page_title: Trolleybuses in Seattle
section_title: Rebirth of the trolleybus system
hierarchical_section_title: Trolleybuses in Seattle / History / Rebirth of the trolleybus system
caption_attribution_description: English: King County Metro trolleybus
context_page_description: The Seattle trolleybus system forms part of the public transportation network in the city of Seattle, Washington, operated by King County Metro. Originally opened on April 28, 1940, the network consists of 15 routes, with 174 trolleybuses operating on 68 miles of two-way overhead wires. As of spring 2016, the system carries riders on an average of 73,200 trips per weekday, comprising about 18 percent of King County Metro’s total daily ridership. At present in Seattle, a very common alternative term for trolleybus is trolley.
  Of the five trolleybus systems currently operating in the U.S., the Seattle system is the second largest, after the San Francisco system.
context_section_description: The new Metro Transit began operation on January 1, 1973, and in 1974 it began working on fleshing-out the plans to rehabilitate and expand Seattle's trolleybus network, hiring a consulting firm in 1975 to carry out the technical aspects of the design. On January 21, 1978, the system was shut down, and while passengers rode diesel-powered coaches, crews began installing new overhead wire, switches, and a new power distribution system. In 1977, Metro placed an order for 109 AM General trolleys, the first new trolleybuses for the city since the 1940s. The first of these was delivered in April 1979. The first routes were back in trolley service on September 15, 1979. Over the next two years, more routes were placed back into service as construction was completed and new coaches delivered. By the summer of 1981, the entire trolley system was back up and running.
  In addition to modernization, the 1978–1981 rebuilding included expansion, resurrecting several closed routes and adding a long, new route to Ballard.  These included former routes 3-North Queen Anne – Jefferson Park and 4-East Queen Anne – Montlake, which STS had closed in 1970.  The Downtown-to-Queen Anne portions of those routes were reinstated with the same route numbers. The Jefferson Park trolleybus route was reinstated as route 1, connected to route 1-Kinnear, but extended from Spokane Street to Dawson Street, 1.1 mi (1.8 km) farther south than the old route had run.  The former route 4-Montlake was revived as route 43, Downtown–Montlake–University District and extended west with a new, never-before-existing section of trolleybus route between the University District and Ballard.  Former route 9-Broadway was also replaced by route 7 and extended across the University Bridge to the University District, returning trolleybus service to much of former route 7-15th Avenue NE, which had been abandoned as a trolleybus service in 1963. Other corridors were also considered but ultimately rejected for trolleybus service, including Aurora Avenue.
  By 1981, Metro started to consider the future of the remaining 1940s trolleybuses, which had been in storage since the beginning of the system rehabilitation in 1978. A group of employees founded the Metro Employees Historic Vehicle Association (MEHVA) in December 1981 to preserve, restore and operate some of the vintage coaches. Under the agreement, Metro maintained ownership of the historic fleet, providing insurance coverage, storage space, work space and spare parts on an 'as available' basis. The first trolleybus to be restored by MEHVA was 1944 Pullman-Standard No. 1005, and regular public excursions around the trolleybus system with No. 1005 began in 1985. In the summer of the following year, MEHVA scheduled three four-hour excursions and six one-hour trips, but the number was much smaller in subsequent years, with three or four per year.  Since the early 1990s, MEHVA has normally operated two vintage-trolleybus excursions per year: a four-hour daytime trip and a 2 ½-hour evening trip, and this pattern continues as of 2017.  Operation of historic trolleybuses has also taken place for special events, such as the commemoration of the 60th anniversary of the Seattle trolleybus system, in April 2000. In the years since MEHVA has continued to add additional trolley and motor buses to the historic fleet.
   
  Sixty-foot-long articulated trolleybuses were added to the fleet in 1986–87. The 46 coaches, designed by MAN of West Germany and built at a North Carolina MAN plant, were assigned to the busy routes 7 and 43, equivalent to present-day routes 7, 49, 43 and 44 (before a 1993 splitting of route 43 into routes 43 and 44, and a 2005 splitting of route 7 into routes 7 and 49), all of which continue to use articulated trolleybuses today. These were the first articulated trolleybuses in North America, other than single experimental vehicles or manufacturer demonstrators on loan, and they began to enter service in April 1987.
  The construction of the Downtown Seattle Transit Tunnel under 3rd Avenue beginning in 1986 forced many of the 
caption: A Gillig Phantom trolleybus on
  route 4 in downtown, August 2005
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