This Week in Queen Anne History
Image courtesy of MOHAI
On June 30, 1919, a Seattle Municipal Railway streetcar making its way down Taylor Avenue lost control and jumped off the tracks at Aloha Street, injuring six passengers and giving a dozen more a terrible fright.
According to the motorman on the route, he recognized a problem with the car’s air compressor but was still able to use the controller and hand brake to slow it. Concerned about the loss of air, he passed stops along the route down Taylor’s steep slope, as he did not want to heavily load the car. He made one last stop at Galer Street and continued down the hill. When the car reached Ward Street, the controller burned out completely rendering the handbrake useless. At 1:45 pm, as the car sped toward the right-hand turn curve in the tracks at Aloha Street, the motorman had no way to slow it.
Traveling far too fast to negotiate the westward turn, the runaway car jumped the tracks and plowed across Aloha Street at a high rate of speed. The car was slowed by the unpaved surface of Taylor Avenue south of Aloha Street, and then by a large pile of heavy lumber. But these obstacles did not stop it. The streetcar’s path was finally blocked by a small bank on the right side of the road near a dwelling, halfway down the block.
Incredibly, the streetcar remained upright during its harrowing, trackless journey. Because of this good fortune, the resulting injuries were mostly minor, with all but one of the injured released from the hospital on the same day. The city would have been ill prepared to deal with the incident had the injuries been more extensive; a July 1, 1919 Seattle Times article recounting the accident reported that a call was received by the police station for “all the ambulances that can be sent.” But, the article concluded, the city’s only ambulance was out on a call and did not return for quite some time.
On the same day that they reported the accident, the Times ran a front-page editorial titled, “Eliminate this Peril”, which stated that the accident proved the urgent need for a change in the routing of the North and East Queen Anne streetcars. They suggested relocating the turn to a block further south at Valley Street. They argued that extending the trackage to Valley Street would eliminate a sharp turn at the bottom of a steep grade, as Taylor flattens out considerably between Aloha and Valley streets. Notably absent from their editorial was any call to increase the number of ambulances in service.