Evan Dodds – Non-work-related blog

As any of you who regularly read this blog know, I’m a big transit supporter. Can’t get enough of the stuff.

But every once-in-a-while there’s a day where the stars just don’t line up for a good set of trips on the bus. Yesterday was one of those days. I’d say I should have just driven to work, but evidently yesterday was also “nobody take vacation and all drive to/from work at the same time as Evan” day, so I suspect that would have worked out just as poorly.

So, here’s the rundown:

Morning 48: I caught the 8:31 bus, which Metro Transit may as well just rename the 8:44 bus (because it’s never fewer than 10 minutes late each morning). On a digression, what’s particularly galling about the 8:31 bus being 10+ minutes late without fail is that the 8:16 bus that precedes it is always pretty close to on time, leaving a 20+ minute gap between buses. Sounds like they need an 8:25 bus too, but I’m no transit planner.

Anyways, back to the story. The 8:31 bus was appallingly late as usual. And, not a big surprise here, it was also crush capacity within a stop or two of Jackson. Riders being riders, nobody wanted to move to the back without gentle suggestion from the driver. So at each stop he had to essentially yell “PLEASE MOVE TO THE BACK” to the oblivious standers in the front/middle so that the additional folks could get on. Whoa, I feel another digression coming — there’s also an 8:46 bus that is usually “about” on-time. Do the math, we’re talking about a bus that should be coming 2–5 mins after the perpetually late 8:31 bus, so why the 8:31 bus doesn’t skip-stop to catch up with its schedule I have no idea.

Again, back to the story. So, visualize the bus driver yelling to move to the back. And visualize a crush-capacity bus. And then visualize us hitting the minivan in front of us at a stoplight. Or something. I was so far back I have no idea what happened, but there was a crash and the sound of breaking glass. As I exited the bus, I didn’t see anything obviously broken but this accident set the tone for my whole day on the bus. Great. But it’s not over yet!

This was right past Madison, so I figured: “no problems, I’ll just walk up 23rd a block and catch the 43 that is bound to be by any second, or at least another 48 will be here within 2–5 minutes”. But, alas, it was not to be. I stood with my fellow passengers just past 23rd and John and waited, and waited, and waited, and waited. And eventually the 48 we had previously been on finished filing whatever accident information had to be filed and drove up to pick us up. We’re talking at least 10–15 minutes worth of waiting and neither a 43 nor a 48 came past during this time. Sheesh. But nothing else significant happened on this route and I eventually got to Montlake for my transfer.

Morning 545: This was the least problematic of any of my routes yesterday. It was late, and it was crush capacity so I ended up standing for my 10 mile trip (which on any other day would make it the worst of my routes), but at least we didn’t hit anything.

Afternoon 545: This one was a problem right from the start. The “www.mybus.org” site wasn’t working, so I had no idea when the bus would arrive. I blindly left my office and headed over to Overlake to find that the next bus would be there in about 8 minutes, and it was already billed as being anticipated as 17 minutes late. I was probably only slightly less thrilled than the 150–or-more other people already standing there waiting for the late bus. Great.

So, eventually it arrived and it was already “full”. Adding 50 or so more of the people waiting at Overlake turned it into crush capacity+, and that still left about 50–75 of us standing there waiting for the next bus (also anticipated as 15+ minutes late and 10+ minutes until it was to get there). The next bus arrived, and I was able to get on. We left the transit center just in time to see another 545 bus pulling into the (now empty) transit center, and a second one just behind it pulling off 520 and turning onto NE 40th. No idea why the first two buses were so late.

The ride on 520 was garbage since the HOV lanes were stop and go the whole way. But eventually we got to Montlake. By this time it’d taken about 50 minutes to go the (according to Streets and Trips) 10.2 mile trip.

Afternoon 48: Arriving at Montlake, I had no idea when the next southbound 48–bus would arrive since the Mybus site was still inaccessible. I didn’t see one on the bridge as I walked up to Montlake, so I figured “it can’t be more than 10–15 minutes, at most, since I didn’t just see one go by”. Ah, if only it were that easy.

It took 28 minutes until the next southbound 48–bus arrived. Even if you optimistically presume that we must have JUST BARELY missed the previous 48 bus by arriving when we did, that’s still about 10–15 minutes too long for a 48–bus cycle this time of day (although, with my >1 hour ride from Redmond, we’d by now fallen out of peak transit hours I suppose).

During my 28–minute wait for my 48 bus, I had plenty of opportunity to notice the four, yes FOUR southbound 43 buses that went past. I also noticed the three northbound 48 buses that went by… including one that said it was going to “Columbia City”. Alas, it was clearly NOT going to Columbia City since it was heading the wrong direction.

Total trip-time for my 13 mile ride home -  just under 2 hours. Yummy. As Jodi pointed out when I got home, this is a key example of when it would be good to do a bike commute. Tired of waiting for a bus (or know it’s not coming for 20 minutes or more)? Bike it!

So, that was my bus experience yesterday. All the stars lined up to make it a huge pain. Normally it’s not this bad, thankfully.