Wow. Almost eight years since our first post. A lot has changed since then. Seattle’s gone from a sleepy backwoods village to the fastest growing ‘big city’ in the nation. From a bus only system to adding Swift, Rapid Ride, and Link; a system with BRT and true mass transit.

Just as the region and transportation system has grown, so has this blog. Since those early days we’ve not only grown into the platform for transit activism in the state, but we are probably the first organization out there to be recognized as Government News Reporting of the Year by mainstream civic organization the Municipal League and Blog of the Year by the alternative press Seattle Weekly.

As we move forward, we’ed like to know what you want from Seattle Transit Blog. In order to do that we’re conducting our second (semi)annual reader survey.  We want to know what you want and how you want to receive it and interact with it.

The survey takes just a minute to complete – it’s only 10 questions! So if you wouldn’t mind, click the link and fill it out? Thanks!

16 Replies to “2015 Readership Survey”

  1. In case it’s not obvious (to anyone besides myself), answer the questions asking for rankings by dragging the options around. It doesn’t work to try to modify the numbers for the rank ordering.

    1. Took me a few minutes to figure that out! D’oh… (it actually seemed to move the rankings when I selected the number, but as I focused on the number and not the text I couldn’t figure out why the numbers weren’t changing….)

  2. “Almost eight years since our first post. A lot has changed since then. Seattle’s gone from a sleepy backwoods village”

    I hope this is intentional hyperbole since it sounds self-righteous. I’m not sure what’s worse, the fact that you seem to be taking credit for all high capacity transit in the last 8 years or the fact that it sounds like the existence of this blog turned Seattle into something other than a backwoods village.

    Regardless of the intent, as a Seattle native, I find this to be the attitude of transplants that believe they created Seattle and that it didn’t matter until they showed up.

    1. I didn’t read all that into it about newcomers, although I would hardly say we were a “sleepy backwoods village” 8 years ago. Link and Sounder are the only true mass transit that has appeared in that time (and that project has been underway since 1997.) Swift is BRT-ish, Rapid Ride is repainted buses with nice stops.

      That said, I think this blog has informed the conversation on transit and is doing great things. Happy 8 years!

      1. I can definitely agree that this blog is awesome. It’s one of the reason I frequent it. This blog has helped bring people together for a common cause no doubt.

        With that said, it’s not as if Seattle Subway or Matthew made that happen. The original light rail build out predates Mathew’s move to Seattle and predates this blog.

        The issue of claiming credit aside, my biggest issue was with how he described Seattle before he showed up. It’s as if we didn’t exist and it was the presence of this blog and Seattle Subway that somehow made Seattle a real city and created the need for mass transit. None of that is true if you look at the history of how LRT got funding, how terrible traffic was before the recession in 2007 and the boom that has followed.

      3. Seattle’s gone from an easily butthurt sleepy backwoods village to the fastest growing yet still easily butthurt ‘big’ city in the nation.

        There. Fixed it for Matt.

        At least the place remains emotionally consistent, right?

    4. As fellow Seattle native, I didn’t read it that way. I saw the “backwoods village” comment as a gentle dig at the attitude of some visitors/transplants from the “East” who have been known to make some incredibly wrong comments about Seattle. I’ve been assured that “Spokane is actually a suburb of Seattle” (such an easy commute) and told that “we’re thinking of going up to Alaska for the day” (o-k…). Time zone amnesia is really common – I get so many 6am meeting requests.

      Now I like to tell East Coasters that we just got paved roads in my neighborhood, I fought off a coyote on the way to the bus stop last week, and that my childhood home was in the forest. Sometimes they are amazed.

      1. The coyote near the bus stop isn’t so far off the mark, especially if it’s early enough.

      2. They have been doing that to San Francisco for decades. Referred to as “drifters from the East” back in the Sixties when I first arrived (as one of them).

  3. One thing that isn’t on the survey that might be worth considering for next time is asking about increasing coverage of Washington State Ferries. Sure, they may be extensions of roads when people drive on them, but I can say that a vast majority of my trips on the ferries have been as a walk-on passenger. Furthermore, transit access at some of the terminals is definitely less than ideal. Other than the “Save our Ferries” Facebook page there doesn’t seem to be an independent group that covers the ferries.

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