Report: 98% of people who actually ride the bus want you to shut the hell up about how great it is.
All mass transit is not created equal; here in Seattle, a city with buses and, well, nothing else, unless you're specifically talking with someone about monorail or lightrail or streetcars (you know, theoretical mass transit), when you're talking about supporting mass transit, you're talking about supporting buses.
And buses suck.
Last week, Erica C. Barnett had a column in The Stranger that spoke to our experience riding the bus to and from work daily:
It's dirty, smelly, hot, and slow, and the only people who do it are the people, like me, who have to. The overwhelming majority of us, I believe, would rather ride in peace—not in a gold-plated private jet, not on a flying carpet. All we want is a regular bus. We just don't want to be harassed, offered drugs, crushed against people who smell like booze and piss, or sucked into confrontations we didn't ask for.
True that, Erica. True that. We get on the #14 to the ID on the run's third stop in the mornings, and more than half the time, it's already standing room only. The morning commute is slightly less hobo-y than other lines (like, oh, any of the 70-series running between the U and downtown), so there's less BO and crackheads. But it still sucks, particularly if it's rainy and wet, when the bus is hot and damp, the windows are fogged up and you're either sitting under someone dripping rain water off their coat, or dripping rain water off your coat onto someone else. And this being the Northwest, the scenario isn't exactly rare.
But today, Barnett was back on the Slog, taking on the editor of The Seattle Times op-ed page, whose moronic take on the news that Metro—after six years—is planning on raising fares by a quarter, is that instead, they should lower fares.
Actually, while the headline suggests lowering fares, the text itself is largely about increasing access to the buses at tax-payer—rather than rider—expense. But Barnett's criticism of the editorial, that "People who support adding vast numbers of riders to the bus system while cutting the revenues that would make the bus system able to serve those riders are people, like the members of the Times editorial board, who don’t ride the bus" is apt. We're constantly reminded of a great Onion article from a few years ago that came under the headline: "Report: 98 Percent Of U.S. Commuters Favor Public Transportation For Others." It may be fake news, but it's still true.
Indeed, mass transit is one of the strange areas of public policy here in Seattle where the people who control it have absolutely no personal stake in the quality of the service (unlike, say, schools), yet a large segment of the middle class does (unlike, say, programs for the poor, where an homage to caring frequently suffices). So we heartily welcome Ms. Barnett's call for a rider's union who can not only help support Metro by virtue of its membership, but also represent the needs of ordinary commuters who are forced to suffer on their way to work or play every day, in exchange for adding a bit less pollution to the atmosphere and for keeping one more car off the road. Some thanks we get.
The image, Scenes From a Long Commute #7 -- Rt. 5 From a Bus, by Grundelpuck, is from our Flickr group. Thanks.
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