Seattle voters approve purchase of Rainier Valley interurban line on March 7, 1911.

  • By Walt Crowley
  • Posted 10/02/2000
  • HistoryLink.org Essay 2692
See Additional Media

On March 7, 1911, Seattle voters approve $800,000 in municipal bonds to purchase the ailing Seattle, Renton and Southern Railway, an electric interurban line that ran between Seattle and Renton. After the vote, the railway owners raise their price to $1.2 million, and Seattle reprograms the money to establish the Division A line between downtown Seattle and Ballard. This new line enters service in 1914.

Purchase of the Rainier Valley line, which was the region's first true interurban railway, was prompted by patron dissatisfaction and by labor disputes. Service was mediocre and passengers were treated poorly. The line failed to meet many franchise obligations, such as paving between tracks, but voters rejected finance plans in the 1913 and 1928 elections. The company had a franchise good to the end of 1934: On December 31 of that year the City of Seattle allowed the franchise to expire. Service on the line ended January 1, 1937.


Sources:

Leslie Blanchard, The Street Railway Era in Seattle: A Chronicle of Six Decades (Forty Fort, PA: Harold E. Cox, 1968); Walt Crowley, Routes: A Brief History of Public Transportation in Metropolitan Seattle (Seattle: Metro Transit, 1993).


Licensing: This essay is licensed under a Creative Commons license that encourages reproduction with attribution. Credit should be given to both HistoryLink.org and to the author, and sources must be included with any reproduction. Click the icon for more info. Please note that this Creative Commons license applies to text only, and not to images. For more information regarding individual photos or images, please contact the source noted in the image credit.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License
Major Support for HistoryLink.org Provided By: The State of Washington | Patsy Bullitt Collins | Paul G. Allen Family Foundation | Museum Of History & Industry | 4Culture (King County Lodging Tax Revenue) | City of Seattle | City of Bellevue | City of Tacoma | King County | The Peach Foundation | Microsoft Corporation, Other Public and Private Sponsors and Visitors Like You