Seattle Municipal Street Railway


The Seattle Municipal Street Railway was a city-owned streetcar network that served the city of Seattle, Washington and its suburban neighborhoods from 1919 to 1941. It was a successor to the horse-drawn Seattle Street Railway established in 1884, and immediate successor to the Puget Sound Traction, Power and Light Company Seattle division.

History

Origins and consolidation

The first streetcars in Seattle were operated by Frank Osgood as the Seattle Street Railway, which ran horsecars starting from September 23, 1884. Osgood went on to convert the horsecars to electric traction as the Seattle Electric Railway and Power Company, beginning with a test on March 30, 1889 and followed by regular service the next day. By 1891, Seattle had of street railway tracks, of which had been built since 1889.

In 1898, Stone & Webster began assembling a transit system by consolidating several smaller streetcar lines, including the Seattle Electric Railway. By 1900, Stone & Webster had amalgamated 22 lines and gained a 40-year operating franchise under a new power and transport utility named the Seattle Electric Company. The system also included cable car lines on Madison Street and Yesler Way. By the end of 1900, the City Council, under public pressure, forced Seattle Electric to provide free transfers between lines, and reduced their lease to 35-years. In 1907, Stone & Webster also acquired the lease to the Everett streetcar system, and in 1912 it combined all of its transit and utility holdings in the area under a new company, the Puget Sound Traction, Power and Light Company.

Municipal acquisition

The City of Seattle entered into direct competition with Seattle Electric by furnishing electricity in 1905 after completing the Seattle Municipal Light and Power Plant. As Seattle Electric was distinctly unpopular with the citizens of Seattle and prevented by a state mandate, several requests for fare increases from the existing 5 cents were denied; meanwhile, there was an increasing need to transport tens of thousands of workers responding to the demand for ships resulting from World War I. High shipworker wages and the lack of fare increases meant that by early summer 1918, approximately of Seattle Electric's cars were idle because they could not pay operators enough. In September 1918, PSTP&L agreed to sell its lines to the city, and several months of increasingly acrimonious negotiations followed.
On March 31, 1919, the city of Seattle purchased the entire Seattle division of PSTP&L's street railways but the price of the acquisition,, left the transit operation with an immense debt and an immediate need to raise fares, which hurt ridership. By 1936, the city still owed half the principal on the 1918 bonds used to purchase the system, and was faced with a $4 million operating deficit.
In 1939, a new transportation agency, the Seattle Transit System, was formed, which refinanced the remaining debt and began replacing equipment with "trackless trolleys" and motor buses. Yesler Way's cable car operation closed out that mode of service with a final run on August 9, 1940. The last streetcar ran on April 13, 1941.

Revival

A modern streetcar system debuted in 2007, with the introduction of the South [Lake Union Streetcar]. A second line, the First Hill Streetcar, opened in 2016. Further expansion plans were shelved in 2018 and remained unfunded as of 2024.

Legacy