The Cable Car That Would Have Opened Union Bay
A promoter promises English capital, jobs, and a wharf at the foot of Seneca Street; a rival railway president warns Seattle is already overbuilt.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
Speaking of the proposed cable road up Seneca Street to Fourteenth and thence out to Union Bay, for which he applied to the council for a franchise, John Parkinson said yesterday:
"This line will not antagonize the interests of any of the other roads now in existence, but it will open up an entirely new section of the city, and a fine one, too, which now has no means of transportation whatever. If the franchise is given us the road will be built, and work commenced on it practically at once, and completed within a year. It will be a good thing for the city, give employment to a large number of men, and every dollar of the cost will be defrayed by foreign capitalists who are now in no wise interested in this city. The road will be a double-track cable line about three and one-half miles long and will cost from $300,000 to $400,000. The men who will advance the money for this enterprise live in England, New York and San Francisco, and if they are permitted to make this investment I believe that it will be followed up by other investments to the extent of $1,000,000. The building of the road will also insure the building of the finest wharf on Puget Sound at the foot of Seneca Street."
F. T. Billings, president of the Consolidated Street Railway Company, speaking of the proposed new lines of street railway, said:
"There are too many roads here now, and the building of more will only defer the time when those now in existence will become profitable. The proposed Seneca-street line does not cut into the territory of other roads, but it will tend to develop a new section, and by just so much retard the settlement of property along existing lines. The proposed Phinney line is altogether unnecessary. It is a parallel line, and is not demanded by public convenience. The business now insufficient to maintain one line giving a first-class public service will be divided among two lines, and the result must be that either both roads must suffer a heavy loss for a long time to come or the service to the public on both be so deteriorated as to make the lines of little or no convenience. Our company offered to connect with Mr. Phinney's road and run his cars for him to the end of our line and furnish him the power to run over his extension for two-fifths of the receipts. Now I think that was a fair divvy, but he wants a railroad of his own."
“It will be a good thing for the city, give employment to a large number of men, and every dollar of the cost will be defrayed by foreign capitalists.”
The Seneca Street cable fight is an early version of a Seattle argument that never quite goes away: whether new transit lines should open fresh land for development or protect the investments already built. Promises of outside capital and construction jobs were weighed against warnings of duplicated service and speculative sprawl. Replace cable cars with light rail and the rhetoric is recognisable.
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