Curley: South Lake Union streetcar remains ‘a total waste of money’ despite ridership gains

The City of Seattle is celebrating the increase in ridership on the South Lake Union streetcar, but KIRO host John Curley remains unimpressed by the data.

The streetcar, which extends from Westlake to South Lake Union, saw a 26% bump in 2025 compared to 2024, with preliminary 2026 data mirroring 2025 trends.

“I told Katie Wilson, I said, “Listen, if you run the one thing, first thing you want to get rid of is that South Lake Union trolley,” Curley said. “That thing is a total waste of money.”

While ridership approached 250,000 people in 2025, the numbers still pale in comparison to those before the pandemic. In 2019, more than 500,000 people rode the South Lake Union streetcar, followed by 90,000 in 2020, 107,000 in 2021, 180,000 in 2022, 236,000 in 2023, and 223,000 in 2024, according to the Seattle Department of Transportation’s (SDOT) Annual Streetcar Operating Report.

Even if the South Lake Union streetcar returns to pre-pandemic numbers, Curley believes that’s a false positive.

“[Let’s say] the South Lake Union trolley is now back up to 2019 ridership. That’s not good,” Curley said. “Why is that not good? Because they take the total population of 2019 and then look at the population where we are in 2026. Well, the population has gone up. It’s gone up by about 9%. If the South Lake Union trolley is now carrying the same number of riders it did in 2019, which was whoop-de-do, a big success, about 18 an hour or something like that. Our population’s gone up, but the ridership hasn’t gone up, so they haven’t really increased when you look at everything being equal.”

How much does the South Lake Union streetcar cost?

After crunching some numbers, Curley found it costs each taxpayer $20 to take the streetcar.

“I wanted to find out how much it costs me, the taxpayer, to have somebody sit on that stupid trolley and go less than a mile,” Curley said. “The distance of the thing is 1.3 miles, which is the total fare. It’s $20 every time somebody gets on that. It costs you and me and everybody else 20 bucks for somebody to ride the thing and, on average, they’re riding it for 800 yards.”

According to SDOT, it costs approximately $4.5 million per year to operate and maintain the South Lake Union streetcar in Seattle. The streetcar averages 500 passengers a day.

“I found out that part of the money that they want to spend is because they think that their passenger electronic counting thing above the door may be damaged,” Curley added. “Maybe. So you’re admitting that it’s not functioning correctly. Maybe it’s accidentally counting 500 [people] a day? I said to Katie, ‘There’s no way 500 people ride that thing, and even if they do, that’s 500 times $20 for each person on that thing in order to go 800 yards.'”

Watch the full discussion in the video above.

Listen to John Curley weekday afternoons from 3 – 7 p.m. on KIRO Newsradio, 97.3 FM. Subscribe to the podcast here.

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