Ballard to CBD can not be in mixed traffic, nor does it need to be. There is plenty of room along Westlake to give the street car its own separated lanes. Leary Way is a problem though. I think it would be much better to stay on the south side of the waterway and use the old railroad right of way to about 11th West. Then rise up and swing across the waterway parallel and just east of the Ballard Bridge, drop down to Ballard Way and go up it and 24th West. This would not serve the heart of Fremont, but it’s only about 150 yards across the bridge and it would serve Seattle Pacific.

West Seattle used to have streetcars on many of the current bus lines, but it is not dense enough to support them and way to nice as it is to densify. So any streetcar development should be focused only on Ballard-Downtown via Leary, Dexter and eastside Seattle Center. It would be nice to include Lower Queen Anne as would a 15th West alignment, but Dexter is already strongly developed, absolutely no height issues and great views. It’s a natural for streetcar development.

It’s possible that another route could branch off across the Fremont Bridge and go up Fremont/Phinney/Greenwood and past NSCC to Northgate, basically replacing the #5. But some folks up on Greenwood probably wouldn’t like that because from 39th to Denny along Aurora, nothing beats the #5 and the Fremont Bridge gets opened a lot, potentially harming schedule reliability.

So lets keep the cute and run with the cute and add to the cute, but when it comes to major movement of people from Ballard and West Seattle to downtown. We have to go light rail. we have to be able to move 400 people every two minutes at 55 mph if needed and that can not happen using street cars. South Lake Union? cute streetcar. First hill? Cute Streetcar? Seattles Waterfront? Old Cute streetcar. Monarail cute. But when we have to move massive amounts of people the answer is light rail! (think about the people that ride now that want to get there faster, the people who will ride once Light Rail is there, and then the most important thing to think about and plan for possible huge capacity increases that will be result of the new dense housing that will pop up around the new stations)

Paul Margolis
Transit Operator
Local 587

A streetcar with ROW would be a decent investment and speed it up big time.

However in street running is just nuts. It has aboslutely horrible ROI.

I love the Streetcars because of comfort etc, but I will NOT oversell them on things they do not do.

They DO get stuck a LOT more than buses. However they are generally mroe reliable and handle cold MUCH better. They also do not use fuel, which is a cost decrease.

The problem they do have is the Skoda cars are vastly overpriced. At 2.4 million for the early cars and bouncing up to about 3.1 million for some of the new ones the cost per seat is almost 1.6-2x as high as light rail, with less frequency, less service, and possibly less life span. They are hand built and the quality is not particular as high as even the streetcars that where built recently in New Orleans in the 90′s. Which mind you only cost about 900k at the time. In today’s dollars, completely renovated after Katrina, the total cost still comes in lower than these silly Skoda cars.

As for the numbered points from daimajim.

1) They do, in the United States, generally get more riders. This is true.

2) They do NOT, by logic incur development themselves. In every situation where they incur development there is either A: a massive tax abatement or other subsidy to spur the development, which would happen with any subsidy or tax abatement with or without a streetcar alignment or B: all the land is either bought up or owned by a singuler person or city entity. In Portland, where this whole Skoda Streetcar mess started, that is the only way they’ve incurred these massive developments. In other lcoations, where they didn’t dump massive subsidies or abatements the regular level of development occurred, albeit more dense. If one thing can be attributed, I would include density, but definitely NOT an increase in development. That is a politically loaded, factually incorrect association.

So please, check your facts first. :)

Thx – feel free to read more over at my blog http://www.transitsleuth.com and search on streetcar.

The newest Muni Metro line, the T third street, looks like Link in the Valley on MLK for most of it’s length.

There’s also plans to build a “Central Subway” that will run from South SOMA up to Chinatown.

Here’s a picture of streetcars in Prague, note automobile traffic is divided (albeit only by a lane marking) from streetcar traffic:
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2314/1498300514_91ddd5fe2c.jpg

How about Frankfurt:
http://lh3.google.com/felix190/Rwr4yvpuUgI/AAAAAAAAA9U/x1CliSsMIlk/IMGP1083%20%282%29.JPG?imgmax=512

I could go on but there are few places in the world where streetcars have to share the road with automobiles for close to their entire route.

Streetcars are pretty and all but if they aren’t on their own or at least, restricted rights of way, they sort of suck (especially for the capital investment required).

Streetcars on a dedicated ROW/grade separated could be great. But that doesn’t seem to be what we’d be getting.

So–how much money is it worth to improve the aesthetics of the ride without reducing the trip time (or even increasing it!)

the Ballard and W.Seattle routes are probably the only ones where they can due to current land-use and development.

Most cities around the world seem to do just fine with in-street systems

They are not actually slower than buses, and those skoda cars can get to 55 mph.

Can you hop off a streetcar whenever you want? The doors do have an “open” button, but I always wait for the next stop.

I’m worried about ever riding one in bumper-to-bumper traffic (which will occur daily among every one of the proposed routes). I’d like to at least be able to hop out and walk instead of being trapped in a box.

Give me light rail, or give me any other major city in the country.