"City Bus, 1953" from the Seattle Municipal Archives You think the buses are bad now? Check out this shot from 1953! We do love the Penney's sign. We found this classic in our incredible Flickr Pool......

Metro just can't make up its mind about fare increases, so we say bring another quarter just in case. Just a few weeks ago, Metro said it wouldn't be increasing fares for a second time this year, but as of yesterday they'd decided that a fare increase is indeed necessary and imminent. Starting November 1, it may cost you an extra 25 cents to ride the bus. Another 25-cent increase may come in January 2010......

"King County Executive Along for the Ride" by Seattlest Flickr Photographer HonuPhoto White Center Now reports that King County Executive Ron Sims has proposed two staggered fare increases for Metro buses on his blog. In other news--Ron Sims writes a blog?!Yesterday's late afternoon thunder and lightning struck a little too close to home for a West Seattle Blog reader. A cedar tree in their neighbor's back yard was split in two by a lightning strike,......

Yesterday afternoon we were trying to jaywalk across 15th when a #10 bus pulled up. We walked past it, hoping to use it for blocking. Another #10 bus pulled up. Then we looked down the street. Another #10 bus was pulling up. Thanks to a Metro "more frequent service" upgrade, the #10s run every 15 minutes during rush hour -- or even every 15 seconds, if they all get stuck in downtown traffic. Over on......

photo courtesy of Seattlest Flickr user kjten22 This just in: the sun is out! In honor of this rare and auspicious occurance, we think you should cut out of work early for a "doctor appointment," and head to the hill to look at some pretty VW buses. According to the press release: Seattle-based advertising agency Creature has created a fleet of hand-painted 1960s Volkswagen buses as part of the marketing campaign for Pacifico Beer,......

"71" by the talented Tim Willis With the ever-increasing cost of gas, the Seattle P-I seems to have taken an extra keen interest in public transit. A quick perusal of the local news on the P-I's site found more stories about taking the bus than any other topic in the local news. It sounds like an exaggeration, but these were all headlines for different stories, from the same day. * Bus Trip Planning Can Take......

Earlier this week, as MyBallard noted, King County Metro reported that Seattle bus ridership in the first three months of 2008 is six percent higher than the same period last year, which we think is great. The more of us on buses, the less of us driving. However, the more of us on buses, the more chance there is to encounter obnoxious cellphone users, which we do not think is great. So we were psyched......

We're not sure if Metro planned to give us an extra day of the old fares by scheduling the new ones to take affect tomorrow (the day after Leap Day), but we sure do appreciate it. Either way, please remember that as of tomorrow off-peak fares will be $1.50 and peak fares will be $1.75. Youth and seniors will keep paying what they've been paying until July, by the way. As a part of our......

We're gonna start asking Seattlest Dan to pick our lottery numbers. A full year ago he looked into a cloudy future and typed:We predict next year will see even higher numbers at Metro Transit as job growth continues and "gas prices remain high." Ridership is going to skyrocket when either the Viaduct closes to traffic or light rail starts coming on line, but neither of those will likely happen in 2007.The bus people have dutifully......

Coming home from work on the bus last night, we got to thinking about how even getting to vote on a light-rail package this year is going to be an uphill fight. The dire prospects for light rail anytime soon pushed us to extrapolate the costs to our psyche of waiting during the ride home. First we had to run a few blocks in the rain to catch the 8. While admittedly, we should have......