Seattlest Pix 09Nov24
Tuesdays are Muppet Days
Seattlest Pix 09Nov23
Can't Miss It: Monday
Thanksgiving Pairing Suggestion: Sides with a Pint
We've long suspected that Metro's slogan is "Technically, We're Right," and now we have proof.
The Seattle Times has a complaint from a Redmond woman who was taking two kids to the fireworks on the Fourth.
On holidays, Metro's policy is that kids ride free with a paying adult. But it turns out the Fourth is not a holiday...well, not a Metro holiday. Metro's holiday was the Third of July, which as you know celebrates the day the Founding Fathers settled on the parchment for the Declaration of Independence.
That little technicality, says Metro Transit spokeswoman Linda Thielke, is noted on Metro's Web site, but not on all printed timetables, because there simply wasn't enough space on the little pamphlets to fully explain all that.
Ah. That certainly--along with the rarely published system maps (based on the wiring schematic of a 737), the haphazard maintenance of route schedules, and running trains of buses during rush hour to give the appearance of extra service--makes a good deal of sense. You know, for an insanely rule-bound bureaucracy that doesn't run on public funds. (Wha--we do fund...HOW MUCH?!)
Anyway, we have a solution, Redmond citizen. Get yourself an ORCA card, you'll save a ton of money. We've been told that we can charge extra passengers to our ORCA card, but damned if we can find a bus driver who knows how to do that. They just wave our guests on back, no charge! This ORCA card thing is amazing--we can't recommend it highly enough. The more we use it, the more it pays for itself.
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So she had to pay a whopping 75 cents per kid. I'm having trouble working up any outrage.
On the one hand, yeah, it's an "outrage" over $1.50 which is utterly trivial.
On the other, maybe it was just the massive botch up that was the snow "day" last year that makes me more aware of how many small ways the Metro tends to screw up in precisely the wrong fashion. It was a holiday that wasn't a holiday and somebody was going to mention it except they didn't so it wasn't widely known and...
Insert a deep breath here.
They have information that we kind of need to use their services and are spotty at getting that information out, which is an utterly valid complaint in my opinion.
I wouldn't call it an outrage, but it's hard to argue that it isn't both stupid and a problem.
Metro thinks it's THEIR bus system, not OURS. As for the Orca cards, which have been in use elsewhere in the world for years: how come it took Metro so long? And why the delay (months, years) between the installation of the card readers and the introduction of the cards themselves?