unfavorable in its first years of operation, in part because of its low ridership; all but one of the candidates in the 2009 city council and mayoral elections stated that the streetcar was a bad idea when asked during a public debate. By 2010, streetcar ridership had reached 500,000 annual boardings and was continuing to increase. Streetcar ridership rose in later years due to an increase in new businesses around South Lake Union, necessitating new service improvements. In May 2011, Amazon, the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, UW Medicine, and Group Health contributed $65,000 to the city government to fund a one-year pilot to use the line's spare streetcar during rush hours to increase frequency to 10 minutes. Amazon announced plans in 2012 to build a new high-rise headquarters campus in Denny Triangle near the streetcar line and offered to purchase a fourth streetcar and fund its operations for ten years at a cost of $3.7 million, allowing trains to arrive every 10 minutes during midday hours on weekdays. The streetcar, painted in Amazon's corporate orange, arrived as part of the First Hill fleet in early 2015 and entered service later that year. Increased traffic on Westlake Avenue and a decline in streetcar reliability by 2015 prompted the Seattle Department of Transportation to propose the installation of transit-only lanes along the street, which would be paired with increased bus service. The new lanes were added to improve reliability and headways for the streetcar and required the temporary suspension of mid-day service for several weeks in early 2016. The new lanes took effect on March 21, 2016; a service change went into effect five days later to increase streetcar frequency to 10 minutes, add bus service on Route 40, and reroute the RapidRide C Line to terminate in South Lake Union. Similar lane restrictions on two blocks of Terry Avenue during rush hours went into effect in November 2018 and are planned to be extended south by another block in 2020. On March 23, 2020, the streetcar was shut down as part of large cuts to transit services amid the local coronavirus pandemic. Service resumed on September 19 with reduced frequencies and hours of operations in the evenings. Expansion plans City officials saw the South Lake Union line as the first in a network of streetcar routes extending north to the University District, west to the Seattle Center, and southeast to