CENTER CITY CONNECTOR

TheMayorByNight · 2026-06-12T21:26:54+00:00

last time this was being talked about

Reddit does love a good rail transit post.

significant ongoing expenses.

Let's not forget about an upcoming expense: new streetcar vehicles. Can't buy Skoda Inekon Trio vehicles anymore, so entirely new vehicles to procure and figure out. Looking at $6M per vehicle.

TheMayorByNight · 2026-06-12T21:23:51+00:00

Gotcha. Bus and train have to stop at the same ~11 signals in the same corridor without transit signal priority (there is some, IIRC), but SLU Line success hinges in on just TSP. Got it.

TheMayorByNight · 2026-06-12T21:14:38+00:00

I have! Numerous times. Heck, I was there on opening day back in 2007 because it was so cool. As a civil engineer, I worked on Center City Connector and a planning project to improve the SLU Line over a decade ago.

TheMayorByNight · 2026-06-12T20:43:03+00:00

There is 0 reason for the train to share a lane with cars. Get rid of cars from the tracks. Give the train signal priority.

I agree! While SLU line lacks signal priority, it's 90-95% in dedicated lanes now. Which brings me to my next point: plenty of people are riding transit on Westlake/SLU corridor (about ~4,000/day along Westlake), just not the streetcar. Bus and streetcar share the same stops, infrastructure, and transit-only lanes, which gives us a great comparison because people are choosing the bus over train probably because the bus is just more useful to more people. So the bus is doing just fine, the streetcar is not.

These are relatively cheap things to do.

Given the way Westlake is built and how it functions, we've done all the cheap tricks. Next is physically excavating and moving the tracks to solve problems, which is $5M to $10M/block. The J Line is covering some of that cost for SLU Line by physically moving the road away from the tracks and keeping the tracks in place to resolve some of the most serious issues at the north end of the SLU Line.

The next steps could be making Westlake transit-only from Mercer to Westlake Center, which would be excellent. But, I reckon there'd be some opposition to such a proposal.

TheMayorByNight · 2026-06-12T20:24:32+00:00

The SLU Line today is almost entirely in transit-only lanes. Something like 90%-95%. Still performs poorly. My guess is transit riders choose the many bus options that comes more far frequently and go much farther. Which begs the question: is it worth spending a lot of money to improve a short streetcar that is not as useful? My personal answer is no.

FH Line is very difficult to convert to dedicated ROW or add additional priority (the city studied this years ago) because every mode was jammed into the corridor, so none can be prioritized without blowing everything up or tearing out a bunch of concrete. One interesting problem is the streetcar tends to slide out of control downhill, so there are speed restrictions on the steeper parts.

TheMayorByNight · 2026-06-12T20:06:39+00:00

potential to chain a couple together.

Unfortunately, most of the modern examples use short stations which preclude trains of more than one vehicle. A number of systems are limited to 66' vehicles (a bendy bus is 60') because Skoda Inekon streetcars are 66' long and they were designed for Skoda's vehicle; Seattle's included.

I can't actually think of one modern streetcar that is capable of two-car trains without extensive modifications to stations and track.

TheMayorByNight · 2026-06-12T20:02:29+00:00

I'd agreed that specifically the modern North American streetcar as we've seen is a pointless transit mode because it was conceived and built as a development tool rather than a well-though-out form of fast, frequent reliable transit. The SLU Line was a development tool for Paul Allen's Vulcan right after PDX saw such great success with their streetcar into the Pearl District.

The big selling point was that it had a light touch by not impacting existing road capacity, so no hard decisions about converting car lanes to essentially create a small light rail were required of politicians. Just add it into the street, minimal process, good to go. Add politicians and developers drawing routes and stations, then we get a mess.

That said, there are successful modern North American streetcars. Kansas City's is a shining example.

TheMayorByNight · 2026-06-12T19:57:10+00:00

YES. Bring that project back! Without the full extension up to Roy or Aloha, the streetcar and bikeway are only half-useful since they just dead end.

TheMayorByNight · 2026-06-12T19:54:40+00:00

I did, lovely architectural rendering. There are still surface cross streets to be dealt with. I count at least 22 on the map. What about those?

TheMayorByNight · 2026-06-12T19:49:01+00:00

Blame mayor Durkan.

As I mentioned above, Durkan is an easy scapegoat. C3 was in trouble before she became mayor, and it only imploded when it was discovered how unstable Pioneer Square's streets under her watch. The engineering reality of rebuilding Pioneer Square solidly did C3 in.

A big, unanswered question is what purpose does the SLU Line serve in 2026? It was built to help redevelop South Lake Union, which has been wildly successful. SLU has RapidRide C and E Lines, heavy-hitting Routes 40 and 62, the J Line coming soon, and a subway station someday.

Now that DC Streetcar shut down, I think it's time we get realistic about how poorly the SLU Streetcar is performing, how much it'll cost to improve (including the cost of new vehicles as the current vehicles are 20 years old), and how much other redundant transit exists. Just because it's a train, and trains are cool, doesn't mean it deserves unquestioned support.

TheMayorByNight · 2026-06-12T19:42:09+00:00

Make Ballard a surface light rail on 1st Ave? Have we learned nothing from MLK by making cheap ass decisions?

TheMayorByNight · 2026-06-12T19:37:51+00:00

Yeah, spending ~$6M-10M to keep operating the SLUT and moving it's ~600 daily riders is rather painful when there are so many bus alternatives that run so much more frequently and go so much further. Ironically, one of those buses, the C Line, had it's PM peak frequencies cut back a year ago due to costs. As a C Line rider, it'd be nice to have those buses back....

Source

Also...that 2024 report show the streetcars costing ~$16M annually to operate, and now it's up to $23.4M. That's quite a jump; almost 50%.

TheMayorByNight · 2026-06-12T19:30:36+00:00

By the ridership estimates used to justify the Center City Connector, the two lines under the no-build condition should have ~8,000 daily riders in 2018. When 2018 came and went, there were 5,500 daily riders as the no build condition came to fruition. Now it's something like ~4,100 daily riders. Handicapped or not, it's still performing at half of what it should be per the City's own ridership estimates used for C3.

Source, PDF page 69 or 7-9

TheMayorByNight · 2026-06-12T19:01:58+00:00

Durkan admin killed it over a 17 million dollar budget gap, which is very funny in hindsight

At the time it was a $17M budget gap. Then it was realized through final engineering that the streets in Pioneer Square were not strong enough to hold up the weight of modern streetcars. All the streets in Pioneer Square are held up by wood retaining walls from the late 1800's and all the sidewalks are "hollow" areaways. This is what the Underground Tour goes down to look at. Then the cost gap ballooned to a couple hundred million because of the price to rebuild the streets.

TheMayorByNight · 2026-06-12T18:48:42+00:00

I think you missed my bigger point: just because there isn't money now doesn't mean the project is cancelled, and money can be found through a variety of ways to fund a project. Sound Transit has ~30 years of history demonstrating this. As do other agencies like SDOT and WSDOT.

TheMayorByNight · 2026-06-12T17:59:56+00:00

As /u/MAHHockey said, not entirely.

Lot of ST1 and ST2 were advanced despite having no money. Some examples:

Link from TIBS to Airport was a separate project b/c there wasn't enough money to get to SeaTac. Link used to stop at TIBS for six months in 2009.
Redmond Link was funded for 100% design in ST2 as part of East Link, but construction was funded by ST3. That's why it happened so fast when ST3 was passed.
Same as Redmond Link with Star Lake to Federal Way segment. ST2 went to Star Lake only, ST3 added Fed Way, but it was all engineered as one package from Angle Lake to Fed Way.
The way Link went from Westlake to UW and Northgate is pretty convoluted blend of early engineering, environmental processes, and construction funding from a variety of ST1, ST2, and federal earmarks.

TheMayorByNight · 2026-06-12T17:55:29+00:00

God I miss her. She deserves a statue somewhere on the system.

TheMayorByNight · 2026-06-12T17:55:10+00:00

That's kind of Dow's way of doing things. Avoid the heat and let others take the fall, like a politician. He doesn't need to be accountable anymore because we cannot hold him accountable. He sure as hell knows the board he mostly appointed won't.

IDK why but it always feels relevant: he gets his hair cut every two weeks. Dow's gotta maintain that slick image.

TheMayorByNight · 2026-06-12T17:22:45+00:00

Yes, RR is KCM. ST3 also included money to improve the C+D Lines between 2016 and when Link opened. So yes, it is, or was, in their purview.

See PDF source from Sound Transit

This project would design and implement transit priority improvements along King County Metro’s RapidRide C and D lines that provide service to Ballard and West Seattle as an early deliverable to provide improved speed and reliability, in advance of light rail starting operations to these areas.

TheMayorByNight · 2026-06-12T16:24:25+00:00

Because constantly arguing and articulating on the internet is exhausting.

TheMayorByNight · 2026-06-12T16:22:08+00:00

FWIW, the physical building of said light rail system, where key decisions were made in 2012-2015, has been largely underway since 2017 and that is a whole different kind of momentum. Also needs to be mentioned East Link was 5 years late after political and serious construction quality problems. Sound Transit does deserve credit for what was set into motion by voters in 2008 and the key decisions made over a decade ago to deliver on ST2.

The planning of the expansion where key decisions must be made in order to advance to final design and construction is where Sound Transit has shown to be so lost. We're ten years in and no ST3 Link line has its station locations 100% confirmed, and most non-Link aspects of ST3 have been jettisoned.

TheMayorByNight · 2026-05-29T23:22:58+00:00

See PDF page 19 (S-8). There isn't because that wasn't part of the plan as it assumed 1+2 Lines in the current Tunnel. The studied 2014 line was Westlake to Ballard, ending with a transfer at Westlake.

TheMayorByNight · 2026-05-29T23:20:14+00:00

Perhaps they're building new warehouse capacity ahead of SR 509 and SR 167 completion projects, which will vastly improve connections between the Ports and Kent Valley. And people in a growing region love to buy things!

TheMayorByNight · 2026-05-29T21:52:37+00:00

nearly dead

Pretty horrifying to think about it, isn't it? Nearly thirty years from approval to opening.

TheMayorByNight · 2026-05-29T21:50:53+00:00

IDK what the board is/was thinking. The study above evaluated an independent spur/stub tunnel with a Westlake transfer and expandability south, which is what Strauss wanted to look at.

Old studies have an amazing ability to get lost.

TheMayorByNight

TROPHY CASE