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Posts by Adron

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by Adron

Introducing The Morning Commuters

I boarded the bus again on a not so normal bright and sunny morning in Seattle. Day #X of my Ballard commute into Seattle. The #17 Express and #17 came spot on time. The #17 Express, as usual, packed em’ in and filled every single seat at this stop. I waited the extra few minutes for the #18 Express. Upon boarding I saw a lot of the familiar faces. It is, in some ways, reassuring to board the bus in the morning and see a lot of familiar faces.

Biz Magazine Gal – One young lady is always reading a magazine of sorts. Looks sort of like a business magazine, but she always folds it back at the spine. This makes it impossible to really see what it is.

Rich Red – Another young woman is always reading a thriller or some type of exciting top 40 looking book. She raises it up so barely a soul could see her face.

Grumpy Frunk – A fella in the back is always sitting, partly stooped over from lack of sleep, and makes a failing attempt everyday at catching sleep on the bus.

Chicky Shades – Another gal boards the bus, and always strikes me as having hit the bong or maybe drank a few to many rounds the night before. Fortunately she’s plenty professional, as everyone aboard this express bus at this hour is.

Suit Guy #1 – This guy usually read a newspaper. That’s this thing made of paper, which is made from a dead tree. It looks like he has transit experience because he politely folds it up via the “quadruple fold” method and reads it that way.

Suit Guy #2 – Almost the same guy, except looks a little more like the “business suit killed the rock star” guy. He’s always got his face pulled into his phone, reading whatever it is that he reads.

Serious Fighter Guy – This guy probably doesn’t fight at all, but one never knows. He looks like he was built for fighting championships. Strapped like a guy out of 300.

Burlesque Lady – Often a girl, looking shockingly hot and wearing a coat over her burlesque outfit is off to ?? I’ve no idea in Seattle. Wasn’t sure the city had anything like this that a young lady would be going to at 7:52am in the morning.

Spunky Hair Dude – This guy is some type of office worker. Has great taste in shoes, but the worst taste in the history of men in shirts. Usually some nonsensical assault on the eyes like pink (salmon? whatever, it’s pink) stripes. One has stripes with dots!? I’m appalled that a designer of any sort would have the notion that this is a good combination to put on a single piece of clothing. Blagh!? 😦

Condom Man – Yup, we have one of those guys get aboard. Loads his bike and boards in about 3 seconds. Real military like, but always wearing the funny look bicycle spandex cloths (or whatever the material is, I’ve no idea). He looks like a man wrapped in a condom. Thus I’ve dubbed him the Condom Man.

Those are all the notable people, that I see, almost everyday riding the #18 Express into Seattle.

In the near future I’ve been pondering taking a more round about trip, just to enjoy different scenery and see who the “regulars” would be on that route. Until then, cheers!

by Adron

Jeez Seattle, Come On… But Seriously, Cool Stuff Afoot!

Yesterday morning as all three buses pulled up to the Market and Ballard Stop I watched as about 25 people boarded the #17 Express, 3 on the #17, and 11 on the #18 Express. A total of 39 people at one stop is pretty impressive.

Today the morning departures came in exactly on time, one after another. The #17 Express boarded 13 people, the #17 boarded 2, and the #18 Express boarded 13. This seemed a bit more the average than yesterday.

However, we did have a dead bus that Metro Workers were working diligently to get out of the the stop. The bus had spewed some oil and the guy taking care of it had thrown down a material that pulls the oil up to prevent any additional from seeping into the cement or roadway cracks.

The last few days of commuting have been good, no serious delays and for the most part, the buses have arrived at the stops I board on time. When I say on time, regular readers know I literally mean on the dot too! I’m a stickler for that. Not that it is a big deal to me if they’re a few minutes late, but I’m always happy when things go according to plan. 😉

There is one thing I’ve noticed over the last few weeks that I knew, but recently it has really resounded loud a clear.

The City of Seattle and surrounding city areas just are not remotely as serious about transit as San Francisco, Portland, or Vancouver British Columbia. Seattle is looking at 2022-2023 before they lay down light rail that should have been built 10-20 years ago to Bellevue and Redmond. (or the city should have bulked up its original transit system instead of letting it die) As far as north western cities go, Seattle is the least progressive when it comes to transit (Ok, some could maybe argue Spokane, but it doesn’t always come to mind).

However, there is a silver lining. Seattle still manages, mostly through no political competency but mostly pure simple lay of the land, to have clean power through hydro. It has fairly clean transport by American Standards because the citizens in the area are generally thoughtful of such things. The air is clean by measure of many American Cities also. Seattle just lacks luster in getting serious transit infrastructure built compared to its immediate neighbors.

That just bums me out.

However, I’ve been a happy citizen as of late. The city overall is doing pretty well, and even amid these bouts of infighting and backwards mentalities from the east side there is some shining examples of great strides forward (I’m not sugar coating it, it’s mostly the east side that has this perverse orientation and obsession with everything being massive paved over roadways, livability be damned!)

Seattle is Kicking Bicycles into High Gear on Dexter!

One of these examples is the bike way from the Fremont area to downtown were bus stop islands, bike ways and bike lanes are being put into place, and generally the roadway as a whole is being improved dramatically. I hope to get some pictures soon of this and get an entry put together to discuss and describe what they’re doing.

Another great example of progress is citizen activity around building out improvements to the transit system with things like One Bus Away. Even though King County Metro doesn’t put much effort into these things (unlike TriMet, San Francisco, etc) there are efforts among local coders to make sure these extremely valuable tools are maintained and expanded for use. Hopefully King County Metro will get on board with more support in the near future but either way, it is great to see the individual support of Seattle Citizens taking this on themselves to make things better!

King Street Station is Looking…

Sexy. This station, which was once and will again one day be a magnificent piece of American Architecture and design. The station is getting cleaned up and rebuilt in some places to assure it continues to remain standing another 100 years! This station has a huge amount of history for the city and had been in disrepair, but now there is a great future awaiting the station. This then leads me to…

King Street Station, Union Station, International District Station to First Hill to Broadway Streetcar!!!!

Yes, Seattle is stepping it up with a streetcar in what is probably the most happening part of the city. Night life, art, architecture, startups, small business, schools, neighborhoods, restaurants, and more all are on Capitol Hill. With the addition of this primary arterial mover, a streetcar line, running from Cap Hill down to the train station and the International District/Union Station Tunnel Stop two major connection points will be brought together. I also imagine that this streetcar might have higher ridership than the existing one on Westlake. But that brings me to my last positive point…

Amazon is Kicking Ass and Bringing Life to Westlake and South Lake Union

Amazon, a major Seattle employer is in the process of building out several major buildings and moving it’s 12k + employee headquarters to South Lake Union. This has caused the ridership on the SLUT (South Lake Union Trolley) to skyrocket. Travel down that way and check out the stops around Amazon at any time during rush hour and you’ll see 20-40 people waiting to board at several stops. I could imagine if they expanded that streetcar into downtown to Pioneer Square and up into East Lake they’d have one of the busiest transit routes in the city with the completion. Already as it is the ridership is finally getting up there.

This means the streetcar will likely take its place as the cleanest mode of transport per passenger in the city, finally beating out the Monorail and Ferries. But we shall see. 🙂

Overall there are a lot of great things going on even though it often seems as if it is in spite of the transit agencies themselves. I’m hoping to see even more improved and better energy between the Seattleites and transit authorities themselves as time goes forward. As Sound Transit, The Seattle Streetcar, and King County Metro all improve the system with BRT, Light Rail, Streetcars, and increased service levels along major arterials Seattle will finally start pushing forward in a big way.

It is, after all, one of the biggest cities in the north west and it could easily take the lead in many of these neighborhood, complete streets, and transit related efforts!

by Adron

Green Transit

I was pondering recently, even with all the fussing the naysayers have about transit, what was accomplished when TriMet finished the Green Line connecting another couple of neighborhoods to the light rail system plus multiple park and rides.

The first thing was the system picked up another 17-18k riders per day. The riders on this line were almost entirely new at first. At least 10-15k of them. The busiest bus line in the city, the #72 plying up and down 82nd Avenue, saw almost zero change to the ridership. Being only about 1-6 blocks at various points from the light rail one might have thought some of the riders would have switched modes. The simple explanation is that the #72 serves a specific constituency and the light rail serves another constituency.

There is however one huge difference. After a period of 18-20 years Trimet will have spent – including infrastructure – less on the light rail service than on the bus service on 82nd Avenue while getting a growing ridership on the green line that will even surpass those estimates.

What does that mean?

It means Trimet will have more money to spend, operationally and for infrastructure, on other parts of the system.

Fast forward to my current city I’m living in. The light rail that Sound Transit is building is almost 10x the cost of what Portland is building. Primarily because Seattle’s Sound Transit is getting the light rail built in raised and subterranean infrastructure. This type of infrastructure is inordinately expensive. A cost, that at this point is unneeded.

Recently Federal Way requested that Sound Transit make sure the promise of light rail doesn’t disappear from the future. Right now, from a money perspective, Sound Transit has basically told the city it won’t be getting light rail. I see two massive problems here.

1. There isn’t money for the current plan to get light rail into Federal Way. That’s the plain and simple reality of the matter.
2. Sound Transit and most of the area Governments are inflexible on building light rail more cost consciously.

Now these are the two problems at the surface. Looking a little deeper, just below the surface, one will immediately notice the real problems. Both of which I’ve raised here at Transit Sleuth a number of times over the years.

The first problem is that the Government assumes the economy will do X and has almost no plans to mitigate when Y happens. Our currency is hosed, so an individual citizen of Seattle can safely assume that all plans moving forward that aren’t already under contraction and paid for are on the chopping block. Yes, EVERYTHING. Increasing funds and taxes won’t particularly help either until some politician in the White House gets the balls to do something about our currency and valuation against the global markets. Right now we’re sunk. That’s the summary position of problem #1.

Problem number two is a different beast. With the money that is allocated so far Sound Transit could do a lot of infrastructure investment. They could, in all honesty, get to Federal Way. The problem lies in Federal and State Regulation that causes Sound Transit to be rather inflexible in how or what they can do with that infrastructure money. This inflexibility we as citizens we do want and don’t want.

Either way, I digress, I hope that Seattle and Sound Transit can find a better way to get real infrastructure with high quality transit built. Right now the ambitions look good, but more reality needs brought to focus. This massive high cost light rail infrastructure probably is not the best way to go about getting higher capacity and higher quality transit to the Seattle area.

by Adron

Transit Projects in Seattle

Out of all the transit projects that I’m excited about, the Capitol Hill Streetcar is up towards the top. Don’t get me wrong, I’m excited about the light rail efforts, but the city/Sound Transit is taking the slowest bloody route possible to get those done. I don’t even know if I’ll live in Settle anymore let alone close to it! Most of the big light rail changes the population that could use it now will be old! Absurd the lethargic speed in which things are being done here.

But I digress, check out the streetcar work starting! It’s gonna be exciting when it is done. I can only imagine how much more life it will bring to cap hill. I just hope it doesn’t damage through to much gentrification, a little wouldn’t hurt, but too much would be less than ideal.

by Adron

Rethinking Transit #2: Make the Route Transitions Transparent

Ok this might actually take some effort on behalf of King County Metro. But seriously, it would help tremendously for anyone traveling through downtown. Most routes come into the city from the north, south, or east (the ferries come in from the west). One example is the #18, which arrives downtown from the north and then becomes another route. Sometimes it becomes the #56 or something else that then heads south, but I’m not always sure what it becomes. It isn’t entirely obvious without doing research on a regular basis and studying the schedules (which again is mostly nonsense). So what’s the solution I proffer? Stop making these routes independent. I understand they’re “different routes” or whatever, but you don’t actually transfer. Not in a physical way. It also doesn’t make sense to any logical person, if you paid when you got on and then when you get off again they want you to pay again. The confusion is stupid. However, I’ll leave the fixes to the fare collection system for another day, so don’t get tangled in all that nonsense.

What I suggest, is keep a route number (or whatever designates the entirety of the route) the same. If the #18 starts at North Beach, goes through Ballard, and generally becomes a #56 that heads south to SW Alaska Way or whatever, just pick a number for that route and stick with it. Stop being all bi-polar about what the route number needs to be as soon as a bus gets downtown. This only serves to confuse regular riders and people that don’t regularly use the system are screwed. Those individuals have no chance of understanding at first glance what in the world the system is doing. If the #18 however changes to another route, say #21, then just change that routes number to #21 from the get go and give it a full north to south alignment.

What other problems does this bi-polar splitting of the route? It makes bus drivers have to deal with passenger confusion all the time. Passengers come up all the time and ask, “where does this bus go now?” or if they know a little bit about the system they ask “what route is this bus changing to?”  Once you’ve boarded there is no way to know without harassing the bus driver. I’m pretty sure they’d be cool with simplifying it for the passengers and just saying this is the #18 route from north to south or the #21 route from north to south. Also, don’t give me some nonsense about this being some normal way to run a bus system, it may be but its a crappy thing to do. For once, act like it actually matters that the passenger has a usable product (the transit service) and make it work for them.

Anyway, that’s solution #2. If you have any ideas, I’d love to hear them! There are lots of improvements to make and I’d be more than happy to be a sounding board for the ideas!

Until another time, happy riding!

In case you want more information about King Count Transit.