WA: Is Seattle ready to put South Lake Union streetcar on chopping block?

The South Lake Union streetcar went into service in 2007 to a pop-music classic's amplified declarations to "join hands" and "start a love train."

Seattle City Councilmember Rob Saka isn't feeling it anymore.

Saka, who leads the council's Transportation Committee, has called for a plan to "thoughtfully retire" the 1.3-mile line in this year's city budget process. The millions it costs to operate the little-used streetcar — estimated at $4.4 million in 2025 — would go to other transit services, Saka said.

"We need to make sure we're getting the most bang for our buck," he said Tuesday, emphasizing that no decision has been made. His proposed budget amendment, co-sponsored by Councilmembers Bob Kettle and Cathy Moore, has a deadline for "terminating" the streetcar's service — from the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center past Amazon's urban campus to Westlake Station — by next fall.

The council began discussing and amending Mayor Bruce Harrell's 2025-26 budget proposal Sept. 25. Harrell's blueprint includes money for the streetcar.

A final budget vote is set for Nov. 21.

"Our office is still evaluating both proposals with (the Seattle Department of Transportation), and are interested in hearing community feedback on both," Callie Craighead, a Harrell spokesperson, said in an email.

Harrell has supported expanded streetcar service through downtown, but, according to the email, recognized that high costs made such growth "difficult."

The Downtown Seattle Association slammed Saka's amendment in a statement from spokesperson James Sido, saying "now is not the time to take existing mobility options off the table," considering increases in workers, residents and tourists downtown, as well as upcoming major transportation projects like Revive I-5.

Saka's descriptions of the streetcar line as "one poorly performing transit line" with "abysmal and anemic ridership numbers" made his opinion clear.

Saka wants to take the money currently spent on operating the line and dedicate it to "proven" transit services like Metro bus Route 40 between Northgate and downtown, Route 70 connecting downtown to the University District and the RapidRide C Line, which travels from West Seattle to South Lake Union.

Whatever money is saved won't be taken away from public transit, Saka said, vowing it would be a "one-for-one, transit-to-transit investment."

When the South Lake Union streetcar began service in 2007, it was in a neighborhood of squat warehouses and parking lots that were quickly giving way to gleaming towers and hordes of tech workers.

At the time, city leaders had a goal of bringing 16,000 jobs and 8,000 housing units to the area by 2020, when ridership on the route was expected to reach 3,000 trips a day. Mayor Greg Nickels said there would be a streetcar network of "five, perhaps six lines" within 20 years.

The area today has 11,100 housing units and a total employment of nearly 77,000, according to the Puget Sound Regional Council. The population jumped from 3,730 in 2010 to 15,450 in 2023.

Such growth didn't extend to the streetcar, which sees about 660 average daily boardings, according to SDOT's most recent data, from 2023. Passengers are counted by automatic sensors as they enter the vehicles.

In a January 2024 report, SDOT estimated the line will attract 1,200 rides by 2028. Ridership on the route peaked in 2017, when it gave nearly 1,500 rides a day.

The city of Seattle owns and funds the streetcar lines, which are operated by King County Metro.

Unlike Nickels' prediction of a growing network, Seattle has just two streetcar lines and plans for a third line to connect them through downtown that has been on hold for years.

Seattle's other streetcar, from Pioneer Square to First Hill and Capitol Hill, serves about 4,000 daily riders and cost $9.7 million to operate in 2024.

As for the third line — dubbed the "Culture Connector" — it, too, is on the chopping block this budget season. Kettle has proposed removing it from the city's list of capital improvements, an amendment Saka supports.

"The only viable path I see for ever doing that one would be to create a public-private partnership at some point," Saka said.

The third downtown line was put on ice in 2018 after Mayor Jenny Durkan flinched at the project's rising cost, which went from an initial estimate of $150 million to more than $200 million. It is now estimated at $410 million, according to Harrell's budget.

By comparison, the South Lake Union streetcar was built for $56 million.

Saka isn't alone in calling for the end of the streetcar.

In September, Charles Prestrud wrote a column for the conservative Washington Policy Center saying the city was "saddled with a costly underperforming streetcar" that is "irrelevant to meeting the city's larger transportation needs."

On the progressive Seattle Bike Blog, Tom Fucoloro argued in August that the city gave up on streetcars in 2015 when SDOT and Metro went all in on the RapidRide bus network, a cheaper, rubber-tired alternative.

When the South Lake Union streetcar was envisioned by the City Council in 2005, it was during the first years of what some saw as a new era for urban North American streetcars, following Portland's successful launch of its first line in 2001.

Dozens of cities followed, while others — Philadelphia, Toronto and San Francisco — improved on the century-old lines they didn't rip up.

Unlike those cities, Seattle had torn up its decades before.

Yet, Seattle transit continues to grow, most notably the light rail network and its 2024 expansions on the Eastside and to Lynnwood. But even that growth spells trouble for the streetcar.

In 2039, light rail is expected to curve through South Lake Union on its way to Ballard. Constructing that line and the Denny Street Station means eight years of road work and traffic jams.

If it dodges Saka's bullet, the South Lake Union streetcar would not run — at all — for the entirety of those eight years.

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