Not content with building the most expensive light-rail line in the world, Seattle has to keep up with its Northwest neighbor, Portland, by opening a streetcar line — the unfortunately named South Lake Union Trolley (SLUT). Although this line is only opening today, they are already talking about building more.
Testing the SLUT.Flickr photo by Choconancy.
Streetcars are so insipid that their advocates barely even claim that they have anything to do with transportation. Instead, they are supposed to stimulate economic development — though the only evidence of that is from Portland, which just happened to offer hundreds of millions of dollars of subsidies to developers along its streetcar line. Especially when you consider that many of those subsidies went to the construction of parking garages, can anyone really think that the streetcar had anything to do with the developments?
