Streetcar gets us untracked

"It's just a bus on rails," the guy beside me muttered.

"I don't think the times work very well," said the woman across the way. For Pete's sake. Can we bask in the Skittle-colored wonder of the South Lake Union streetcars for just a little while without our trademark grousing?

Can we see this not as a citywide expense for a small section of the population, but as a sign of true transit progress?

I admit, I asked for people's opinions recently, when I boarded the purple streetcar for my maiden 1.3-mile journey from the Westin Hotel to the Fred Hutchinson Center Research Center.

The ride was free then; as of Wednesday, passengers are required to pay a $1.50 fare.

Is it worth it? After years of transit hand-wringing, monorail-or-no-monorail and Sound Transit some days, I'll take a streetcar ride — even as the Seattle Department of Transportation works out the kinks.

The streetcar stalled twice in its first two weeks of service, forcing passengers off both times. A few days before Christmas, the orange streetcar hit a sport-utility vehicle at Mercer Street and Terry Avenue.

"They told us it was going to take cars off the street," one passenger cracked to me a few hours later. "They didn't tell us it would be one car at a time."

It didn't help, either, that passengers didn't know when the streetcars were arriving at each stop. SDOT finally calibrated the station signs last week.

And yet riders have been undaunted; there have been some 3,000 boardings a day since service began Dec. 12. (Numbers for fare-paying riders aren't yet available.)

The trio of wide-windowed wonders makes the cityscape look like something out of "The Jetsons," where people are transported smoothly and soundlessly, if not that swiftly.

I gave in to the cartoon theme music in my head as I watched the doors swish open, and people board wearing corporate badges and carrying bags from Whole Foods.

We passed buses. I spotted the monorail over my shoulder. I glanced into cars at preoccupied drivers who turned, startled, then smiled.

See? We're a bustling metropolis! Seattle is on the move! And for only $52.1 million!

It's worth it for people like Oanh Mai, 28, who takes the bus from Renton to Westlake Center, and then the streetcar to the University of Washington School of Medicine's biotech and research building on Mercer Street. She used to take the bus for the last leg, she said, but it was unpredictable.

"So far, so good," she said.

Gregory Buck, of Queen Anne, has ridden the streetcar four times since it started. He is annoyed that Mercer Street traffic has to stop to let the streetcar pass. Too many cars held up for too few passengers.

Don Vidger, of Queen Anne, shrugged off the griping about car counts and dollars spent.

"It will be worth it in three years, when it will cost four times as much to build something like this," he said.

"This is progress. Let's get started. Let's do something."

He's right. The streetcar may not go far. But in a city that has been waiting for some time to get somewhere, it seems a Miracle Mile — point three.

Nicole Brodeur's column appears Tuesday and Friday. Reach her at 206-464-2334 or nbrodeur@seattletimes.com.

Can we step on it a little?