Service was officially suspended on November 18, 2005, when the maintenance barn and Broad Street station were demolished to make room for the Seattle Art Museum's Olympic Sculpture Park.

The original city streetcar system in Seattle ceased operations in April 1941 and was replaced with a network of electric trolleybuses and motor buses.

City councilman George Benson first proposed the idea of building a streetcar line along the Seattle waterfront in 1974, a year after he was elected to the council, to be operational in time for the national Bicentennial on July 4, 1976.

Eventually, the proposal garnered enough support from the public and Benson's fellow council members that funds were allocated for an engineering and design study,[2] ultimately leading to the approval of the project.

[8] The streetcar ceased operation on November 18, 2005, when the maintenance barn was demolished to make room for the Seattle Art Museum's Olympic Sculpture Park.

[13] In spring 2012, a large portion of the trackage and the stations at Pike, University, Madison and Washington streets were demolished in as a part of the construction project drilling a deep bore tunnel to replace the Alaskan Way Viaduct.

In 2015, the Federal Transit Administration informed King County that if the streetcars are not put back in service soon, Metro would need to pay $205,000 to compensate the agency for its remaining investment in the cars.

[14] At the same time, the warehouse used to store the streetcars was in poor condition and the land needed for expansion of a neighboring bus base.

[14] In January 2016, it was announced that a private venture, Friends of the Benson Trolleys, was intending to raise the money required to retrofit two of the streetcars to allow them to be used on the future Center City Connector on 1st Avenue.

[16] The remaining three cars were sold by King County to St. Louis, for use on their heritage Delmar Loop Trolley,[15][17] for which they will need several modifications before they can be used.

[20] Because the warehouse in which they had been stored since the end of Waterfront Streetcar service in 2005 was due to be torn down, to make way for expansion of a Metro bus garage, the streetcars were moved out in early June 2016, to a private site in Arlington, Washington, where they will be stored indefinitely, awaiting possible future developments in the proposals for their return to service.

[25][26] The streetcar was located entirely within Metro's Free Ride Area, but charged a normal fare paid with cash or a valid bus transfer or pass.