Singapore transit sign. (From Wikimedia.)
Reader Andrew Taylor asks, “Given the availability of Durian at Uwijamaya next to the ID station, do we need such signs?”
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If you did, you would not need to ask!!!
Oh yeah, we laughed when we saw that in Singapore back in 2002 but no fine?
I have noticed that there are no longer “No Eating or Drinking” signs on buses, why is that? Also, it used to be that only service animals were allowed. Times have changed–the other day someone walked on the bus with two HUGE dogs and driver didn’t say a word.
Dogs (and other pets) have been allowed on Metro for as long as I can remember. They just have to behave themselves.
Ha, read that as “Dogs and other people”
…time for sleep methinks
I recall a few months back where this one suspected criminal was walking around with a dog, and he was spotted on a Metro bus. I guess it was the dog that gave him away.
Oh yeah, it was that South Park stabbing prick.
I believe the official policy is still only that service animals are allowed. However Metro drivers aren’t really in a position to judge what is and isn’t a legit service animal so they don’t typically tell people they can’t bring their dogs on-board.
I just tried looking it up on Metro’s site and couldn’t find it, but I have been told by more than 1 long term Metro employee that dogs are allowed on buses if leashed. Cats must be in a carrier.
This is not something they like to advertise, of course, but as for official policy, well behaved pets are certainly allowed.
Well if we’re hoping to encourage more people to give up cars then this is a good policy in my opinion – people don’t need a car in order to own a pet and take it to the vet.
This is what I found on the Metro wesbite;
“Animals on buses
Service animals for persons with disabilities ride without charge, as do small dogs that will fit in their owners’ laps. Large dogs, leashed, pay the same fare as their owner and may not occupy a seat, but should ride on the floor of the coach next to their owner.
Other animals, cats, etc. that are not service animals must be carried in appropriate pet carriers.”
http://metro.kingcounty.gov/tops/bus/fare/fare-info.html#animals
Although I’ve never seen anyone pay a fare for their dog
I’va had a driver try to make me pay a fare for my 50 lb dog, but he loves sitting on my lap!
The signs are still there – right up front, right hand side of the bus. And dogs have been allowed on Metro buses forever. Lots of people don’t drive and still want to take their dog to the park.
Hey, they left chewing gum off of there! After all if you let people have chewing gum and durians the terrorists win!
Chewing gum is banned in the entire country not durians though, that’ll be an outrage. Really, in a country located near the equator, the weather’s hot and humid enough that any food will go bad real fast or get attacked by bugs in minutes. It’s a good idea to keep things clean.
Don’t be caught smoking while holding flammable goods. That’s serious money.
Is the fine for that additive or multiplicative? Certainly the effect of smoking with flammable liquids is multiplicative.
Most of the Durians I’ve seen at Viet-Wah and Uwijamaya are frozen solid…problem thankfully averted.
Lam’s and (I think) Viet-Wah have been selling some fresh Durian over the past two years or so, but we are talking real money ($30+) for one of these. Should not be too much of an issue.
Plus, Durian is delicious.
I really want to cut one up and carry it on a train now.
I’ve taken a whole durian on the bus in Seattle. No one complained, probably because no one knew what is was. (also because whole, frozen durian don’t smell much)
But I have been picked out of a hotel lobby in Bangkok for eating one.
I had never heard of Durian until this thread and later that night on Next Iron Chef someone had to use Durian in their recipe! AB also mentioned how it’s not allowed on buses in many countries. Funny how that always happens. :)
My open thread question is for Brian Bundridge. Are there any plans for WSDOT or local transit agencies to partner with any of the shortline railroads in this area to increease either Amtrak Cascades service or streetcar systems.
Starting at the north:
I believe Mount Vernon Terminal owns some track in its area. I thought it paralleled the BNSF mainline (not sure). Could this be used as an addditional siding for Amtrak only as it is probably to short for freight. Also is there any chance of a hertiage trolley connecting Skagit Station with the rest of the city using this shortline RR track?
Continuing south: Does Ballard Terminal stand to lose/gain anything if the Seattle Streetcar plan gets a full buildout or McGinn gets hit Westside light rail plan in effect? Will the city use any existing track or ROW.
Aside from the point defiance bypass, is there any other partnerships with Tacoma Rail planned, either for mailine or a streetcar from the Tacoma Streetcar planned? Is this something that would be part of PT Tomorrow?
Lastly, I do not think there would be any benefit/demand on either the Meeker Southern or PSAP, but have you heard anything?
Thank You
Sounder North
My parents live in the MV area and I’ve long though that some sort of streetcar that ran from MV to Burlington to Sedro Woolley would make a lot of sense. The track is there and it runs through all three city’s downtowns and most of the freight traffic is only at night for that very reason. The problem is of course cost and the generally conservative (ie anti-transit) crowd that lives there. Also, something to La Conner and the Anacortes Ferry would probably be really popular.
Oops, I don’t think there’s any track to La Conner. Anacortes could be a good idea, but there isn’t much along the way.
But what a good point. Is there anything like a mini-regional electric train or light rail that connects a smallish metropolitan area like the Skagit Valley that’s operational in the United States? It seems like if there’s not one, this would be a cool place for some kind of demonstration project. How great would it be to be able to catch the Cascades to Mount Vernon and then a light rail to Anacortes to the ferry?
The closest things I can think of are the South Shore line in Illinois/Indiana, the River Line in New Jersey, the Sprinter near San Diego, WES, and The Willamette Shore Trolley. But I don’t think any of these are what you are talking about since they have large cities on at least one end and pass through built-up suburban areas.
Instead of electric light rail, some form of DMU service might be more practical.
Google “Via rail + Victoria BC” and look for the The Malahat, which runs an RDC about 30 miles up the coast. Apparently it goes up in the morning and back in the afternoon, making a nice day trip, but bring your own lunch- no food service on board.
There used to be a DMU that went between Rockaway Beach and Garibaldi on the Oregon Coast. They called it the Fun Run, so it was geared towards tourists, but it didn’t rely on any big cities.
Sounder North -
The answer to your first question is no. There are no plans for WSDOT or Amtrak to expand trains on local short lines. It would cost far too much money to do this. The closest one would get to this would be maybe Tacoma to Graham via Tacoma Rail’s Mountain Division.
There are no plans to use Mount Vernon Terminal RR for anything other than it’s current use. There was a study to restore the track between Mt. Vernon and Concrete but I do believe that went down in flames. There won’t be any trolley or streetcar services North of Everett…
Ballard Terminal most likely won’t be involved with any Streetcar or Light Rail studies.
The Tacoma Streetcar will not use any existing ROW from freight railways.
There was some talks of a weekend train on the PSAP to Aberdeen before Rail America took over the company. Once that happened, the proposal went down fairly quickly. Meeker is growing business are a good rate. There will not be any new commuter railroads out that way unless a new line and bike path is built out to Orting.
Sound Transit studied DMU service to Orting and Graham but nothing has materialized from those and not even part of future scope.
Does this have to do with their smell, or potential to be used as weapons for their spiky enclosure?
Durians have a very particular and horrible smell. My friend had one in the trunk of his car and I swear I knew it was there as he drove by.
The question is what he was doing with one in his trunk for that long?
Wasn’t long. He had just bought it and was on his way home from the grocery.
It’s the smell. I had a friend who lived in Singapore for a year and loved durian. He’d eat them on the bus. I’m surprised he was never arrested!
I recommend they add Korean Kimchi to their list of forbidden food items then.
Those are some hefty fines. Converted to USD:
$354 Food
$707 Smoking
$3,537 Flammable
Be glad that those offences are not punished with caning. Yes, caning is a legal form of punishment in Singapore.
Sorry, I know it’s terrible, but this line made me chuckle:
“A much smaller cane is also used by some parents as a punishment for their children of either sex.”
It’s true and it’s also common in Thailand as a school discipline tool. I got it a few times for being tardy.
Hey what on earth is going on with the Link signaling at the south end of MLK?
Last night both on the way to and on the way back from the M’s game we either stopped or slowed nearly to a stop multiple times between Othello and Rainier Beach. There were a couple of times where the cars lined up next to us at in intersection clearly got a left arrow while we sat and waited?
Best comment overheard, from some folks who (I think) were visiting: “So…..this is basically like the same speed as riding on a bus.”
Two words. Operator error.
It’s usually the operator, not the signaling. The signals change in a progressive wave in the direction of travel and only remain in the “proceed” aspect for a certain amount of time. If the operator goes too slowly the train will get behind and miss the signals. Once the train gets out of sync with the signals it usually has to stop at each signal until the next station is reached. Some operators just don’t seem to have the hang of it yet, but others do a beautiful job and sail smoothly from station to station.
Interesting on the signaling — I guess it seemed strange that it was only really between those 2 stations (and in both directions). I guess it could have been the same operator (good luck for me!) about 4.5 hours apart.
Yes, I was driving north from Renton (Fry’s run) on MLK today and saw Link stopped just a couple of lights south of Othello Station.
I’ve been to Singapore. i loved it there. I would not want to live there and they take some of those rules to far. However, when they caned that kid I was cheering them on. I’ve ridden Singapores trains. If Link was as clean and quiet as Singapores trains I love to ride them.
Talk about a place that incents the use of Mass Transit — for most people in Singapore owning a car is a financial impossibility. The MRT there is fast, clean and packed, although it is more Skytrain than Link…
Does anyone know what the details of the maintenance problems on Central Link they announced this morning (Monday) are?
The detail I’m aware of is that Link was ssuuppeerr slow today, and I ended up at work in Lake City about 45 minutes later than normal as a result!
Not sure what LINK signalling has to do with durians, but probably ought to keep quiet about them in transit discussions for fear of new terrorist threat: surreptitiously dropping a durian in front of a train at Westlake Station at PM rush hour during Holiday season.
Separate transit stories from a suburbanite this weekend.
Friday morning I took a series of buses from Burien Transit Center to my specialty mechanic on South Tacoma Way in Tacoma to pick up my specialty car. Friday night my wife and I took Link Light Rail from Tukwila International Blvd Station to Gameworks downtown with a couple of other parents and 15 ten- and eleven-year-old boys for one of the boy’s birthday’s. One of these experiences was huge fun with a few drawbacks. The other, uh, not-so-much.
I have to do the Tacoma run every so often to get my WRX-powered Vanagon serviced. It always consists of Metro 140/180 to the airport, ST574 to 512P&R, and PT300 back down South Tacoma Way to the shop. This time I used the Metro trip planner tool, noted the times (it never takes less than two hours), and the fares. This time, I decided to use ST560 to ST574 to PT300. The Metro trip planner said $1.75 two zone off-peak/transfer/transfer, which I paid but only got the “one zone” transfer. Yet, when I took it up with the 560 driver, he replied “you’ll have to take it up with the 574 driver.” Which lead to my paying another $3.00 as I boarded the 574 for a ST three-zone fare and transfer. Lucky for me I had $5 in quarters. I have to say that this fare/zone/peak-offpeak shit gets confusing for folks who ride transit infrequently. It doesn’t help when the Trip Planner doesn’t give you the right story either. Thumbs up for being there but down for the experience.
On the other hand, having my friends organize their son’s birthday party around meeting at the Light Rail station and taking a bunch of kids downtown and back proved to be fairly effortless (other than trying to corral a bunch of little monkeys). My friends live in Normandy Park and would inclined to use light rail for downtown runs, but never would have considered using the bus. The trip saved us from having to use as many 8 separate cars, driving and parking. And it was fun to have a couple of pops without the background concern of drinking and driving. The only drawbacks stemmed from the both the sway in the Tukwila segment and driver technique in the valley segment. Our driver had a jerky technique with short stops and quick starts that made for a bit of an uncomfortable ride. Thumbs up for everything although the driver could use some more training.
Oh and the Pho place in the Safeway shopping center across the street from the Burien Transit Center has Durian Smoothies. I usually have one of these every month. It’s a lot like an onion milkshake. If you can imagine that.
An open thread question for those familiar with local bus driver training: is there any specific training regarding “curb pinching” cyclists?
A “curb pinch” is when a long vehicle such as a bus incompletely passes a cyclist before pulling to the curb, squeezing the cyclist between the right side of the vehicle and the curb.
Most Metro drivers seem to recognize the problem, others seem either oblivious or sufficiently hostile to cyclists that they do it repeatedly.
Discussion on the Cascade message boards at
http://www.cascade.org/Community/forum/messageview.cfm?catid=14&threadid=15663
If a police officer happens to see and happens to care enough to stop, this potentially-lethal maneuver can be cited as failure to provide proper clearance when passing, but both cyclists and Metro drivers are usually at the low end of police priorities.