Morning Ride

RantWoman's morning featured exactly the sort of misadventure that could cause even the most diehard fan of the Light Rail to suspect that it is a giant plot to disrupt the lives of people who already know how to use transit, to make everything more dicey and uncertain, and to drive more people into their cars. RantWoman is trying to figure out just what sort of car-centric thinking could so completely miss the point of what already worked in a neighborhood where people do not own cars and already are big transit users. RantWoman is also trying not to linger too long with the thought that on the Sounding Board she herself listened to many promises of these disruptions and wonders whether she should have objected even more forcefully than she did.

RantWoman had a 10 am appointment at a frequently visited destination on S Alaska St. RantWoman has actually walked between her domicile and her destination, but the morning was already getting away from RantWoman and that was not going to happen.

Formerly, prior to the most recent Metro shakeup, RantWoman could have gone out her door and found a stop nearby where she could have picked up any of three buses that go right near her destination, the old 42, the old 48, and the faithful 7. One variant of the 48 even used to go right by RantWoman's destination, but RantWoman was happy enough with two aspects of the old situation not to be too picky.

First, there was the many choices at one stop for a single-seat ride angle. At the time of day when RantWoman was traveling, she could have expected at least 4 buses in the interval she had before her appointment. Second, all of the old possible routes were single-seat rides with varying amounts of walking.

Under the new scheduling instead RantWoman could:
--count on a 7 about every 10-15 minutes.
--catch a 48 to the Mount Baker transit center / light rail and then go one stop on the Light Rail or wait for the 8.
--try to time the 8 with its half-hour headway at a completely different stop and go all the way on it.
--Maybe catch a 42 but probably not.

Today the transit gods were mocking RantWoman. RantWoman got to the stop where formerly she would have had multiple single-seat ride choices. There was not a soul, frequently an indication that several buses have just departed. RantWoman decided to walk to the next stop. RantWoman actually got almost to the next stop when of course the 7 rumbled past. RantWoman did not feel like running to catch the bus with the next traffic light. Instead, RantWoman just decided, what the heck, she would do the next leg one stop on the Light Rail.

Keep in mind, the morning had flown by and RantWoman was fretting a wee bit about timing. At the Light Rail station, RantWoman found the elevator and felt her stomach flutter as the doors took what seemed like hours to open. Sure enough, RantWoman heard her train leaving while she was waiting for the doors to open. Okay 10 minutes on the platform doing leg stretches to keep some middle-aged twinges at bay. RantWoman WOULD still make her appointment. Certainly she WOULD.

RantWoman did happily make her appointment. Her arrival featured one of those touching clean up public grime moments that should warm RantWoman's swine flu preventing heart: one of the people RantWoman was to meet with was also in the lobby. Quaintly, in this age of ubiquitous cellphones, this particular lobby still has a phone for such as may need it. While the other person was waiting for RantWoman, she was so stricken by the slime on the phone buttons that she had borrowed some sort of cleaning measure from the receptionist and was thoroughly cleansing the hapless phone.

RantWoman supposes she is supposed to be grateful all of her transit misadventures contributed to the spell of cleanliness. Instead RantWoman is filing one more point in her appreciation for others' vehement grumbles about the new many-transfer regime. Often when one transfers from one bus to another, this can be done at one stop withouth having to walk very far during the transfer process. Any transfer between a bus and Light Rail forces one to walk at least half a block just to get out of the station and Mount Baker for instance requires almost a two-block walk. All this extra walking likely is good for many of us, but RantWoman has no problem imagining people for whom half a block of extra walking will mean hours of painful joints and undesirable side effects of life on transit and no wonder people are still grumbling.