October Transit Challenge
2006-11-03 19:56:56

I think we gave King County Metro a generous opportunity to prove itself.

If downtown parking was $400 per month and gasoline $10 per gallon, I would still not continue to ride the bus. Lucky for me, it is not so expensive.

For seven days, starting on the second of October, Leslie and I commuted from our home in north Seattle to our offices in the city's downtown core, and back again, on Metro's route 77.

King County has a vigorous ongoing advertising campaign to inform the people of the virtues of public transportation in and around Seattle. They are all lies.

Here are my actual experiences:

Metro busses are slow, inconvenient, inconsistent, smell awful, are frequently dirty, wet or sticky and sometimes even dangerous.

Busses share the same roads as cars, are subjected to the same congestion, and make many additional stops along their way. When commuting by car, we can leave our home a full half-hour later, and arrive ten minutes earlier, than when riding the bus.

The nearest express stop is a ten minute, poorly lit, sidewalk free, walk from our home. This is particularly unpleasant in the rain, where in the pre-dawn twilight pedestrians are nearly invisible.

I came to wonder what purpose there was in printing a timetable for our route. On occasion, as many as three time points may pass without the arrival of the bus.

Spending three-quarters of an hour, twice a day, packed into a poorly ventilated box with all variation of humanity leaves a scent in your nose that only a very old European cheese can remove.

We try not to imagine the source of the copious condensation that forms on every surface of the inside of these vehicles.

Downtown includes an area where riding the bus is free. I believe this is to encourage tourism, making it possible for sight-seers to move about the city. The true effect is to provide daytime shelters for vagrants and panhandlers, who understand that legitimate riders have no retreat from their aggressive solicitations.

I am very likely to REJECT King County Proposition No. 2 when I go to vote on Tuesday.

October Transit Challenge
2006-09-12 15:10:25

Towards the end of the month, my office will be moving from its Pioneer Square location on 2nd and King the more downtown locale of 3rd and Columbia.

For the past eleven months, I've been purchasing parking passes for the North Lot at Qwest Field ( Go Seahawks ). In addition, our Honda CRV, which burns fuel at an approximate rate of 0.0476 gallons per mile, must be re-fueled three times per month. I believe I could reasonably price my daily commute, discounting for insurance and regular maintenance, in the neighborhood of $300 per month.

The cost of parking in proximity to my new office is going to be substantially higher.

Both Leslie and I are encouraged by our employers to make use of public transportation by subsidizing our purchase of monthly or annual bus passes.

Despite what I have said about Seattle's public transportation, with the possibility of reducing our monthly transportation expense by an order of magnitude, we are going to attempt to ride the bus for the month of October.

This is a huge leap. I hope they don’t screw it up.

An Inconvenient Truth
2006-07-21 11:49:36

A couple of weeks ago, Leslie and I finally got round to seeing the Al Gore movie.

For the college educated, liberal, upper-class, elitist minority -- which means you -- there isn't really any NEW information, scientist have been in agreement on this subject since the 1960s. You and I don't really need to see this movie, but everybody else does. The film's presentation is perfectly packaged, presented and made understandable for those who are confused about the reality of global warming.

Encourage others to see this film, discuss it at cocktail parties, and make changes that matter.

Remember what you learned in economics class about pyramid schemes -- if every body who's seen the movie gets two other people to see it...

June 15th Confab Show
2006-06-27 01:13:25

Leslie and I sat in for the June 15th Confab. We had a pretty good time. Topic was supposed to be food -- which we did touch on here and there, but it's pretty easy to get on tangents. I was in much better form than the last time I was on the show. Give it a listen!

I brought along a few samples of home-brewed beer and it was well received. Surprise was common among the tasters of my Strong Belgian Golden Ale -- uh, there's a reason it's call 'Strong'.

Let Me Stand as a Lesson to Others
2006-06-06 00:51:19

Everything Dan Savage says about Seattle transit is not only true, but magnified one hundred times after 10pm.

Met up with Richard, Gavin, et. al. for Confab on Thursday. I was pretty quiet this show. I feel bad about it because the popularity of the show rests on the lively discourse, but I was in sort of a funk and couldn't seem to muster the energy to bust in. Maybe it's because I agree with just about every point the group makes and it takes a lot to play devil's advocate with this group. I tried to frequently take counterpoint last time I did Confab, and that was fun -- maybe I need to be getting more sleep.

While I was at Confab, Leslie went to see Cirque Du Soleil, 'Varekai' in Redmond, so she had the car. I left the party about 10pm in order to catch a bus home.

On the corner of 4th & Virginia, there was a fine gentleman relieving himself inside the only available shelter, so I waited in the rain. The bus was not so late that I would have been irritated had this been a warm and sunny afternoon.

Upon boarding, I found each pair of seats occupied by one individual, except for one, which was, as my nose was luckily keen enough to alert me to, also not suitable for sitting.

After transferring at Northgate, I found myself riding with a driver who must have been called in on his night off. At each stop, he opened the doors before the bus had stopped, and started moving again before all the departing passengers had stepped off. This, actually, almost qualified as entertainment.

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