South Lake Union Trolley is a Spendy Ride for Taxpayers

CHS reader Alan snapped this shot of a derailed SLU trolley on his Samsung tablet yesterday.

"King County Metro’s 2010 budget for running the streetcars was nearly $2.5 million," says the Puget Sound Business Journal, noting that last year the streetcars brought in just $760,000 in revenue. That means cash-strapped King County Metro, which runs the South Lake Union streetcars, spent $1.7 million on the operation of a 2.6-mile line. 

Though the Seattle Streetcar is part of the Seattle Department of Transportation, Metro pays 75 percent of its operating costs, with the city chipping in the remaining 25 percent. The city's 2011 adopted budget (pdf) assumed average daily ridership of 3,800 in 2011, and for the farebox eventually to return 55 percent of operating costs. 

That will represent a substantial jump. Last year ridership (which had increased 15 percent from 2009) reached 1,800 per day on average, so the projection is a 200 percent increase. Of last year's revenue, only $560,000 came from fares, and of that that, only $149,000 came as cash from the farebox. ($200,000 came from sponsorship, down from $386,000 in 2009, and very far from the $450,000 projected for 2011.)

The remaining $411,000 in fare revenue is an "estimate," says the PSBJ, based on the use of transportation passes, yet if you use an ORCA card, there's no reader to tap yet. I am not sure how Metro is really receiving revenue if there's no way to pay via ORCA, so I don't trust that "revenue" means what they think it means in this context. It may be that the taxpayer is footing over 80 percent of the line's operating costs, and I am waiting for Metro to call me back to explain (SDOT thought Metro would be better equipped to walk me through the details).

UPDATE: Ethan Melone, Rail Transit Manager for the Seattle Streetcar, writes:

We have automated passenger counters that tell us the ridership, and we do periodic fare checks during which the supervisors record the form of the proof of payment provided by the riders. We also have the total count of tickets sold at the wayside and onboard ticket vending machines. So, we can calculate the number of rides that were taken for which an ORCA card was the proof of payment, and we apply an average fare per ORCA-user trip, which is a little less than half the peak hour fare.

We do have plans for getting ORCA readers on the streetcar. Metro is currently working with the ORCA vendor to design the modifications to the ORCA equipment/software used on buses to the streetcar. We do not have an estimated timeframe yet.

SDOT, meanwhile, has just spent $900,000 on the newly opened McGraw Square downtown: 

The goals of the new, centrally-located plaza are to make walking and biking through north downtown safer and more comfortable, and to improve transfer opportunities between the Seattle Streetcar, Monorail, light rail tunnel, and major bus routes.

I do like that biking emphasis. For cyclists planning to park their bikes and take light rail, the Monorail or the street car, SDOT will put in an "integrated transit shelter/covered bicycle parking for up to 10 bikes." I biked past over the weekend, and didn't see it there yet. As you know, there are no bike racks at the Westlake entrance to the light rail tunnel--either outside or inside.