Shakeup!!!!

RantWoman has waited a few days to comment on the fall bus schedule shakeup, the first wave of bus service changes since the Light Rail opened.

For one thing, the first week or so after shakeups are nightmares for drivers. A lot of the drivers are driving new routes and still checking their directions after every turn. In the best cases, they have reduced interactions with problem routes and days that should be easier, well except for the novice drivers plunked into the problem routes. A lot of them also most assuredly are struggling to find whatever combination of theatrical or preacherly inspiration needed to call even some of the stops.

Next, even under the best circumstances, the traveling public finds zillions of ways to vex even the most friendly, patient, and even saintly cheery extrovert. With major changes in routes all over the south end, almost every trip is pretty much guaranteed to be full of multilingual gasps of surprise when a bus makes an unexpected turn, turns out not to go downtown or arrives with a completely different number than expected. Next there will be a long stream of repetitive questions about where to change to get a bus that really does go downtown, what the new route does, and multiple other questions which may or may not even be on-topic.

RantWoman, as a member of the SE Seattle Transit Connections Sounding Board has been up to her eyeballs about these topics for months, and even RantWoman is finding the changes gut-wrenching.

1. Changing a bus which runs only every 1/2 hour on Sundays such as the northbound 48 so that its schedule is basically off from the previous one by 15 minutes is HUGE. RantWoman is scratching her head about how she is going to adjust her Sunday go to meetin' practices to compensate.

2. RantWoman thinks SoundTransit has made a HUGE mistake in setting fares on Light Rail: RantWoman thinks as a courtesy that Sound Transit fares especially for senior and disabled riders should absolutely not be higher than equivalent routings within Seattle on the bus. This is in fact currently the case. This apparently is temporary and also related to persistent equipment malfunctions but the exact details of it have been badly publicized and this leaves plenty of room for public ire.

Enough people are irate about having to change from a bus to the train to go downtown, about the need for transfers sometimes on both ends of the route, about having some really important bus routes taken away, broken up, or rearranged. There a million other real and perceived forms of disconsideration: lack of ticket instructions in languages other than English, bus stops that do not have the correct numbers listed on the signs, a nightmare when one calls BUSTIME (see below).

RantWoman has spent little time around Light Rail during commuting hours but she has not yet been on a single Light Rail train that was overcrowded. RantWoman quite understands the ire of people who have been paying and paying already through their sales taxes for the Light Rail now being told they have to pay higher fares AND no longer have a bus substitute. In 20 years lots of things will have evolved so Light Rail ridership is more organic, but right now RantWoman would be concerned to make riding easy and to make the advantages of Light Rail more apparent. This does not appear to be happening, and the fare structure would be an easy thing to adjust to quell some of the ire.

3. The public's preference for a single-seat ride instead of multiple transfers that are supposed to lead to short trips seems counterintuitive to transit planners. Perhaps this is because transit planners spend too much time living life in their cars. Consider RantWoman's agenda yesterday afternoon, a stop to the north and then a meeting to the south.

RantWoman has new feline staff. Rantwoman has been trained by previous feline staff to keep things simple: if the feline staff arrives at one's household with certain defined habits about things like flavor of catfood, one's life will be simplest if one just accommodates these preferences even if the preferences come from a store where one shops less often than others. Feline staff was completely out of her preferred supper. Partial compensation for going out of one's way is a selection of things at prices RantWoman is very pleased about--until she thinks about the rest of her agenda and how much she gets to carry around.

RantWoman thought of trying out the wonders of the enhanced 8 schedule for the cat food purchase end of her agenda and then also in a single-seat ride to her other destination. In the end she opted for the 48 + the 2 plus part of her daily quota of walking going there. RantWoman just missed one 2 and was too lazy to walk up the hill. Once RantWoman arrived at the store, she found a number of items she wanted in addition to catfood: eggplant, cantaloupe. There were also a couple items that might sensibly have needed refrigeration except that RantWoman's philosophy about cultured milk products allows for sort of extended gaps in refrigeration on the grounds that the milk is already suffused with desirable fermentation to keep the undesirable fermentation at bay. RantWoman pointedly did not buy a few other things because she did not want to have to lug them around. RantWoman also opted to walk a known distance to the 48 rather than a longer one to the 8.

In a car, RantWoman imagines that purchases plus travel would have taken about 45 minutes including dawdling and additional impulse buys in the store and early evening traffic and parking for the later event. A car owner might even have had time margin to do the shoppng errand AFTER the other event; RantWoman did not, both because of store schedule and because of longer headways on several transit legs of her trip later in the evening. On the bus, it took almost 2 hours. The last leg of the trip would have been faster if RantWoman had wanted to lug her catfood, eggplant, cantaloupe and sundry other items across the street and up to ride one stop on the Light Rail and then lug her purchases 2 blocks from the light rail station to her destination. RantWoman likes the exercise benefits of her lifestyle, but even her enthusiasm has its limits.

Instead, drum roll please, RantWoman visited the forest St. Mount Baker bus facility and lived to tell about it. RantWoman caught the 48 back south and opted to wait for the 8 which stops right across the street from her destination. The downside of this was that RantWoman was a whit too late for the frequent 8 service and had to wait another 15 minutes. The ONLY upside: the 48 and the 8 both stop at the very same bus bay.

RantWoman's destination: an evening with members of the Seattle City Council to listen to people talk about--surprise--transit issues. The evening gets its own rant. RantWoman noted all sorts of warning flashers about approaching trains. She also noted that crossing MLK really does seem like a long walk, even to someone as more or less vigorous as RantWoman. Then it was time for the trip home.

For RantWoman the trip home was a one-seat ride on the 8. Amusingly, despite having gotten off the 8 across the street in the opposite direction, RantWoman had a brief moment of panic because the bus stop sign has not been updated with info about the 8 stopping there.

For amusement, RantWoman called BUSTIME. RantWoman is really glad she was not using daytime minutes to hear a voice chirp at her about looking up needed info on the internet. RantWoman does not have an accessible mobile device on which she might be able to peruse the internet. RantWoman can dial numbers she already knows. RantWoman has many other tirades about this topic. The important thing is the info about the web was irrelevant for RantWoman's situation. Even worse, so was the content of the BusTime info for Route 8. BusTime still had schedule info for the OLD version of the route 8 that stopped on Capitol Hill at that time of night.

The ride home was basically uneventful for RantWoman though not for people used to being able to ride the 42 downtown. The one peculiarity RantWoman is just filing: RantWoman THINKS that other years by this time in September more of the leaves are usually starting to fall off the trees. A lot of the street lighting in Seattle seems to assume this because RantWoman has walked a few different places recently that seem darker to RantWoman than she would like despite the fact that RantWoman can see there are some though not necessarily enough street lights. RantWoman thinks this problem is a lot of leaves on trees but she herself is not really street tree geek enough to do more than note the data points.