Figure you might want to consider calculating the cost of your commute sometime. Might be a good idea to use the Community Transit trip calculator to do so.
Also, listen I hate rude people okay, but unless you want to buy up a tiny but sporty Toyota Yaris like a relative did for a while, maybe you should save money and Dump the Punp.
My Toyota Yaris photo from my amateur photography days – pardon the low quality
Or you can get a Ford Focus…
https://flic.kr/p/oXDNBV
Flickr photo by Ford Europe used under noncommercial license
Or you can really think long and hard about your transportation choices versus the money you’d be saving. About 30 miles per gallon going from Mukilteo to Seattle in a small car like the above is the tipping point back in favor of the car over the bus…
Up to you. I so prefer the view from King County Metro 124… and riding what I see below when I’m in Seattle:
My photo
It’s your money. Give the cost calculator a go.
I attend — or would like to attend — a variety of evening events at Edmonds CC, downtown Everett, Arlington, and the Quil Ceda Casino. MMA tournaments, music bands, hockey games. But transit from Edmonds and Everett knocks off at 10:15pm so I’d have to leave in the middle and miss the main event. Sometimes I do that just to see something, but other times I don’t bother. The alternative is a $40 Zipcar, Uber, or taxi, but that’s too expensive to do more than once a year for a very special occasion. Arlington and Quil Ceda, of course, are impossible. The last southbound from Arlington is at 7pm. When my roommate had a van and we drove up to Arlington on 2-3 occasions, it was at least $20 in gas per trip, so again an investment.
(The best-looking car in my opinion is the Mini Cooper. Never been inside one, but someday I will, for that special occasion….)
Sorry I didn’t get back to you. I hear ya about the lack of good connectivity in Snohomish County. Having to leave events at 7 PM to get back to Skagit stinks…
“The alternative is a $40 Zipcar, Uber, or taxi”
It’s actually worse than that. Zipcar charges by the hour, and if you’re going to stay at whatever the event is long enough to be worth the drive, the trip will likely cost well over $40, by the time the 17% rental car tax gets added. You could possibly hold it to $50 if you are willing to pay extremely close attention to the time and leave early if necessary. Taking Uber from Edmonds CC or downtown Everett just to the nearest #512 stop should, in theory, cost only $10 or so, except the 512 also stops running around 10:15 in the evening, so you’d have to pay for the ride all the way back to Seattle – around $35-40 from Edmonds CC, more like $50 from Everett. And, that’s assuming that you can even trust Uber to show up. Once you get north of the Seattle City limits, finding a driver near you can be very hit or mess, especially late a night – you basically have to hope that someone happened to just drop somebody off near you. And a bloated taxi all the way home from Edmonds or Everett is likely to cost at least as much as Zipcar.
I think Quil Ceda may operate their own bus, although my guess is that it has a limited schedule which, for an evening trip, would basically require a $150-200/night overnight stay.
I think the key to making trips like this affordable is to go with friends so that you can pile in a car together and split the cost. If none of the friends who want to go have cars, I would probably grudgingly choose Zipcar, for lack of better options, although Car2Go could potentially win my business if they started running the $50 weekend specials more often (more than 1-2 weekends per year).
RelayRides could be another option if you are able to get it to work. Although, when I’ve tried, I always ended up with no-replies and gave up.