Why Seattle’s Streetcar Project Is a $500M Mistake We Need to Stop

Why Seattle’s Streetcar Project Is a $500M Mistake We Need to Stop

POV: It’s time to get real—this streetcar nonsense needs to stop.

I’m sorry, but pouring half a billion dollars into extending a single mile of track is not just irresponsible—it’s outright absurd.

The city has burned almost twenty years and millions of dollars on this ill-fated project, and somehow, we’re still pretending a 19th-century relic is the answer to modern public transportation.

This isn’t some quirky nod to history. It’s a financial sinkhole.

And DSA cannot seem to admit that it’s a sunk cost and it’s time to move on.

Let’s be clear: streetcars are nothing more than glorified buses on rails.

But at least buses don’t require tracks, a dedicated power grid, or an entire set of specialized maintenance staff and facilities. The upkeep alone is astronomical.

And if you look at the math, the numbers are a joke.

Even if we magically increased daily ridership tenfold to 5,000 people, we’d only be looking at 1.25 million riders per year.

Even if each person paid $5 a ride, that’s just $6.25 million annually—nowhere near enough to cover the costs, let alone make a dent in traffic.

Public transportation doesn’t have to be profitable, but it shouldn’t be a massive, ongoing money drain, either.

Instead of pouring millions into this dead-end project, why not use some of the money to figure out a real, 21st-century solution?

Tunnels, hyperloop, self-driving shuttles, something built for modern needs using modern technology.

I don’t know what the exact answer is, but I know it isn’t clinging to 19th-century tech.

It’s time to stop chasing this failure and look for solutions that actually work. Time to end the SLUT (they should have kept that name).

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