Results tagged “buses”

There's a feature in the Seattle Times today about the #7 bus that seems to be celebrating it as a "colorful" part of Seattle history, but also makes the claim that "most" and "many" #7 riders prefer it to the light rail. Try as we might, we can't find any numbers in the story to back up that assertion. We emailed reporter Phillip Lucas, but it bounced back undeliverable, user unknown. We've also called Metro's community relations line three times this morning, but no one's picking up. We'll update if it's the rapture and no one else is at work this morning. UPDATE: It's not the rapture. But here's Publicola's ECB, an actual #7 rider, going off on exactly how colorful the route is.

In announcing his run for mayor of Seattle [video], Michael McGinn wanted to say three things: schools, broadband, buses. But staying on message isn't easy when you have a whole press conference to fill, and McGinn, despite his Greenwood Community Council and Sierra Club past, looked like a rookie early on. He whiffed on what should have been softball questions in the Q&A: "Why are you running against Greg Nickels?" and and had no public safety plank.

• Hella Bus is back with the rap from unexpected sources, this time flowing from the verbally gifted mind of Mark Trahant, the editorial page editor of the P-I ("until tomorrow," Hella Bus sadly notes).
• Seattle Transit Blog has an opinionated piece on solving Metro's budget gap, with two suggestions that have elicited dozens of comments.
• Seattle 911 is talking about the case of the untaxed cigarettes in Stilliguamish.

Seattleites are so upset by the way the city has handled the recent snowfall that they are...gosh!...it's just...where are our buses! Damnit, we're forming a Facebook group over this! Meanwhile, over in Spokane, the City Hall was shot at six times over the weekend, the bullets leaving 2- to 6-inch holes in the windowpanes. On Tuesday, a guy stormed out of his house with a gun and threatened a snowplow driver if he blocked him in. Then he called the city and told them any snowplow that came down his street would be shot. Now that beats an intemperate letter to the editor.

            

Today, two charter buses slid down icy, cobblestone East Thomas Street on Capitol Hill, across Melrose, and crashed through the guardrail, almost plummeting onto I-5. One bus made it several feet past the guardrail before coming to a stop. Buses frequently use East Thomas Street--they exit I-5 at Olive but can't make the left turn down Denny, so they go two blocks up, turn left at East Thomas and then right on Denny to get to the Greyhound station. This time it appears two of them attempted East Thomas at the same time, and the results were heart-stopping. At this point we're not hearing of any major injuries. Updates to come.

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 as well. Like we said, with all the "may"s and "maybe"s, better to be safe and bring a couple extra quarters the next time you're riding Joe Metro.

• 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, sending cedar chips flying everywhere.
• PhinneyWood wants to let you know that, if you've had trouble with getting a green building permit, there's a meeting scheduled just for you this Wednesday at the Phinney Neighborhood Association.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

When that 25-cent fare increase hits in March...let's see, gotta calculate up...carry the exponent...Metro could be making 1,925,000 extra dollars per year (not really, we're just multiplying 0.25 by 7% of total boardings, for a quick estimate). A peak 1-zone fare will be $1.75, so make sure you're carrying around three quarters during commute times.

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.