Here’s how I look at it.

If you weren’t politically willing to repaint a street for dedicated bus lanes at a minimum then you should reconsider the intention behind building a streetcar

Seattle built a first hill streetcar and a South Lake Union Trolley without dedicated lanes because they couldn’t negotiate with businesses about taking away space from roads that already had travel lanes, parking, and protected bike lanes. Given that they could not sort this conundrum out the resulting streetcar follows an alignment in which it travels in car traffic and is generally unreliable

The Downtown connector project, if it ever gets built is supposed to link these two surface rail lines together and it is estimated that it would boost ridership substantially but it doesn’t matter. The nail is in the coffin. Most people look at the streetcar as something to ridicule because they could walk faster than it.

Now SDOT is hoping to bring some bus lane projects online in a span of the next few years. These bus lane projects are treated much more seriously than any surface rail project would ever get. Because when it comes down to it buses are not exciting to the general public, not nostalgic, and do not always yield the same real estate investment but when a city is really invested in improving their buses it really means that they’re invested in improving service, and good service is the most impactful thing a city can ever have