The Seattle 1st Ave streetcar plan now known as the Cultural Connector might be permanently stalled
With a new $410 million price tag for a long-planned connection to the line, it looks like the First Hill Streetcar will remain a stub.
When service first began in February 2016 on the 10-station route connecting Capitol Hill’s Broadway through the International District to Pioneer Square after a multi-year, $133 million construction project to complete the line, there were hopes of extensions of the trolley and bikeway up Broadway and, eventually, across downtown to connect with the South Lake Union line.
The Aloha extension plan was axed long ago. Now the 1st Ave connection seems to be doomed.
A consultant report on the long-planned connection shows have soared more than $124 from estimates five years ago due to everything from inflation to the city’s own poor planning that has created elements like newly landmarked property along the route.
With City Hall facing a major budget deficit in 2025, its seems unlikely Seattle will have a $410 appetite to complete the line even with federal help.
The Urbanist reports on the new price tag and adds that a $75 million grant from the Federal Transit Administration remains up-in-the-air while the city plan remains in limbo.
In a press release, the city has said only that “there is no change to the status of the project.”
Sound Transit footed the bill for the $132 million First Hill route’s construction and was on the hook for beginning operation costs as part of mitigation for the authority’s decision to not build a light rail station serving the First Hill neighborhood. The streetcar is managed by the city but operated by King County Metro.
The First Hill Streetcar line isn’t the most rapid of transit. Its layout sharing lanes of traffic with motor vehicles can mean the trams can easily get stuck in back-ups or, sometimes, by a single poorly parked vehicle. The city has looked at a multitude of small tweaks and changes to try to speed service along the route.
Despite the limitations and lack of connection to a wider trolley system, the First Hill Streetcar has soldiered on. While ridership in the tech corridor served by the SLUT South Lake Union Trolley has dipped, recent tallies show the First Hill Streetcar has grown its ridership to just over 1 million riders a year.
While it may never connect to another streetcar path, the First Hill line terminates within a block of Capitol Hill Station and, by the end of 2024, will be intersected by the new RapidRide G bus line on Madison.
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This is a real question — the new line would be around 1.2miles of track. How can that possibly cost almost half a billion dollars? Would love a top level breakdown that explains. I’d love a streetcar-type service downtown…
We need more buses; we should fill in the tracks for these beasts. The rails are dangerous to bikes, people walking, etc…
The amount of money Seattle has blown on these marginal systems which provide us a hodge hodge set of services?
Buses, we need more busses.
I voted for every mass transit idea people have suggested ( I voted for the monorail twice !), but in the end?
We need more buses; listen to the folks in West Seattle who want more buses, not light rail.
What has light rail done for Capitol Hill?
We have less buses and a central business area which has never recovered from the ongoing construction required to build light rail. ( And a light rail system which seems to often broken. )
It probably only costs a quarter of that, but this being Seattle, they’re most likely figuring it will need to be redone at least 2-3X due to poor planning or defective building/materials. May as well factor that in now…
Unfortunately you are correct
The Urbanist article explains some of it, mentioning “structural upgrades to underground passageways under city streets in Pioneer Square (called areaways) and upgrades to S Jackson Street”. If it’s anything like the Madison bus project, they’ll take advantage of the road work to rip up and replace all of the utilities underneath.
Areaways?
So instead of investing in the installation of sidewalks throughout Seattle, the spandex wearing tech bros want to build underground tunnels in Pioneer Square? That sounds like an amazing use of tax dollars.
The Madison bus project is late, over budgeted, and has had additional projects tacked on that have had little design review ( the detention tanks being installed in order to get the EPA to not fine Seattle like they should are temporary measures, there is no process for cleaning them ).
The project was advertised to be completed in 202, so it doesn’t have the excuse of the pandemic for being late.
Was it needed? Sure. As a project it is not a model for future projects.
The streetcars are a menace, we should dump them and invest in buses.
we NEED to connect these, every number sounds big and scary, but this is needed
Is it? I like the idea of a streetcar running down 1st – but exactly why is it needed to connect to the SLUT, when there are many faster and more direct ways to get from Capitol Hill, First Hill the International District and Pioneer Square to SLU than a slow, surface level streetcar that takes the scenic route.
The project may be needed, but the number isn’t. The Urbanist article mentions saving $17M from pedestrianizing part of the route. $87M is being spent on the actual vehicles; what’s the cost savings if we forget about the federal funding we lost and buy foreign ones? It seems like $40M would be typical, and if manufacturers that don’t have a captive audience to fall back on can address the weight issue, we easily save all the money the feds could have contributed and then some.
Even if the cost were cut in half, it doesn’t make much sense without making the streetcar lanes transit-only through 100% of the system.
This is massively frustrating. First Hill has one of the highest population densities in the state. Sound Transit made a penny wise, pound foolish decision not to cite a light rail station in First Hill in the first place. Now they’re gutting the supposed mitigation measure. Unfortunately, it’s par for the course for First Hill: they’re still waiting for their voter-approved park from the 2000 levy.
I feel for the business owners in the International District who endured years of construction on Jackson, were promised by the city/Sound Transit that the project would yield thousands of additional customers, and now the streetcar system won’t be integrated in any meaningful way.
I feel more for the workers for those businesses than the owners. They’re the ones working for crap wages in the kitchen and need to travel to ID and other areas from really far away for work.
Yes, because those first or second generation immigrant owners are all living in their high-rise penthouse condos downtown, lording it over the little guys. If you got off your high horse and actually visited some of the businesses (that could use your business) you’d realize many of the ‘fat cat’ owners actually work in the kitchens themselves.
The greedy property owners are a whole other thing though, and I know that is an underlying issue for many of the small business owners in this city. Don’t conflate the two.
“Gutting” the supposed mitigation? First Hill already has a streetcar connecting it to the light rail system (both at Capitol Hill and the International District) and is about to get a new BRT line on Madison Street, providing another direct, fast connection to downtown. The Center City Connector/Culture Connector would be nice, but it’s silly to imply that First Hill hasn’t received any good transit improvements.
What is absolutely asinine for the Streetcar (and even some bus lines) is that the DOT does not employ priority for it with traffic signals. So many times I’m in the street car and it gets every red light like cars even approaching an intersection and bam, red light. Other cities have equipment to know when something like a bus or trolley is coming and keeps the light green or changes the signal faster but not here. But that is par for the course from a transit and DOT that have no idea what they’re doing except asking for money.
So true! It’s beyond asinine. Same with light rail. Why on earth does a train sit at red light after red light. It was so much faster to take the bus to SeaTac back in the day.
No, the bus was not faster. It sat at “red light after red light” too. Link is a big improvement. But it absolutely should have railroad right-of-way signaling along the at-grade stretch.
Just put a connector on Denny from Westlake to Broadway and use the same type of street car. But then Seattle keeps wasting money on slow Rapid Ride routes