Just a few shots of transit in service around Seattle. Enjoy. (Click on any image to see the FULL SIZE image – warning, they’re big)
Transit Photos in Seattle
Category / Bus Related
Flanged Wheel Please
Give me some steal rail vehicles. I took another bus ride out and about, as I’ve done hundreds of times before. The biggest gruff I have with buses is they have to travel on the roadways. The roadways in the US are absolutely falling apart – and if the roadways are as smooth as a runway, then the bus turns into a rickety rackety vibrating sardine can. It makes it very hard to do anything on board, such as using a cell phone, txting, working on a laptop, watching a DVD, or otherwise.
Almost any type of flanged wheel vehicle; streetcar, tram, trolley, light rail, passenger rail, or otherwise has almost none of these issues. Even on fairly rough track the issues are drastically reduced for maintaining a smooth ride. Throw in the fact that rails last decades longer than roadways at a vastly higher ride quality and you have some real money savings!
I digress though, I’m really glad to have what services are available! Seattle, Portland, Vancouver (BC), and San Francisco all have superb transit services (in spite of the locals, they always find reasons to bitch or become NIMBYs). Oh well, I’m off to board a train and just wanted to rant about crappy, unmaintainable roads beating up buses (and by proxy, all of us riding the bus).
A Few Not So Great Shots of the Snow
…with of course a transit focused emphasis. 🙂
A Little Bit of Commentary
So almost every single bus line is either shut down, on snow routes, or almost non-operational. Same thing happened to TriMet when it snowed and they got slammed for it. A few people in the community even ranted and raved about how TriMet had done a horrible job keeping the buses running. They noted that “Seattle didn’t have this problem and Seattle does way more to keep the buses running”. I can officially say that is not the case. The simple fact is, “BUSSES CAN’T RUN DURING THE SNOW!?!?!?!!!!”
Meanwhile in the reality of the realm of physics and serious infrastructure, Sounder and Link Light Rail are running just fine. There was a small delay on a Sounder run this evening. Thousands of people used this non-auto, non-bus based transport to get home without interruption or “alternate routes”. In inclement weather (which it seems we’ll be getting more and more of over the next century) rail absolutely rules. Rubber on road is an absolutely inferior technology for this type of situation. Also to add, the streetcar in Tacoma and Seattle are running without interruption. Seriously, American cities desperately need more rail. Not BRT, not extended buses, not all wheel drive buses, but rail. Hard care, large scale, massive infrastructure with trains and light rail on rail. It doesn’t stop during snow, heat, or otherwise. It is only minimally hampered in all but the most harsh weather. But I digress, on to more winter wonderland fun…
…with two last links…
Some news about all the snow on the Capital Hill
…and some sledding/luging down Denny.
A New Challenge, Metro Route #256
I decided to try a new route home on the 15th instead of my normal hop onto the Sound Transit #545. This was a mistake of grand proportions.
Usually from Overlake Transit Center to downtown the #545 usually takes about 18-22 minutes. Even on the worse day of traffic I’ve seen yet, it was still only about 35-40 minutes. The #545 is timely and frequent enough that I don’t worry much about missing one during the core work hours.
Fast forward to the #256, holy crimeny this bus goes on the oddest route. It only runs about every 30 minutes, but does go just enough different places that I suppose it has a reason to exist. The frequency however is horrible and Metro runs a full 60 foot bus on the route. This I don’t understand, the number of 60 ft buses that are used when 40 foot or even smaller buses would work fine. I suspect Metro uses way more fuel than they should really be using.
My Plan to Resolve the overuse of 60 foot Busses:
So I have this idea. Metro should send TriMet about 50-60 of these 60 foot buses and TriMet can send Metro some of their 40 foot busses. That way TriMet can bump up service appropriately on the #72, #9, #14, #15, and other routes accordingly and Metro can scale back their excessive capacity on route that don’t need the big busses.
There, another solution to a transit problem. Some other time I’ll throw out my random solution for the bottleneck of Highway 520 or 90 across Lake Washington. Those are some absurdities if I ever saw them.
Transit Sleuth 