I think streetcars need as much of their own ROW as possible, and I honestly don’t know where you’d put them on First without making it more of a mess than it is already. Now, if you made Third Avenue into a buses/streetcars-only thoroughfare, that could work. It’s been a busway before and it worked relatively well. But in general, the streetcar needs to not be competing with already-congested traffic if at all possible. The Waterfront Streetcar was good that way. (Even when it ran on the street, after turning, it was not in a lane shared with cars, was it? Wasn’t it in the middle? Hmm, I usually didn’t ride it up to the ID, just along Alaskan Way, so I’m not sure about that.)

What is this thing you call Pike Market? We locals call it Pike Place Market. ;)

You don’t want more traffic of any kind on the city’s streets if you’re a pedestrian. That means more turns across the cross walk, more drivers gunning it on the end of the yellow light and more staus where nothing moves.

Slower traffic means lower capacity below about 42 miles per hour. Very few cars in downtown go faster than about 20 miles an hour, even if there is the opportunity, because the lights impede them.

You don’t want a “surface option” in constricted downtown Seattle.

All of your statements about rail (permanence, visibility, comfort, quiet) and true in spades for streetcars….in dedicated ROW. First Avenue is going to be so far from “dedicated right of way” that you will scream. What about all the jaywalkers at Stewart, Pine and Pike? How about at the top of the steps at University? Then of course there are the stumbling drunks in Pioneer Square.

And that’s not even considering the cars and trucks crammed into a 3.5 lane street striped for four lanes. Putting a streetcar into that fetid stew is a clusterf*#@ waiting to happen.

Bernie is pretty right on about most of his points, except one. The First Hill Streetcar won’t serve the hospitals except Swedish because it’s routed on Broadway. The other hospitals are all at least a block west of it and if we’re talking disabled passengers, that block is a problem.

He’s right on all counts. Streetcars are much narrower than LRV’s so there ‘s no room for dedicated bike storage. They slow vehicle traffic, but even more, vehicle traffic slows them! First Avenue is a ten hour parking lot around the Pike Market right now, and you want to run a streetcar through it? Crazy is too weak a word.

I get that you want to do something to link the great new development in Belltown and just to the north to downtown, but a streetcar on First is not the way to do it.

I live in Vancouver, USA, and let me tell you, the Portland Streetcar is fun and a decent development tool, but it is NOT FAST. One can just about keep up with it through downtown at a brisk walk. Cars stop in front of it for people to load and unload, or to make right turns. Trucks block the tracks. Where there is a long corridor with medium density within an eight of a mile to either side but not much car traffic like Irving/Judah in San Francisco streetcars in mixed traffic can be very useful if they have a CBD tunnel. But in the CBD like Seattle wants to do it — on FIRST AVENUE which is already a ten hour traffic jam for God’s sake — they’re insane.

Portland doesn’t even give the Streetcar signal priority and it has STOP SIGNS!!!! Not to mention but the traction motors are pretty noisy, much more so than the Max LRV’s.

repurposing the Battery Street Tunnel as an egress to Seattle’s downtown West Edge neighborhood at Western Avenue.

I really don’t know much about this idea. It came public at the same time as the other alignment but it seems the decision was already made before the public knew much about either proposal. It would seem the right way to do this would be to advance all viable alternatives though the DEIS process. Most are engineered to this level already. What it gives you is a public forum but with a deadline and preliminary schedules.

the First Hill Line would earn $2.5m per year,

Gotta love it. ST2 funding pays to install the line and covers the operating expenses so the fare box recovery and advertising revenue is “pure profit”. Anybody that reads this report and still thinks building out the Seattle Streetcar network is an immediate priority really is blinded by the neato factor. All you have to do is look at the estimated operating cost and service hours to see the cost is about 50% higher than buses. Even if they do manage 50% farebox recovery (doubtful and very hard to calculate because so many trips would be short transfers, U-Pass, etc.) it’s still just a break even proposition with 30% fare box recovery from buses.

and the U-Line would earn $2m per year.

This entire fanciful earnings is from $2.1M increased fare collection from SLUT (footnote they’d already applied this “savings” to the Ballard/Fremont line).

Let’s see, UW to Downtown in 7 minutes on Link or 30 minutes on the streetcar (assuming the University Bridge isn’t open). But for $8M in operating cost we can replace $4.2M in bus service. That’s a winner?

This document predicts that through a combination of eliminating duplicate service, farebox revenue, and sponsorship, the First Ave/Jackson street line would cost just $200,000 per year to operate,

So, it would cost $200,000 per year more than the duplicate bus service it could eliminate. How does this ever pay off?

Doesn’t Metro prohibit advertising on bus shelters? If you’re going to ad that to the economics for a streetcar then you have to allow for it with buses. There’s no shortage of companies that want to advertise on buses. The number of full bus wraps was reduced by the county coucil. Metro had more sales on the books and could have sold even more.

As far as getting people out of cars; not so much. The Waterfront Streetcar atracted a lot of toursits. SLUT is an alternative that’s sometimes faster than walking. If you run a streetcar where you have a choice between it and a less frequent bus for the same fare then sure people will ride it. Increasing the capacity from P&R lots (more parking and better connections) gets people out of their cars. Of course fare recovery isn’t great on these long haul routes but they score high on reduced vehicle miles traveled. That’s something streetcars aren’t really designed to do. The money is much better spend on expanding regional rail.

“This 1.3 mile initial segment is demonstrating that the advantages that streetcars have brought to other cities is transferable to Seattle,”

OK, I can see where anybody starting with the premise that the SLUT is a successful demonstration is going to believe streetcars are the only way to fly. This document isn’t a vision, it’s a pipe dream. The city council approve a streetcar network and then directed SDOT to come up with a report propping it up.

The only route I can see that makes any sense right now is the Central Line. Except we don’t need the part from the Sculpture Park to the Center because we already have the Monorail that gets you from the Center to Westlake. So, what you have is the map of how to replace the Waterfront Streetcar. Connect it to the new First Hill line, brilliant! And why the worry about the Viaduct destruction? If WSDOT has to destroy part of it while working on State Route 99 then they can foot the bill to replace it.