From the Mar 31 – Apr 6, 2005 issue

News

Miller's Glossing

Port Commissioner's Streetcar Plan Overlooks Serious Drawbacks

by Erica C. Barnett

From a PR standpoint, the timing was genius: Just three hours before King County Council Member (and city council candidate) Dwight Pelz was scheduled to give reporters a tour of the waterfront streetcar's endangered maintenance base, Port Commissioner (and Pelz competitor) Paige Miller called a last-minute press conference of her own. The occasion for the event, held within view of the maintenance base, was Miller's announcement of a plan that would not only save the beloved streetcar line, but extend it a mile north to the Amgen biotech campus.

So hastily thrown together was Miller's event, sources in city and county government say, that Mayor Greg Nickels and King County Executive Ron Sims didn't even find out about her proposal until 9:30 on Wednesday morning--half an hour before the press conference. Miller's fellow port commissioners Lawrence Molloy and Alec Fisken both say they were "surprised" by Miller's proposal, which followed the passage, one night earlier, of an innocuous resolution stating the Port's general support for the waterfront streetcar. "I thought it was a nonissue," Fisken says.

By Wednesday morning, however, that general statement had evolved into an elaborate proposal to save the streetcar, whose maintenance barn (where the '20s vintage Australian streetcars must be stored) stands in the way of the Seattle Art Museum's planned sculpture park and must be torn down. Under Miller's plan, which won immediate praise from the Seattle Times, the Port would do three things: provide land north of downtown for a new maintenance base; extend the streetcar between its current northern terminus at Broad Street and the Amgen biotech campus in Interbay; and provide right-of-way through narrow Elliott Bay Park for the trolley line to run alongside existing bike and pedestrian paths. The plan announced last week does not say where funding for the track (estimated at $1,000 a foot) will come from; nor does it provide for utility relocations or a replacement barn itself, which the city has estimated would cost around $2.6 million.

Despite the lack of detail in her plan, Miller says, "Almost everyone I've talked to is thrilled with the idea of extending the streetcar. This is a gift horse that people should reach out and grab."

Not so fast, say skeptics like Pelz and City Council Member Richard Conlin, who are both running in the same hotly contested council race as Miller. Pelz and Conlin were working on their own streetcar proposals when Miller rushed her proposal into prime time. The two point out numerous concerns about Miller's plan, not least of which is funding. According to a 2004 study commissioned by the city and King County Metro, extending the trolley to Amgen would cost somewhere north of $16 million, not including the maintenance facility. So far, Miller has not proposed a funding plan, although she says she's "working on partnerships," presumably with the city and the county.

According to Conlin, "Just having the [Port] land doesn't really do a whole lot.… If [Miller] was really interested in solving the problem, it would have been nice for her to talk to us."

Had Miller discussed her proposal with the city, she might have run into questions about whether a northern streetcar extension is truly the best use of limited transportation dollars, many of them raised in the city's 2004 report on the viability of various streetcar lines, including the northern extension along the waterfront.

According to the 2004 study, the $16 million expenditure would buy the city an increase of between 80,000 and 143,000 trolley rides a year--far less than extending the south end of the streetcar east to 12th Avenue, an addition that would boost the streetcar's ridership between 250,000 and 270,000 passengers. Many of those rides would come, presumably, from Amgen employees, who currently number only 800. (Amgen plans to expand to just over 2,000 workers.) As Molloy puts it, "If I'm going to spend money on transit, I want bus service every five minutes to the airport, not a rail line for Amgen workers and their private park." The route's usefulness would also be limited by its location just west of the existing railroad tracks, which cut off the waterfront and Amgen from 15th Avenue West, and by its proximity to the planned monorail, which would run a few hundred yards away.

Relatively low ridership projections were one reason consultants who conducted the city's 2004 study proposed first extending the trolley east up Jackson Street, rather than north along the waterfront. According Bob Santos, a longtime International District resident and director of Interim Community Development, extending the trolley east up Jackson, "should be a top priority for any kind of new streetcar development." But Miller's plan relocates the maintenance base north of viaduct reconstruction, cutting the north extension off from Pioneer Square and the International District during viaduct reconstruction. Putting the maintenance base so far north would effectively postpone an eastern extension until after a viaduct replacement is built, leaving a heavily transit-dependent population without a streetcar. Miller dismisses concerns about her plan's impact on the proposed eastern trolley extension, saying, "I've solved this problem. I can't solve every problem."

Miller is similarly breezy when discussing another potential concern about the waterfront plan: Bike and pedestrian paths, which traverse a narrow strip of land between the shore and existing railroad tracks in Myrtle Edwards and Elliott Bay Parks, would have to be moved, a process Miller says would involve "a tiny, really minor, slight bit of impact--otherwise, it's a piece of cake." According to the 2004 study: "Much of the alignment is located in a park-like setting. The introduction [of the streetcar] would change corridor esthetics and would possibly alter westward views toward the waterfront."

Conlin adds, "The park is a huge amenity for north downtown, and it's a transportation corridor for bicycles." The need to preserve the heavily traveled bike lane would also limit the trolley to a single track, though Miller says her plan would include a "passing track" that would allow trains to pass one another. According to the report, however, a double streetcar track would be needed to "provide meaningful transit service"; with just one track, the report continues, "reliable frequencies" would be "limit[ed]."

Will all of these concerns be enough to stop Miller's plan in its tracks? Unlikely, say Miller's fellow port commissioners. "If it's strictly a matter of dollars, then we have the money," commissioner Alec Fisken says. As for votes, Miller needs just three: Her own, plus Bob Edwards and Pat Davis--the two port commissioners who stood at Miller's side when she announced the streetcar proposal.

barnett@thestranger.com