Tag / trimet

by Adron

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.

by Adron

The Existing Commute, The New Commute

On the 15th I’ll start a new commute route for a new job.  I’m pretty stoked, as this one is more what I like.  I used to have a commute in Portland like this:

…or like this…

Then I changed that one for greater opportunities in Seattle and my commute turned into this:

…and I’ve again made a move for a great opportunity and an awesome urban commute of this:

…or this one.

Needless to say I’m looking forward to spending 10-15 minutes getting to work each day versus the hour long commute each way before.  I’ll have more about these locations in the future.  For now I just wanted to post these commute maps for reference.  Interesting changes that I’m really stoked about.

I still, have the big wopper of a blog entry coming on Vancouver, BC.

by Adron

Bing Maps Catches up ~5 Years After Google Enabled…

…the urban transit lifestyle through Google Maps.  Google and TriMet, the first to pair up and develop some standards and get transit systems on maps, finally have an urban competitor in the online mapping space.  Bing finally offers transit directions in…  well I’m not sure all of the areas they offer directions, but I know they cover Seattle now.  I’m happy, but at this point Microsoft lost me years ago with their suburban centered, not so feature packed maps.  Google on the other hand has pushed the envelope for years.

Which leaves me the question, how could Microsoft even gain my interest at this point in the mapping field?  In the clean urban lifestyle field?

  • Microsoft now has transit on the maps, using of course the transit information that originated from Google and TriMet’s work years ago.
  • Microsoft provided transit to their campus from downtown Seattle, even though they’re mostly suburban focused still.  Google did this in San Francisco years before Microsoft did.  I do however, applaud both in these efforts!
  • Microsoft does have alternative campus locations in Westlake in Seattle, and Lincoln Center in Bellevue which are great urban campuses.  However, many of the people who would like to work in these offices are still stuck traveling out to the suburbs.

This also leads me to one of the other questions I have pondered a lot lately.  I wonder how many candidates Microsoft loses because they are young and want to live where the startups, the fun, the action, the music, and the art are?  Because those things sure aren’t out on the Redmond, that’s pretty much downtown Seattle, Fremont, or Ballard area.  The mixed zoned, city center oriented, transit friendly areas.  Does anyone know these statistics?  Does anyone have a wild guess?

Overall, I’m not really complaining.  It is awesome that Microsoft finally got on the bandwagon.  I also realize that the corporate powers slowly but surely realize that they need a LOT MORE presence in urban centers in San Francisco, Portland, Seattle, and other tech heavy cities.  These are the cities that are starting to show the future trend path of the youth.  These cities are the ones that are showing the rest of the country how to get its act together.  I just hope that these corporate leaders didn’t realize to late to stave off ill will and bad effects.

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.