendly street grid, bike share, scooters...

I do know one thing that will uniquely pose as a catalyst for economic vitality for downtown Seattle.

Get rid of the mentally ill and the drug-addicted that have taken over downtown. Clean up the city. Make it welcoming to visitors who don't feel like they need armed bodyguards. Nobody should be screamed at just for walking down the sidewalk minding their own business. Businesses should not have to pay the social cost of vandalism - repeated vandalism.

The Streetcar was a dumb idea Seattle did "because Portland had one" and now cities are seeing the mistakes Portland has made over and over. Not to mention having permanently lost so much transit ridership and goodwill, but beating motor vehicle use records every single month - post-pandemic beating pre-pandemic records. TriMet's great idea? Pouring $150 million into a light rail line serving THE Airport in all of North America with the slowest post-pandemic rebound and isn't predicted to return to its glory for many, many, many years.

Enough "fad" ideas. Do what works. Not "The Urbanist's" and "StreetBlogs" idea wheel of the day.

wigwagfan wrote: ↑Tue Mar 19, 2024 12:22 am I fail to see how a Streetcar can do what dozens and dozens of bus lines can't do, not to mention a light rail line, a monorail, a generally pedestrian friendly street grid, bike share, scooters...

Well, a streetcar certainly could use alternatives to street running the no bus route could ever use, you know, run on reserved track, such as in medians or alongside roads, that road vehicles (which buses are) could not use.

wigwagfan wrote: ↑Tue Mar 19, 2024 12:22 am I fail to see how a Streetcar can do what dozens and dozens of bus lines can't do, not to mention a light rail line, a monorail, a generally pedestrian friendly street grid, bike share, scooters...

I'm generally suspicious/dismissive toward streetcars, but one clear area in which they might do better than a bus is passenger load. Depending on equipment and whether there are multi-car units, a streetcar can carry a much larger number of people than a bus, while not requiring the same infrastructure investment for full light rail.

Streetcars, light rail, and other fixed infrastructure send a sign to developers that a specific area will get long term services which makes development projects safe, while here-today, gone-tomorrow activities like bus routes, shoving around the homeless, etc don't send those signals and do not get developers to build projects.

Ironic that 80 years ago the argument in favor of bus conversion was their route flexibility -- now it discourages investment.

The real argument for rail to bus conversion was that public transport was mostly privately operated, and street car operators had to maintain that infrastructure (and pay property taxes on it) while bus operators didn't have the fixed infrastructure to maintain and operated on roads subsidized by property taxes, so private operators jumped at the opportunity to reduce costs. When it's the city or state maintaining all public transportation infrastructure, the incentives become quite different--the city's incentive is to promote investment in property in the city, which is not an incentive of the private bus operator.

True, and some cities, like Philadelphia, required the transit company to pave the track area (and plow the street in snowstorms), but not after buses were substituted. Nevertheless, Detroit and San Francisco got rid of all the streetcars they could as soon as they were able to obtain buses after the war. The root cause of the phenomenon was a "perfect storm" of various factors coming together during the immediate-postwar period. (Btw, it should be noted that National City Lines didn't cause it; they saw it coming and seized the opportunity.)