The Seattle Bus Challenge
Friday, 27 March 2009
It began with, as usual, a Monday lunch. Dan, Portland blogger, avowed transit geek, and ideas guy, had a question: were transit systems in the northwest well developed enough that a person could ride from Portland to Seattle, purely by using local busses? No Greyhound, Gray line, Amtrak, or charter systems. True, public busses.
For a long time, the answer seemed to be no. But some intensive Google digging turned up the critical gem: a rural transit program out of Longview. It was not only possible to get to Seattle using local busses, but plausible that it could be done in one day, and in time to return to Portland via Amtrak!
It had to be tested. It was begging to be tested.
TriMet No. 12 at about 5:25 A.M.
This was the second 12 of the day according to the schedule. I was unsure how popular the bus would be. Empty? Jam packed? In the end it was neither, yet it was about as busy as it was on a typical normal (non commuter) hour of the day, which surprised me. There truly are some early risers in the P-town region.
With almost no traffic and in the light rain, the ride went very smooth and fast. Before I knew it, I was being dumped off at 4th & Hall near PSU, where I was to make my first connection of the morning. The city was dark, quiet, empty. I had once had a theory that the lack of nightlife in Portland was because the city was a morning town. Now? Now I’m not so sure. The cafe behind me was almost clinical in its absence of life, with vinyl letters on the door stating that it did not open until 7 A.M. Useless.
Busses stopped about every five minutes, with sporadic passengers. I was ever watchful for my quarry, C-Tran 134, the Salmon Creek Express. I had time, fortunately. There were at least two of these expresses I could catch and still make the following connection, but where were they? As I stood eagerly looking at my watch, along came a C-Tran bus. It was close to the right time, and I didn’t have my schedule out. The reader board said I-5 express, but there was no mention of Salmon Creek. Was this the right bus?
“You go to Salmon Creek?” I asked the driver through the open door. He seemed not to notice, so I repeated my question hesitatingly.
“Yeah, eventually,” he replied. I climbed aboard.
Inside, the bus was clean and neat. The layout felt a tad more open than a TriMet bus, and it had that bright, Shell-station-at-2am quality to the illumination. Aboard were a smattering of people, including some elderly women. I took my seat and we charged off. The bus had one more stop to make in Portland, down at 2nd and Alder, and there the elderly women left. The driver announced “next stop, Vancouver!” and we charged over the Morrison Bridge and onto the interstate. I glanced around me. Who was he announcing to? Me? There was nobody else left on the bus, and I certainly didn’t need loudspeaker announcements to hear the driver.
Backhaul commuting apparently isn’t too popular.
We crossed over the river, and in Vancouver, picked up a couple more passengers, including an elderly man with a massive backpack, a long gray beard, and a walking stick. Then back on the freeway we went. About this time, it occurred to me that I was not on the bus I had wanted to be on. Outside the window, in the fast lane, a 134 Salmon Creek Express passed us by at such speed that I feared we’d never see it again in our lifetimes. If that bus, headed to Salmon Creek, had been one of the ones I had needed to make my connection, just how slow were we? How long did the driver really mean when he said that we would “eventually” get to Salmon Creek?
I fretted, and the minutes passed slowly in the rainy darkness. Then, we were once more pulling off the freeway. Shortly after, we turned into a large transit center with great sweeping wood-rooved shelters lit artistically from below. I had seen the place before, from the freeway back when I had a car still, and always recalled it as being attractive. It was rather large, too. Surely, this must be Salmon Creek. Saved! There was plenty of time left before my scheduled connection.
Or not. The driver: “99th Street Transit Center!”
99th Street? Where the heck is 99th Street? My ignorance of Clark County was not helping me any here. I dug out a C-Tran map and sure enough, we were only on the outskirts of Vancouver proper, but not yet at Salmon Creek. With the map not to scale, it was hard to know just how much farther that really was, much less what it looked like.
Back on the freeway we went. Outside, the sky was getting a bit lighter, turning from black to shades of deep larkspur. Dawn was approaching, and this was bad. It simply reinforced what I knew: that time was moving onwards, and I was still not at my connection. If I missed it, the challenge would fail. I would still be able to reach Seattle, but not return the same day, meaning that I would have to cut my trip short no later than Tacoma at best, and Olympia at worst.
We began to sidle off of Interstate 5 again. A couple of turns, and we entered a rather sketchy parking lot. Another stop along the way? Must be. And yet… we stopped. Here, in this dull parking lot, with almost no architectural form whatsoever, we stopped. Yes, this, this was Salmon Creek.
Salmon Creek, landmark of the masses.
On the bright side, I was well within my target time. It was 6:45 or thereabouts, and my next connection was at 7:05. I cannot stress what elation I felt. If I had missed this connection, failure would have been certain. Making it was the first and, really, the most critical of the narrow gateways I had needed to pass.
At seven, a little van-bus pulled into the lot, the kind that are often used for paratransit services, complete with the massive side door to accommodate wheelchair access. Welcome to the Lower Columbia Community Action Program Rural Transit line. Open to the public for $1 each way.
I once recall reading legislator (and future governor of Oregon) Theodore Geer’s account of riding a ramshackle narrow-gauge railway in Oregon’s Willamette Valley during the 1880s. He recounted the horrendous ride, the slowness of the pace, the utter uselessness of the employees. I felt much in sympathy with Governor Geer, and believe I have found a spiritual successor to that railway line. The seats felt as if they had been trampled on by a heard of bison, and smelt like it too. The driver was sterner looking than an Easter Island carving and about as taciturn, with his only utterances being to curse under his breath at fellow drivers. With no interior light, I huddled against one of the windows to try and read my book and forget. Sadly, though, the ride had more texture than Joan Rivers’ face, and half the time my eyes bounced a few inches northward on the page, forcing me to reread the same sentence over and over until we got to smoother road.
The interior signage was rather amusing. “No food / or drink / allowed”, in red letters, with not one but two exclamation marks at the end. A second sign read “Please” (underlined) “do not ask the / driver to make / unauthorized stops.” Another: “Absolutely / No food or drink / ” (last three words underlined) “you will be put off the van / immediately and permanently / (last three words in red letters) “if you do” (one exclamation mark). Lastly, “if you vandalize the can / the appropriate police agency / will be called and you will / be prosecuted” (one exclamation mark). One is glad for their sake that punctuation is free.
Longview could not come quickly enough, and nor could I wait to leave it again. The transit center was amazingly busy, with every stall filled with a clean if dated looking bus. Passengers stood around in fair number, smoking and waiting for their departures. I could see why the system was busy. Looking about me, I saw more twenty-year-old domestic automobiles than I had seen since a trip to West Virginia years back. Probably none of them ran, or even if they did, it was widely agreed that it was preferable to be seen in a bus. Beyond the transit center, it was the typical sad sight of former lumber towns like Longview: Meth alley. Cinder blocks, badly painted buildings, decay, gambling parlors that had the effrontery to claim to share a professional tradition with the likes of The Sands.
And by here I knew how T. T. Geer felt.
Then Longview surprised me. At 8 A.M., sharp, every bus in the lot started up their engines. People scattered, and then each of the vehicles departed. All at once. At the same time. It made me wonder if their schedules had been planned by someone who had worked in school transportation in their past.
Once they had gone, about five of us were left at the very, very empty transit center. Our “bus” from Salmon Creek had left us here and drive off, perhaps back to the Hades from whence it had come. I hoped, likely in vain, that it had not simply gone off to refuel before returning for us. Please, please, please, be a different vehicle, or at least a different driver!
Another van-bus pulled into the lot, looking much as the other had done, and stopped before us. The doors opened, and prayers were answered. Not only was the driver different, but so was the van. This one was clean, and did not smell, and had a driver who actually asked a friendly question or two, remarked on the coldness of the weather, and cranked up the heat. It was 8:05, and we were off.
The ride from here was a long one, one that would take me from the waters of the Columbia River and its tributaries, to those of Puget Sound. Along the way, we would pass through the heart of Washington’s timber country, a land that was once a cash cow for the state but has sadly turned sour. Environmental restrictions and international trade have conspired to make logging in the region less and less attractive. While protectionists had and have good intentions, the communities that once depended on the timber monies have, like Longview, declined rapidly. The ride filled me with bittersweet thoughts. Sure the forests are beautiful, but humanity here? Perhaps it’s unfair, but it’s hard to ignore the meth houses, the abandoned trailer houses, the closed mills, the empty storefronts. Centralia has, perhaps, fared the best, as it tries to convert itself into a tourist center. Antique stores have settled like a benign rash on it’s main streets. But even here, you have the distinct feeling that anyone who wants a better life for themselves and their families goes to seek their fortunes elsewhere. For many it’s a place to be from, but no longer one to call home.
This long ride was scheduled to terminate in Tumwater, just south of Olympia, where I would be able to transfer to the local transit agency, Intercity Transit. The point of embarkation: Tumwater Square. I wondered what it would look like. For a time, I had lived in Olympia, but I had rarely had occasion to visit Tumwater. Would Tumwater Square be some kind of transit center? Perhaps it was a suburban mall of some kind. Maybe, just maybe it was some kind of transit oriented development? The Olympia region does have a progressive streak, it was possible. It was surely, however, a very impressive name.
Too impressive, by half. Tumwater Square consisted of a pair of bus shelters on either side of a road, amongst the swanky delights of two gas stations and a Safeway.
Is it square because the streets are at right angles?
Shortly afterwards, IT No. 13 rescued me from oblivion, and we charged into downtown Olympia. The route followed Capitol Boulevard, whose streetcar era bones show through today in the gentle curves and continuous lines of bungalows. Past these residences, the road and the bus route begin the slow descent through downtown Olympia. Not far after this descent begins, the dome of the capitol building pops into sight to the left, but even before then you can tell you are in a seat of state power. There’s lots of concrete buildings and a hollow, haunted look to the streets. Subconsciously, you just can’t figure out why the city exists. It is large, yet looks poor. It seems to have more importance than other towns, and yet it lacks the bustling air of a city. It is the whiff of futile dreams, suspended in the amber of bureaucracy.
Olympia Transit Center has always impressed me. It is clean, modern, white and glass, and appears by all observances functional and busy. Arrival here was a kind of celebration, really. This was the hump. Here, actually on the waters of Puget Sound, everything suddenly became “downhill.” Now the question turned away from if and towards when: when would I reach Seattle? I was hungry, I wanted food, I had not eaten yet and I had been up for nearly six hours. I pondered walking around the harbor, gloating in the waters of the sound, dining beside them at someplace-or-other from years before.
But over at the north edge of the transit center, a Tacoma bus idled.
Aboard the Tacoma express at 10:30 A.M.
The bus was rather on the full side, and I was lucky to find a seat. Up front, the driver was rather garrulous, chatting with a flight attendant headed to SeaTac International to work a flight to Japan. “If I had my way,” the driver noted, “you’d ride free. Transportation people would always be free.” Returned the steward, “yeah, and you’d fly free too, right?” The driver rather liked this notion.
I glanced at my private timetable and noted my progress. My original goal had been to be aboard a 603 to Tacoma departing Olympia at noon, and here I was 90 minutes earlier than that. If things continued as planned, and assuming that my connections were available when I got to Tacoma Dome Station, I’d be in Seattle near lunch time. We made an odd circuit of Olympia and Lacey, stopping at park-and-ride lots to pick up people here and there, and then we hit the freeway and sailed down into the Nisqually River Delta. With the crossing of the delta, I had entered Pierce County, and soon after, Tacoma.
Then there was another snag. We pulled off to another nondescript park-and-ride, this one somewhere near the McChord Air Force Base. “This is the SR 512 Park and Ride,” yelled the driver. “Transfers here to SeaTac and Seattle!” I puzzled over this. Was not the 603 bound for Tacoma, where I could make my transfer as planned? As nearly the entire bus emptied out, I took a gamble, and got out too, trusting that we couldn’t all be wrong.
On reflection, this was likely a mistake. The 603 did indeed touch on Tacoma at Tacoma Dome, where I could have transfered to a Sound Transit bus to Seattle. But no, instead of staying in the warm bus, I got out with the crowd to stand in the cold and await my transfer. It is very, very likely that the bus I had to take — Sound Transit 594 for Seattle — was the same exact one I would have caught in Tacoma proper, meaning my wait was no longer. But here, at the SR 512 lot, there was nothingness. Some shelters. Some garbage cans. Freeway exit ramps. Parked cars. No food, no warm drinks. I dug into my stash of snacks for the first time that day, but found little comfort in them. I was cold, I was wondering not for the first time why I hadn’t done this in warmer months. But it was too late now.
Twenty minutes passed. Other busses came and went, including those from Pierce Transit, Tacoma’s transit provider, and a massive boat of a bus from Sound Transit. This was ST 574, the SeaTac express, a bus very similar to those used by Greyhound, complete with dual rear axles and cushy reclining seats. Ah, the thought of reclining seats! And warmth, too. The moments dripped by slowly. But finally, finally, a blue-and-white bus pulled in the lot with the name SEATTLE on its destination sign, and I stepped aboard.
My stomach was growling, my eyelids were drooping, and I was lulled ever more to sleep by the warmth inside the bus. The seats were nicely cushioned, though annoyingly they did not recline despite the presence of headrests. I checked to be sure multiple times. But it didn’t matter. I was down $13.80, and I was nearly there. I only opened my eyes a few times, mostly to note passing through Tacoma. This city has always been my favorite on the sound. It retains a blue collar edge and an honest, industrial vibe. It is no city, and likely never will be, but it is a fine, fine town, the likes that few are fortunate enough to be. The fact that our bus had exited the freeway for a slow and prolonged trip down surface streets, making stops every two or four blocks? That was only mildly annoying, for it gave me time to glance about and try and remember the buildings I had been inside of. And then, we were back on the freeway, and my head was nodding back, and I was asleep.
~12:48 P.M., Pike Street at 3rd.
I woke with a jolt as we exited the freeway and traversed Spokane Street, bound for Fourth. Alongside the latter road, to one side were the rails of a BNSF switching line, and along the other side were the tracks of Sound Transit’s first light rail line. Shoehorned into an area vastly comprising of light industry and railway yards, I really wasn’t sure why they bothered to put stations in so frequently. I counted at least two in the industrial flats, places that by the nature of the constrained rail assets of the region will never be anything other than railroad infrastructure. I shrugged. It’s Sound Transit’s first light rail line, and this is hardly the biggest lesson they have yet to learn.
Then we ascended the viaduct beside King Street Station, and passed into downtown itself. I kept an eye out for the streets, waiting for the one I wanted. Jackson, no. Cherry, no. Spring, no. Then there it was. Union. I gathered my bags, my stomach growling louder still, and began to plan where I would find my lunch. Outside, the pavement was wet, but it was not raining. I checked my watch, and found that it was 12:45 in Seattle.
