Trying to solve all First Hill’s east-west employers in a north-south line is not possible, so we shouldn’t pretend it is. Having a one-way streetcar in front of your business is ridiculous.

In my opinion, I think the two-way Broadway alignment, with maybe the Boylston/Seneca jog, is the best route. The alignment is understandable to occasional users, should be fast, serves the east First Hill, Yesler Terrace, and SU. While it doesn’t penetrate in to First Hill like the Boren/Minor alignment, it’s more direct routing should allow faster travel times and shorter headways. Broadway is the main corridor connecting the three neighborhoods that the streetcar will serve, so it seems like the obvious choice for a streetcar line. I’d like to see Broadway rebuilt from Yesler all the way to Roy as a great boulevard with a streetcar at its heart.

I still think Sound Transit’s requirement that the alignment be double-tracked, i.e. bidirectional, will kill the couplet.

The purpose of the First Hill Streetcar Connector Project (the Project) is to replace the connection to the regional Link light rail system lost when the First Hill light rail station, was deleted from the regional system.

The streetcar connector will directly connect First Hill employment centers to the regional Link light rail system at the International, District/Chinatown Station at 5th Avenue S and the Capitol Hill Station at Broadway between E. Denny Way and John Street…

(emphasis added).

It does not say connect the First Hill neighborhood (as defined by neighborhood planning).

It say connect the First Hill employment centers. Every definition of “First Hill employment center” that can be found in public documents includes Seattle University even though Seattle U is adjacent to rather than within the first Hill neighborhood planning boundaries. Seattle University is specifically referenced in the First Hill neighborhood plan and they are a dues-paying member of the First Hill Improvement Association. Seattle U was also completely contained within the station area overlay of the original First Hill light rail station while Harborview was not (see station area map).

The loop serves Seattle U better at the expense of Virgina Mason and Swedish. The Boren-Seneca alignment serves Virginia Mason better at the expense of Seattle U. Given that the three major institutions that were included in the station area overlay (Virginia Mason, Swedish and Seattle U) are geographically arranged east-west, there is no way to design a single north-south alignment that serves all three very well. The question that plagues both the western alignment (Boren-Seneca) and the eastern alignment (12th Ave loop) is: “Is it better to serve one of the three targets very well at the expense of one of the others?”

I would say the alignment that best fits the scope is the two-way Broadway, but that the loop does not stray farther from the scope of work than the Boren-Seneca does. However, I’m Tony the Economist, not Tony the Lawyer, so I could very well be wrong on this one.

Unfortunately, I fear that retail trips are not being given much consideration in the analysis that SDOT is conducting. People should send comments reminding them that retail trips are a critical part of the benefits of this project. Remember, SDOT doesn’t read the comments on blogs, they read comments submitted to them via this website:

http://seattlestreetcar.org/firsthill.asp

Yes, hopefully everyone does agree that steetcars offer a unique ability to catalyze development, but they are not magic. They cannot, for example turn a street that is already heavily built up with pedestrian-hostile uses like office towers and parking garages such as Broadway south of Union Street or Boren Ave into a vibrant pedestrian oriented neighborhood retail district like Broadway North of Union St.

The other critcal issue, and this is a key economics concept, is the importance of marginal development. The point I was making above is that the north end of 12th is caught up in the pedestrian shed of Pike-Pine, which is doing quite well. A streetcar would facilitate development here, but even without the streetcar, the development would still occur, thus the streetcar offers no marginal development benefit beyond what is going to happen anyway. The same can be said about the hospitals and Yesler Terrace. With respect to development, whatever is going to happen is going to happen regardless of the streetcar alignment.

The key to figuring economic development and “place making” benefits is to identify the areas where the streetcar can “make the difference”, and it is under this metric that 12th Ave shines. The south end of 12th Ave is built, zoned and situated in such a way that the streetcar would make a big difference here. Most of the other alignments are in places that either A.) are already doing well so don’t critically need the streetcar or B.) are already built up in such a way that the streetcar will not be powerful enough to bring about a transformation.

Of course there is value in serving future density even if that density is going to get built anyway, but the key is that serving that new (or existing) density is a transportation benefit, not an economic development benefit. It only counts as economic development if the streetcar “makes the difference” with respect to what gets built.

Unfortunately, the economic development potency is undermined by running the streetcar in a loop. 1/2 a streetcar offers some economic development potency, but not much. As such any economic development advantage that might be ascribed to the 12th Ave loop should be discounted appropriately in cost-benefit analysis.

http://seattlestreetcar.org/about/docs/FirstHillStreetcarinterlocalagreement.pdf

anc–I am simply saying that streetcars are better development tools than transit solutions. And I think the development potential is greater with 12th, than the already built out Boren corridor.

We dealt with this years ago. The First Hill Link station would have cost nearly $1.2 billion – it would have cost $350 million on its own, and would have made us not competitive for the $813 million grant U-Link got.

It was drop the station or drop U-Link entirely.

the First Hill streetcar would be more trouble than its worth. The name First Hill (steepness) implies it is not a great place for streetcars. in the 1930s, Yesler Way, James Street, and Madison Street were served by cable cars as First Hill is too steep for streetcars. the SDOT alignments all go through the topograhic saddlepoint of 12th Avenue South and South Jackson Street. This key intersection also draws cyclists and frequent trolleybus service as well. The streetcar would have to be squeezed into other critical intersections as well: 5th Avenue South and South Jackson Street, Madison Street and Broadway, Broadway and Pine. SDOT published a consultant report on these difficulties and has begun to study them.

http://www.seattlestreetcar.org/about/docs/StreetcarNetworkAppendixD.pdf