Mount Baker bus facility

RantWoman has given the Mount Baker bus facility the benefit of the doubt for roughly six weeks now. RantWoman has survived so far. cross fingers. RantWoman also, predictably, has themes that annoy her., make her twitchy, and cause general consternation--and RantWoman has not even tried to find the stops for all the routes she knows stop there.


The MountBaker light rail station is set up so people can either get off the train and walk out to Rainier or walk north under the tracks to Forest St. Either way, one has to hike two blocks before crossing Rainier. RantWoman almost always walks north undr the tracks. It's drier. It's a quieter and in multiple ways much more pleasant walk than all the noise and clatter of Rainier. RantWoman sees people taking the other route and, well, wonders about their sanity.

When one takes this route and gets to Rainier, one of course would like to press the buttons for one's desired pedestrian signal, either across Rainier to the bus facility or N across Forest St. Either way, if one comes east long Forest street, the signal buttons for both crossings are exactly on the wrong sides of the light pole. RantWoman has sort of figured out how to reach around the pole and find the button for the signal she wants, but she can think of a lot more intersting things to hug than the traffic signal pole.

Gripe: there is a bench / shelter facing the East side of Rainier where the northbound 7 and 8 stop. It is a great bus shelter, long, plenty of room. So what's not to like? The shelter is set at an angle where one would THINK one could see approaching buses and be seen by the drivers of approaching buses. One would be WRONG. There is a spectacular enormous utility box of some kind that all but perfectly blocks any kind of view. If one wants to be seen by bus drivers, especially at night, especially when it is rainy and visibility is already bad, one has to stand out by the street and get rained on!

RantWoman quaintly thinks it is cool for buses that travel the same route for several stops to stop at the same place. In RantWoman's ideal world this would mean the 7 and 48 would share northbound stops. It's fine to have the 8 there as well, but RantWoman's goal is minimum waiting for things that go the same general direction. Many bus front readerboards are way too dim for RantWoman to tell whether a 48 is inbound or outbound. The 48 stops at a different place from the 7 or 8 and if RantWoman just wants to get a few stops she really, really does not care which route she does it on. She just does not want to get killed crossing in front of a bus to figure out whether it is one she wants and then crossing back to wait at another stop.

RantWoman has a deep-seated personal allergy to pedestrian routes that always cross in front of buses. This allergy is pretty much not amenable to reassurances about how careful Metro drivers are. The Mount Baker Bus facility is all about pedestrian crossings in front of buses. At least RantWoman now gets to be specific about the terms of "pedestrian nightmare."