This post originally appeared on Orphan Road.
Seattle Transit Blog flags a story in the Seattle Times about the South Lake Union Streetcar being — surprise! — over budget. Well, not over budget, per se, construction costs are peachy, but the city seems to have been a bit rosy in estimating the operating expenses:
Metro Transit, which will operate the trains, plans to bill the city $2 million a year, compared to the city’s original $1.5 million estimate. Startup costs will add $500,000, compared to the early estimate of $144,000. The current shortfall is about $1.5 million for the first two years of operations, said a City Council staff analysis issued this week.
So we’re looking at about $500K/yr in operating expenses. The streetcar was still a great deal, since the local businesses volunteered to put up half the construction costs. That said, there’s a lot riding on this project (so to speak). It represents a very different way of building a transit system, so it will be heavily scrutinized.
But it’s also the canary in the South Lake Union coal mine. I love the Whole Foods as much as the next guy, but there’s still a lot we don’t know about how South Lake Union is going to turn out. It could be a Potemkin village, if stories like this become the norm. So there’s a certain amount of “pressure” on the Streetcar.
That said, it will take time to really assess the Streetcar, since it will come online years before the neighborhood around it fully matures. And it’s benefits in connecting SLU to Westlake Station and Light Rail won’t be realized for decades, if you think about the potential connection to Eastside light rail. So when you start to see investigative reports on KOMO next year about the “empty” streetcar, keep that in mind.