by Adron

I Felt Spontaneous

Because of that, I got off the bus at Montlake Expressway Stop instead of getting all the way into the city on #545.  I didn’t know where I was, but figured “what the hell, I’ve got 2+ hours before I have to be somewhere.”

I got off and walked up the sidewalk to the main street.  The bus pulls off a side stop, called and Expressway Transit Stop or something, and people can get on or off the stops and walk up to the primary surface streets.  I got to the top and immediately saw about 50 bikes (ok, I didn’t count but there were a lot of them).

I walked across the overpass and to the south bound (toward downtown Seattle) and boarded the next bus that came along.  The #48 pulled up and I flicked my newly received Microsoft ORCA Card and off we went. 

After just a few minutes I got off again, not being sure where the #48 actually went, to check were and what route I needed to be on.  The #43, which I knew goes downtown, runs parallel to the #48 route along this road.  I could at least board it.  However I saw a Fuel Coffee Shop a second ago and decided to walk back to it.

I arrived and purchased an ice coffee.  I pulled the laptop out to figure out where I was, and where I needed to go to arrive at Fado in downtown Seattle by 6pm.  I first looked up Fado to be sure of the address ”801 1st Avenue, Seattle, WA 98104-1404”.  That looked good so then I looked up what routes I was near to figure out where I was actually at.  I found myself near E Lynn St and 24th on OneBusAway.  So now I went back to Google Maps and threw in the two address I knew of “801 1st Avenue, Seattle, WA 98104-1404” to “24th Ave E & E McGraw St”.

This is where I didn’t like the results.  Google Maps told me to go back to the Montlake Expressway stop and get on something from there to go downtown.  I didn’t want to do that so I figured I’d board the next #43 and just enjoy the scenery.  So with that I finished this entry up and…  vroom, off I went.

by Adron

Point to Point, Beautiful Seattle Transit Routes

Here’s a question or two for the Seattle Transit Traveler.  Which transit trip has a truly beautiful route?  I’ve been a fan, so far of #28.  however I know there have to be a number of other routes that have beautiful scenery.

In other topics, which route goes through the most happening area, which goes the farthest, and otherwise?  Got any route trip trivia for me?  I’d love to see it.

by Adron

#545 Redmond Bound

Today the bus had wifi and I was seriously grateful.  I had a few key things I wanted to research before getting to work today and needed to send and receive a few e-mails.

Today I got to thinking about a number of transit related questions I haven’t verified or researched lately, the most important being a verification of transportation costs for multiple modes.  I’d like to get a baseline, and the extreme costs for $5k, $13k (cheapest option), $22k car (median family car), and $40k car (the cheap BMW or something) and pair that to the same trips on transit for the average commuter.  Then break that down to trips that are transit friendly and trips that aren’t.

The other cost factor I’d like to see is how much we pay the Governments of our respective areas for transportation, infrastructure, etc., and how much we paid out of pocket 50 years ago, 100 years ago, and about 130 years ago (when streetcars were taking off).  My hypothesis is that transportation is actually more expensive today in net societal cost than the disciplined approaches of yester year, but for about 50% of the population it is cheaper out of pocket.  I’ll get to the bottom of this eventually.  Anyone else have some opinions to interject, I’d love to hear others’ hypothesis on the matter.

by Adron

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.

by Adron

CATS is rocking even if LINK is failing…

I just happened to be reading an article today on Progressive Railroading about the increase in ridership on the Charlotte North Carolina’s CATs Light Rail Line.  They’re actually looking at extending platforms to handle larger trains because of this increase!  That’s great news for that area and future expansions.  Meanwhile in Seattle’s Sound Transit Central Link Light Rail is well below expectations, not completely failing, but very close to it.  It makes me curious, as to what the excuse is for Seattle’s Light Rail line.  Anyone have any notions on that?  If anything bode well for success it was the Seattle areas’ pro-transit populace vs. Charlotte’s anti-transit populace (of course in and out of cities these populations change, but generally each city has a reputation for these things…)

…so, any thoughts?