Friday Roundtable: First Hill Streetcar Turns 10

36 Replies to “Friday Roundtable: First Hill Streetcar Turns 10”

1. I happen to like the First Hill streetcar and ride it most every time I’m in the City.

   One thing to keep in mind however. Rails can’t fail. If you think the First Hill and South Lake Union streetcars aren’t good transit and need to be replaced by something else….. Well, first that isn’t going to happen, and second, that would be a massive blow to Sound Transit and transit in general. Because “rail can’t fail”! If a city puts in any steel track and later decides it’s not working out, the opposition to building any more rail projects will be massive.

   Some of the problem with the First Hill street car, the number 8 bus and other slow and often late transit lines is “rider expectations” and not the actual transit. Density in a City means chaos, snarled traffic and longer travel times. I’ve been to London and NYC and if you can walk to destination, it’s likely easier than local bus transit.

   1. Some of the problem with the First Hill street car, the number 8 bus and other slow and often late transit lines is “rider expectations” and not the actual transit.
      Oh come on. The problem is a lack of transit priority, which is in turn due to a lack of political will. When the 8 has a bus lane all the way down Denny, it won’t be slower than walking.

      Well, first that isn’t going to happen, and second, that would be a massive blow to Sound Transit and transit in general. Because “rail can’t fail”! If a city puts in any steel track and later decides it’s not working out, the opposition to building any more rail projects will be massive.
      Citation needed? I get that it’s a sunk cost and that the tradeoffs might be obscure enough to most people to the point that it seems like a downgrade, but Sound Transit’s service is quite popular because it actually provides a good rider experience for some parts of the system. Whether or not the FHSC exists has no effect on how much faster the Link from Westlake-U. District is than every alternative.

      1. June Foamer,

         Bus lanes on Denny would help the #8 to some degree, but the more density Seattle adds, the worse crosstown traffic is going to be. Slow traffic is just the way things are in dense American cities. There’s no way to make the streets of Seattle any wider and the population just has exploded. The problem with buses is the Seattle population went from something around 520,000 people in 1990 to over 800,000 people now. Currently Seattle is adding close to 20,000 people a year….. and this kind of success comes with a price. The First Hill street car is a perfect example. High density, high housing costs, a breathtaking mix of income and culture, poverty, addiction, blight, wealth, art…. everything that makes a City a City. Seattle isn’t a little cowtown any more. Of course the street car is running late and always will be.

         I guess you can celebrate what Seattle has morphed into (I certainly do) and you can show yourself the door? I’m not saying it’s impossible to change things a little, like bus lanes on Denny and maybe a few cut and cover projects to so the First Hill street car could bypass a couple of busy intersections. I think it’s best to think about Cities as living organisms that grow, live and die largely on their own.

         Currently 1500 people move to Seattle every month! These folks are the future and nobody really knows where that’s going.

   2. tacomee, your “rail can’t fail” argument is immediately refuted by the removal of the Benson waterfront streetcar and current rumblings about shutting down the SLU streetcar. This is clearly demonstrated by stark contrast in post-pandemic ridership rebound on the SLU line vs the First Hill line.

   3. “that isn’t going to happen”

      We don’t know the future. Politicians could change their mind, they could be replaced by other politicians, something somebody says or might resonate and dislodge the status quo, or excitement for a larger overall reconfiguration might overcome opposition.

      “that would be a massive blow to Sound Transit”

      It has little to do with Sound Transit. ST merely contributed to an SDOT project. ST hasn’t been involved in it for years, and the vehicles aren’t blue and white. Many riders have forgotten ST was ever involved.

      “and transit in general.”

      The whole point of removing the First Hill streetcar would be to improve transit circulation overall. It could allow buses to be faster and more frequent. Not just because the lanes could be reconfigured, but because it costs less to operate a bus than a streetcar so that gives more service hours for the same cost.

      “Density in a City means chaos, snarled traffic and longer travel times.”

      No it doesn’t. That’s like what tacomee says about housing costs. If you give transit its own lanes, robust signal priority, and a strategic amount of grade separation, it can bypass that traffic and be faster than driving. The problem is it isn’t fully implemented. London probably has room for improvement, and American cities are far behind that.

      The car lanes will be congested because of the “tragedy of the commons” phenomenon, but that doesn’t have to affect transit.

      One problem with the First Hill streetcar is it is in mixed traffic. It should have never been built under that circumstance, because the whole point of a streetcar is to be faster, more frequent, and more capacious than a bus to justify its higher cost and make transit more competitive with driving. So its loss wouldn’t be as bad as losing a better-quality service.

   4. “Bus lanes on Denny would help the #8 to some degree,”

      It would help a lot. We could also add bus lanes on Broadway and other arterials. Then your argument goes away.

      “but the more density Seattle adds, the worse crosstown traffic is going to be. Slow traffic is just the way things are in dense American cities.”

      That’s car traffic. Who cares about car traffic? What people on a transit blog care about is transit performance. If you have full transit lanes and robust signal priority, that traffic wouldn’t matter to buses any more than it matters to the monorail. Sure, the adjacent lane is congested, but tower-in-the-park buildings and dead space around them are also bad neighbors. At least it’s not affecting you directly.

      1. Mike Orr,

         Is Seattle up to 50% on transit trips yet? There’s still a major majority of households with cars… something like 80% I think? Although that number varies from neighborhood to neighborhood I’d guess.

         Cars are just part of the City… the same way high rent is in walkable desirable parts of the City. Even if Katie Wilson went all in on transit lanes, the next more car friendly mayor would just tear them out. The First Hill street car works well enough and there’s zero money or political will to tear it out.

         Every City in the entire world has funky parts of it. The First Hill street car has its charms even if it is mired in traffic much of the time.

      2. We need to improve transit immensely in order to get car mode share down to 50%. Transit lanes are part of it.

         “Even if Katie Wilson went all in on transit lanes, the next more car friendly mayor would just tear them out.”

         Part of the task is to convince people not to vote for car-friendly mayors.

      3. Mike Orr,

         Growth in Seattle means more of everything…. starting with cars. It’s quite possible that even if transit reaches that 60% of all trips in the future, the number of car trips may be numerically climbing as the trip percentage is decreasing. More people = more cars.

         Most of the complaints I hear about the First Hill street car sound an awfully like just complaints about the density of central Seattle neighborhoods. As Seattle adds more people, of course there’s more congestion, more gridlock more general chaos. Bus only lanes on Broadway? That’s not going to happen. Broadway was a zoo on Friday nights back when the City had only 600,000 people in it. It’s a fun place a hang out at however.

         In my lifetime, I’ve watched a big chunk of the population of Seattle either die out or move away, replaced by newcomers with new ideas and often a lot more money. Seattle is living city, not some little fishbowl terrarium. There’s limits to what the government can do change or even control it. The city is also a cruel mistress. She simply doesn’t care if you’re broke or homeless. Those with money will always be served first.

      4. @tacomee

         The number of cars in Seattle has been more or less stable since 2017. There’s been roughly a 20% growth in population and a 0.4% growth in cars

         https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/data/car-ownership-rate-hits-record-low-in-seattle-census-data-shows/

      5. Unless you can make transit right of way fully separated from general traffic, car traffic matter.

         Every RapidRide project has arterial traffic analysis that focuses on the signals and vehicular delay on the private transportation side. Somewhere along the line, the bus routes will run into a spot where they either have to share right of way with others or cross general purpose traffic. So not completely failing the general purpose traffic along transit corridor is important, too.

         Denny Way’s transit priority is not as simple as paving the bus lane or converting curbside parking into BAT lanes. You have to be able to divert some percent of existing traffic to make it work. Not enough people will simply stop driving just because you take two lanes off Denny Way.

      6. Bus only lanes on Broadway? That’s not going to happen.

         Right. Nor will they add bus lanes on Westlake. Or on Denny. Oh, wait…

         Of course it is challenging to add bus lanes to Broadway. But the existence of the streetcar makes it worse. If you were just dealing with buses you would take away parking and add skip-ahead here and there (like they will for the 40 and various RapidRide projects). But that is made more difficult because the streetcar can’t just change lanes.

         Even if Katie Wilson went all in on transit lanes, the next more car friendly mayor would just tear them out.

         Holy smoke, you don’t understand Seattle politics. Sorry, but that is absurd. No mayor is going to get rid of bus-lanes. We have a better chance of electing a right-wing Republican (and that isn’t going to happen either).

   5. Cities throughout the US had streetcars that failed. That included Seattle, Tacoma, and Spokane. All three NW cities developed around streetcars. The Seattle urban villages are linear along streetcar lines. Many streetcars were began by developers and later acquired by banks, utilities, or municipalities. Streetcars were changed; in Ballard several changed before the 1940 end. The Rainier Avenue South streetcar was ended before the rest of the network. My grandmother rode a streetcar between Fern Hill and downtown Tacoma; the fare was a nickel. Some streetcars were intercity; see the two Interurbans here; they were ended after SR-99 was provided. Mike Bergman wrote an excellent book on Seattle’s history.

      Success and failure for either bus or rail is complex. A key aspect is the priority it is provided through traffic. Either mode can be slow or fast. A second is service subsidy. Service design is important. I am amused that both the Tacoma ST streetcar and the Seattle network had a bobby pin shape.

      1. More recently you have the DC Streetcar. It failed so badly they are going to replace it with a bus. Other streetcars are like SLU — mostly symbolic transit. These are clearly failures but they are keeping them around anyway. So the idea that “rail can’t fail” is ridiculous.

2. Since this is an open thread ST officially confirmed March 28 opening:
   https://bsky.app/profile/typewriteralley.bsky.social/post/3md4d7zppnc2w

   1. Should have refreshed the main page :)

      https://seattletransitblog.com/2026/01/23/full-east-link-extension-will-open-march-28/

3. I love the FHSC, when it happens to be there.

   It just is not frequent enough for the relatively short, but very urban, path it takes. ST spent a good chunk of money building it, but cheaped out on fleet.

   Seattle has been spending money on frequency on the 107 milk run through single-family north Skyway, with a frequency that does not match Link. That’s money that could be saved up to buy more streetcars and a second or larger barn.

   The FHSC is very useful when it is there. It suffers from mostly not being there when people want to go somewhere along its path.

   1. How much was ST responsible for the fleet choice.

      The issue of the streetcar’s mixed-traffic alignment and vehicle choice are both related. It’s a substandard vision of what streetcars could be, and the minimum requirements it should have. If the politicians had gotten that right, we’d have a much better streetcar or alternative transit improvements.

      It’s also related to the federal “Buy American” rule. Projects receiving federal grants are limited to US vendors/subsidiaries. State-of-the-art vehicles are all outside the US because the US is too small a market for tram vehicles or trolleybuses. The Czech company Skoda licenced its years-old technology that was no longer selling well in the rest of the world. That’s what Seattle’s and Portland’s streetcars are based on. A has-been vehicle technology, for a discredited mixed-traffic alignment, and a vehicle no more capacious than a bus.

   2. I agree it has issues with frequency. I think it should be paired with a bus route up Broadway. Running more trams would be nice too but really the frequency needs to be roughly doubled, which would mean a huge expansion in fleet size.

      The Roy extension would be nice too.

      1. The Roy Extension was silly.

      2. Yeah, it makes more sense to just pair it with a bus. A fair number of the riders are not interested in going to CID — they just to go the other end of Broadway. Paring with a bus like the 60 would make the 60 faster while also increasing effective headways on Broadway for a lot of existing streetcar riders.

   3. Seattle may have spent STM funds on Route 106. The Route 107 headway is still anemic at 15/30.

4. Even with the First Hill streetcar’s flaws, I’m not advocating removing it immediately. It works; I ride it; it gets moderate ridership; a Jackson-Broadway route is useful. The larger street reconfiguration I talked about is still vague and theoretical: I haven’t yet seen a specific improvement concept that would fully meet the needs of existing and potential bus riders. We’d need a robust concept before we push to implement it. The CID community is already frustrated with both past and future construction impacts, so let’s wait until we have a concrete plan for something something better before we remove the streetcar tracks. There’s nothing wrong with leaving the First Hill streetcar operating in the meantime.

5. Link ridership data for Federal Way Link stations is now available!

   December data is a bit wonky generally because of holiday travel. When schools are out, ridership drops.

   Add to that the weekday data for federal Way stations is further dampened as the first day of service was on December 6. And there was a surge of riders in the opening Saturday. So it seems more sensisble to look at data in the second week by plotting the graph axis to “Day”.

   As expected , Federal Way Downtown has most of the boardings, like in the 80 percent ballpark. Star Lake is the weakest and KDM is probably affected by college schedules although it’s not much higher than a Star Lake. Angle Lake did lose riders, but SeaTac and TIBS may have gained riders. The holiday season makes it hard for me to conclude anything more specific.

6. I saw some impressive dashcam video of Amtrak vs. forklift in Portland today from a college of a nearby commercial vehicle who sat near me at a bar. I guess driving down a one way street the wrong way with your forklift and crossing train tracks is a really bad idea if you’re inattentive.

   https://www.koin.com/news/portland/crews-respond-to-train-forklift-crash-in-southeast-portland/

7. The FHSC has some struggles with reliability but I don’t find it overly bad. Broadway and Jackson are both slow but generally consistently moving. Are there any major pinch points? Maybe Broadway nearing Pike/Pine?

8. Seattle’s ORCA transit system gets major tech upgrade with new ‘Tap to Pay’ feature ： https://www.geekwire.com/2026/seattles-orca-transit-system-gets-major-tech-upgrade-with-new-tap-to-pay-feature/

9. I’ve ridden the FHSC twice recently.

   The first ride was between Capitol Hill and First Hill during a weekday PM rush hour. I ordinarily would have walked, but I was tired and the streetcar was waiting at the stop. The trip was frustratingly show because traffic was bad. For the return trip, I elected to walk back.

   The second ride was between Capitol Hill and Little Saigon on a Saturday morning. Traffic wasn’t bad, but we seemed to catch every red light and dwell time at each station felt longer than necessary. On my return trip, I used the 60 and it was much faster.

   I think the FHSC should never have been built, but ridership seems decent now. I was surprised by repeatedly catching red lights- I thought the FHSC had signal priority. If if doesn’t, it should get it, and if it does have signal priority, it seems like it needs improvement.

   As others have said, it should have higher frequency than it does.

   It would help immensely if it had it’s own ROW, at least on Broadway, but I don’t see how that’s possible unless you either make the street car-free or you eliminate the bike lane (which also sees substantial use). And in the latter case, if you’re re-configuring the entire street, there’s no sense in re-building the streetcar line- it would make more sense just to switch entirely to buses.

10. We should just congestion price downtown and build the CCC with the revenue.

    1. Any such revenue will have many and better alternative projects to fund. The CC or CCC Streetcar would have been a poor use of capital, ROW, and service subsidy. A cordon toll would improve bus flow; that is what happened in London and NYC.

11. re the article
    ST had a sham study on alternatives; the Board, led by Nickels wanted a streetcar. Objectively, electric trolleybus would have been a better choice. The overhead was already in place. Sadly, at that time, Metro was in a fiscal crisis and an audit suggested giving up on the ETB. That notion was beat back. Also, the current ETB fleets were high floor. Now, Metro has low floor ETB.

    Jamming the FHSC through an ETB network took extraordinary effort and special overhead. After all of that, the FHSC uses battery power on much of its alignment. That alignment includes a deviation to 14th Avenue South.

    Under the 2014 TBD, the funds were more restricted to bus transit; Councilmember Licata may have asked for that.

    Fourth bullet: a second cyclist died on South Jackson Street just west of 14th Avenue South.

    The 2016 decision to nix the Broadway extension was welcome. It was a very weak and costly concept.

    Mayor Durkan and her consultants also found that the Murray-Kubly SDOT (Andrew Glass Hastings was the lead) CCC Streetcar plan included many flaws as well as higher cost. They had ordered cars of a different size; changes to the platforms would have been required; they were heavier, raising concerns about the viaduct over the BNSFRR; the cars would have required changes to the maintenance bases. The operating plan relied on trips from both tails to overlap; both tails are unreliable, so the headway would not have have been even in the middle. The plan relied on an unrealistic ridership and fare revenue forecast; it was to have no new service subsidy and make it on fairy dust.

    Fall 2019: I recall that budget item to be $7.2 million. The revenue was to come from a tax on TNC (Mosqueda concept). With Covid, the revenue did not come and the studies were not conducted. SDOT canceled the order for the 10 new streetcars.

    Please be careful measuring productivity. The best measure is rides per platform hour. Revenue hours and platform hours are different. Bus hours and streetcar hours have different costs; streetcars are more costly; they are boutique, have separate management, operations, and maintenance. Please see the FTA NTD. https://www.transit.dot.gov/sites/fta.dot.gov/files/transit_agency_profile_doc/2024/00001.pdf
    Note that Metro has stopped including the streetcars in its System Evaluation.

    If the FHSC is retained, Seattle will have to find service subsidy as the ST funds are no more. It is even more challenging for the SLU line as it has less ridership. I have suggested that the FHSC be truncated at 5th Avenue South. That would make it shorter, more reliable, and could reduce headway and waits by focusing the limited cars on the core ST2 function of connecting First Hill with the two Link stations. The extension to Occidental Avenue South just gets the FHSC stuck in traffic jams, especially on event days.

    The 2020 TBD revenue stream is smaller than the 2014 stream but it is being asked to cover more. Seattle has to consider the replacement TBD in 2026.

    The 2024 G Line seems a better mitigation for the deleted First Hill Link station than the FHSC.

12. I can’t believe still around and not a bus. This is precisely the kind of project that is used as an example of what not to build outside of the US and as an example of why not to waste money on transit inside the US.

13. Ignoring funding limitations, how about build the CCC, but have it continue south on 1st down to around Hanford then have the FHSC turn south onto 1st and interline with the new southern track? Find some industrial land to build a new maintenance and storage facility, and free up the existing facilities in the city.

    1. It never made much sense to me for the system to form a big U. This new Y setup would provide much needed service for a lot of Sodo businesses, entertainment, dining, and sports, and allow for FHSC and SLUT to retain their respective rolling stock.

       1. It never made much sense to me for the system to form a big U.

          Agreed. To quote Jarrett Walker:

          All other things being equal, long, straight routes perform better than short, squiggly and looping ones.

          The route is short, squiggly and looping. Sending it somewhere else would help. But that is basically just putting good money after bad. An extension would cost a bunch of money. Not only to add the track and buy extra trains but it would cost extra money to run the trains. This in turn means that buses run less often. In contrast you could shift service to First and it wouldn’t cost anything. You would get more riders overall because the buses would be running more often. An extension of the streetcar is really a bad idea. Keep the First Hill streetcar if you must (for the tourists) but we should shift a few buses to First Avenue and replace the South Lake Union Streetcar with better bus service.

    2. I think that the root problem with the streetcars are that the vehicles themselves are not designed to offer more capacity than an articulated bus does. No amount of expansion is going to solve this fundamental limitation. Add to that they are designed and operated to move even slower than a bus in most of the routes. And of course add to that how the streetcar routes are set up to be supplemental transit services rather than replacement services to offload a crowded bus route.

       Would a First Ave S extension replace a bus route? I don’t think so. A streetcar there would also be overwhelmed by game day crowd surges, making it relatively useless for stadium event crowds.

       It’s worth noting that back in 2017 there was an effort made by some advocates to move the West Seattle Link Extension project run further west than the SODO busway. It was taken off the table pretty early — way before the outrageous extension costs were known. As things have unfolded, it seems to me that a First Ave automated Link line running aerial through downtown could be much more affordable and strategic than DSTT2 would ever be. It even could jog away from First Ave in places to improve Link transfers or serve nearby places like SLU. It just seems too hard to put on the table now.

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