When did you start riding public transit independently? Were there certain pivotal trips that made you more of a transit enthusiast and shaped your viewpoint? What’s the youngest people you see now taking transit independently? The full 2 Line opens tomorrow, which many be a similar pivot point for many people. That makes it a good time to reflect on how we all got into transit.
I started riding Metro in 7th grade in 1979 when I chose to go to an alternative junior high school on the other side of Bellevue that didn’t have school buses. At first my parents drove me and I was afraid to take the bus because I’d never been on public transit before. Would I be able to reach the stop cord and activate it, or would the bus sail past my stop? After several months, I took Metro home from school, and saw how easy it was and and other people from my school were taking it. I started taking it to school every day. My first trip to Seattle was to the Record Library (a record-rental shop) at Broadway & Denny. Then I started taking it to the downtown library, and the U-District for its used record shops and bookstores and friends who hung out there.
I lived in a single-family area, a mile from the nearest supermarket, with only houses in between. Luckily it was a 5 minute walk to an hourly Metro bus, and it was the route that went to downtown Bellevue and downtown Seattle. So that’s what made it possible for me to use transit and become a transit fan.
In 1982 in the summer between 9th and 10th grade, I saw a friend on the bus who had moved to the top of Queen Anne, so I followed him home — and I found another world. Buses every 20-30 minutes. The ability to walk walk to a corner store and friends’ houses like people in books. We could even walk to Seattle Center where Queen Anne teenagers went on weekend evenings. This was really possible now, not just sixty years ago or in the vague New York I’d never seen.
By 11th grade I lived in a downtown Bellevue apartment with my dad. Now I had half-hourly buses, and could walk to school and Safeway and Bellevue Square and everything else in downtown Bellevue. It was my first time living in urbanism, even though Bellevue was only 1-2 stories then, and I was so happy. When I graduated I went to UW and moved to the U-District.
In winter 1985 my dad and I drove down to Nevada to visit relatives, and we stopped in San Jose on the way back, where he’d gone to college and I’d lived until I was 6. One day he had business meetings all day, so his friend suggested they drop me off at Fremont and I could take BART to San Fransisco; his friend was sure I’d enjoy it. That was my first time on a metro/subway, something I’d always wanted to do. I spent the day in Frisco and came back in the evening, and took the express bus from Fremont to San Jose, which stopped a mile from where we were staying. So my first subway experience was BART, and that has made more more sympathetic to metro-wide frequent rail than some others who want only a city-only network, because I could see how it benefited people in the East Bay.
In 1995 I went to Moscow and St Petersburg; in 1998 Düsseldorf/Köln/Liège; in 2000 the UK and Ireland; and in 2000 New York, Chicago, and DC. It was from furthest to nearest: the opposite order from how most people would go. But it gave me a different perspective. In all those cities I rode the transit of course, and walked around as a resident would on everyday errands. All that gave me a clearer picture of what I liked and wanted.
I asked other STB authors how they got into transit, and this is what they said:
Sherwin Lee: “I grew up in the transit desert of south Bellevue and lived too close to school to get a free Metro pass, but I would occasionally take the 921 back home to Somerset, and I also regularly rode the 240 with my friend back to his place in Newport Hills. My earliest memory is my grandmother taking me from her apartment in the CID up to Westlake via the DSTT.
Martin Pagel: “I grew up in Langenhagen, a suburb of Hannover, Germany. I would ride the bus to the tram to downtown Hannover to get to my orthodontist appointment. I must have been 10 or so. Later I went to boarding school in Hildesheim. I would take the bus to catch the tram in Sarstedt, another suburb of Hannover, and ride through downtown back home to Langenhagen, an almost 3 hour trip. That tram turned later into a subway through downtown.”
Ross Bleakney: “I remember taking the bus when I was in middle school in Seattle. I was a shy kid but I felt empowered the more I rode the bus. I learned bus etiquette and sat in back (where the cool kids sat). I learned how to yell “back door please” and other important skills. Taking the bus to other neighborhoods also helped broaden my horizons.”
Nathan Dickey: “Where I grew up in California, transit access was poor. Other than riding the classic yellow school bus, my first transit experience was as a tourist in other cities. I started riding transit independently in college to go into town, and to a summer job. LA’s version of ST3 (Measure M) passed in 2016; which was an exciting time for the region but they’re having similar issues to ST with cost inflation. I moved to Seattle in 2019 in part because of its efforts to increase transit use region-wide.”
Michael Smith: “I’m from the Philadelphia suburbs but rarely, if ever, took transit there. When I was 8 years old, my family moved to Hong Kong. My earliest transit related memory is sitting in the front row of a double decker bus on the winding mountain roads from Wan Chai to Stanley. After 2 years in Hong Kong, we moved to Singapore. Once we settled into our apartment and were familiar with the nearby area, I was allowed to travel independently around the city. Initially, I mostly used the MRT to get to/from school when I missed the school bus. In high school, I used the MRT and buses to meet up with friends, and get to my activities and appointments.”
What’s the youngest you see riding transit independently now? For me it’s the crowd of high schoolers at Roosevelt, Bellevue, and Interlake HS. Since high school goes down to 9th grade now (it was 10th grade when I went), that means they’re only two years older than when I started. That surprised me because I thought the difference would be larger than that: you hear so much how kids nowadays aren’t independent, and they stay at home on their phones. But it’s not really that much different, at least the ones who do go out on buses and Link. And they could have started in middle school for all I know. Other STB authors see it pretty similarly.
How did you get into transit? Let us know in the comments. This is an open thread.
When I was in elementary school, the kids in my Rainier Valley neighborhood were dropped off at the downtown YMCA on Saturday mornings by a parent and we were expected to take the bus back home by ourselves. All our parents were regular bus commuters and it was expected that we should know how to use the bus system, too.
Within a few years, we were buying all-day passes and would frequently spend Saturdays exploring the city as a group of middle school kids. We traveled the sprawling Route 7 network extensively (RV, University District, Lake City, View Ridge, Roosevelt). Sometimes we ventured out to Ballard on the 15 or 18, but the 7 was our main line. Kids riding the bus was commonplace at that time and we would collect paper bus schedules as we rode as souvenirs and study the maps to plan our next adventures. Life without the internet and mobile phones! Of course, we had extra money to use a pay phone in case we got lost.
After I returned to Seattle after college, I found an old shoebox full of those timetables from the earliest days of Metro Transit: plenty of 7 Rainier editions, 10 Mt. Baker, 2 Madrona, one of the earliest 60 timetables, 39 Seward Park, 42 Empire Way, 4 Montlake, 226 Bellevue (offering hourly service between Seattle and the Eastside). In the early days of STB, I posted some of those images on PageTwo, but they never seemed to get much attention.
I’m excited for the full 2 Line opening. Judkins Park is closer to my home than Beacon Hill Station. I’ll avoid the huge opening day crowds, but starting Monday, I’ll be working the 2 Line into my regular afternoon commutes. You can expect plenty of my grumbling commentaries about local transit service in the posts next week.
My story involves the Y also. I lived three miles from downtown Tulsa and was taken to the Y by my Dad or Mom weekly on Saturday starting when I was eight. I was to ride the bus home.
Sometimes, though, the lure of a big chocolate sundae at Walgreen’s ended up diverting my bus fare, which was the same twenty-five cents as the sundae, and I would walk home.
I grew up in Madison, Wisconsin and rarely, if ever, took transit until moving to the Pacific Northwest in 2021. I would take the bus home from my Mom’s work on campus occasionally after I took Latin tutoring with some friends in middle school, but that was about it. I was mostly a bike rider.
When I moved to Portland, my partner lived close to a MAX station and we would take the train downtown on occasion for events and such. But it wasn’t until a trip to visit a friend in San Francisco where I really became a bus rider. That would’ve been 2022, at which point I started riding the bus in Portland somewhat often. I always hated driving (didn’t learn until I was 22 and had to in order to take a job in Nashville), so once I realized that bus + bike could get me most places I wanted in Portland it was an easy sell.
Hail fellow Badger State-r! I grew up in Milwaukee and went to UW-Madison.
I didn’t start riding the bus regularly until I was out here in 2012 without a car; back in Madison most things I needed were in walking or biking distance. Even after getting a car in 2014 I tried to stick to busing wherever I could and got very familiar with Eastside bus service. Link was always on the horizon but somehow never seemed to get any closer until all of a sudden it got here!
I grew up in Kent and rode the 150 to Southcenter and Seattle as a teenager. Never learned to drive a car. This lead to some long hikes up and down a hillside at the time, and I came to avoid walking distances on trips.
FWIW, in the early 80s I rode practically every all-day Metro route to see what was there. When I took the 150 to Kent and got off at 68th & James, there was nothing there, just emptiness along the side of the road. It went one stop further to the P&R, but there was little there either. That’s what West Valley Highway was like all the way from Southcenter before the industrial parks were built, a rural-like highway.
No, wait, the short runs went to the Kent P&R. The full runs continued further to central Kent and Auburn.
The great urbanist awakening was in New York, high school age: 15-16 or so.
I’m from one of the distant suburbs of New York City, but well within reach of the commuter rail network: Manhattan was about an hour by train, excluding the short drive to the suburban train station itself.
I went to a high school about halfway towards NYC and the way there was by commuter train. There was a regular band of about 25 of us, collected at various points along the line, to go to school. Mom or dad dropped me off at the local station in the morning. Ride the train, go to school. Then the ride home, call mom or dad to come pick me up at the station, and back to our bucolic-but-isolated suburb. Where nothing happened. Where none of my friends actually lived. Where if I needed or wanted to do anything, I needed a car to do it. And in New York, one does not procure a drivers license until at least age 17 (and within proximity to NYC, is restricted until age 18). To a teenager who desires to see and do, it was a minimum-security prison.
I hated the social experience of being in high school (not least because of the residential isolation) but not the academic one: the proximity to NYC meant frequent field trips or independent assignments into NYC itself, where I often found myself armed with little more than a Metrocard and a notebook. And it opened my eyes: the subway will take you to places where you can both “see” and “do”, and you don’t need a car — or, importantly, someone to drive it — to do it.
As soon as I got a drivers license (which as I’ve mentioned, was an absolute necessity), I was able to drive myself to the commuter train station, and in about an hour, the city was my playground.
I’ll never consciously choose to live in a car suburb, as long as I can afford it and my life situation allows it. I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemies.
Transit, especially rail is magical in NYC!
I think I was in 7th grade when my camping buddy Fred Pazzaglia and I boarded a Niagara Frontier Transit (NFT) bus in Williamsville NY and headed into Buffalo to hit an Army Surplus store for camping gear (pre EMS and REI days). We repeated the trip a few times but my independent mobility was based on a ten speed back in the days before helmets! Buffalo was just starting construction of it’s underground subway light rail line but life had other plans for me in Los Angeles.
I moved from Buffalo to Los Angeles in 1976 thinking I would be in a transit desert I was surprised that the RTA had such a great bus system. I used the route on Pacific Coast Highway to attend the LA Harbor Junior College and an express bus from Torrance to LA Union Station, one of the best transfer points one could ask for, Phillipes French Dip for dinner every night! I also started my advocacy for rail transit by becoming involved with Citizens for Rail California, one of their projects being to bring back the old PE line between LA and Long Beach
I finished my 4 year degree in San Luis Opispo (SLO) and got to use the SLO Transit system in town, the first transit bus I used that played music! ( the others were in Mazatlan and Jefferson Transit.
In 1983 I moved to Seattle and settled in for a few years between Green Lake and what’s now called Tangletown and rode if I recall correctly the 16 bus to downtown for the Market or to transfer to the 250 which then travelled to Boeing Field.
Later I moved to the Idylwood neighborhood in Bellevue and continued to take the 250 to Boeing Field through downtown, that was a very interesting route and sometimes two of us would get off the 150 at the Mayflower Hotel and have a few pints of Anchor Steam beer then get on a later 250 to Idylwood Park.
In 1990 I was stationed at RAF Waddington outside of Lincoln UK. To get into Lincoln I had a choice of using a Stagecoach or City of Lincoln double decker buses. When passing through Heighington the bus backed down about 4 blocks to reach a stop. That had to give some drivers some grey hairs!
Back in the US again my normal desk at Boeing had moved to Kent and I ran into the Metro 247 that allowed me lots of reading time, I would guess the 247 was the champion Milk Run of routes anywhere.
Eventually moving to Issaquah I took advantage of the bike racks appearing on buses and used various combinations of the 554 and the Sounder and first elements of the 1 Line to get to work. I also started taking trips to Oak Harbor for lunch with my Aunt and she in turn would travel down to stay with us using the same set of buses (the Issaquah Press was nice enough to print a piece I wrote on the trip).
I had left Buffalo before its rail line was opened, the same with LA. But here in Seattle I’m finally living the life of a rail transit rider! Well done Sound Transit, warts and all!
And thanks to all the people who contribute to the STB, it’s a nice community, even a few of the Trolls are ok.
Extend the Monorail (as a Monorail)
[Ed. Changed 150 to 250 per author’s intention, fixed “Pacific Coast” and “their” spelling. I was wondering how the 150 could serve Boeing Field and what it had to do with Bellevue. -Mike]
I don’t remember a 247. Where did it go?
When I was nine, in fourth grade on the Near North Side of Chicago, September, 1977, I took the CTA’s 36 Broadway bus after school every day to the Loop. I’d get off at Adams Street and walk a few blocks to an office to get a car ride home from there. The bus fare for kids my age at the time was a quarter. This was a real adventure for me as I’d previously taken a yellow school bus to a suburban grade school.
The CTA bus went down State Street, at really interesting time in the city’s evolution, before that area was re-gentrified, and it gave me a better feel for real city life in Chicago than I would have had getting picked up at school. The bus ride was a nice meditative interlude in the day at a challenging time.
Soon, that morphed into a weekly routine taking the CTA’s 151 Sheridan bus to Union Station for commuter rail out to Lisle to visit my dad. I’d get popcorn at the station and look out the window which is what most people did because nobody had a phone.
First trip was presumably in Chicago, probably on the Metra going to/from the suburbs to the city. Definitely rode the subway in NYC when I was around 10, and then lots of transit experience living in Europe for a full year while in college. I’ve lived in American cities of all shapes and sizes, which colors my view that while transit should be the primary mode for travel within Seattle’s urban core, our policy goal for most of the regional should be to allow people to live car light, not necessarily car free.
I really got into the wonky part transit by reading this blog. My now wife had moved to Seattle and we were dating long distance, so I started following the local news and somehow stumbled across this blog. After reading for months, I can remember the first time a wrote a comment and how delightful it was to be treated seriously and engage in conversation with people I’d never met.
After getting married and living in the Seattle area for a few years, I had the opportunity to work for Sound Transit for ~1.5 years before moving out of state. I walked into work the first day with a better understanding of transit policy than 90% of the people who worked there. ST staff are good people who generally like the fact they work for a public agency, but for most of them it’s a job and they aren’t particularly passionate about transit (except for a few pockets, like the service planning team) and they’d be perfectly happy working for SDOT or WSDOT or the Parks department or whatever. We had free copies of Human Transit (the book), I gave them to my team and I don’t anyone read it. I’m a big believer in regional transit and the vision of ST3 that implies a massive increase in TOD across the region commensurate with the investment we are making outside urban nodes (aka Seattle and a few other neighborhoods).
While we don’t live in the PNW anymore, we still own our home in Issaquah and love returning to visit our friends and enjoy the beautiful outdoors. Thank you for maintaining this blog and allowing me to continue to participate in the conversation.
I grew up in Dubrovnik Croatia and don’t quite recall the first time I rode the bus by myself but I was probably 9-10 when I started riding it regularly by myself. I rode the #3 Libertas. https://www.libertasdubrovnik.hr/en/line/25/nuncijata-pile-3
Kids riding transit by themselves over there was and still is completely normal. In Seattle I sometimes see groups of 9th graders riding the 50/128 after school near the West Seattle HS.
When i visited Victoria BC a couple years ago i was pleasantly surprised to see what seemed to be 10-11 year olds riding the bus by themselves and that being normal.
Surprising to see a local transit agency site in English. Since I’m a language fan, what are all the languages it’s in, and where’s the language selector (I don’t see one)?
It’s a tourism mecca (more visitors than Venice these days IIRC), so almost everything over there these days has English versions. I only see English and Croatian options on the website here.
Generally German and Italian are also common there (such as restaurant menus)
I can’t remember the first time I rode a bus because I was very young. My mom had health problems when I was 4. and one of two of my aunts took care of me some days. Neither aunt had a car nor drove (not uncommon for women in the early 1960’s) so day trips with them were by bus in my small Ohio River city. Even though I was very young, my aunts still explained the basics to me like how to pay a fare, know where the bus was going and how to pull the cord to signal the driver to stop.
When did I ride independently? It must have been in college. I had ridden transit — both bus and rail — many times before then but never alone. I was in Evansville, Indiana and was long fascinated by transit.
I made a friend in college from Main Line Philadelphia, and visited there one summer. We went to DC that trip too. His entire family were into trains (his Dad actually worked for Budd). We college students independently rode multiple rail lines there, and also stayed in Rosslyn a few nights and rode the then-new DC Metro to visit museums. (I instantly loved how the round glass-covered bulbs under the platform edge would flash when the train approached in DC!)
I think many people’s first experiences being an “independent” rider is actually as a companion with other peers or relatives. So I can’t specifically remember first actually riding transit alone because I had already so spent many years riding!
“I think many people’s first experiences being an “independent” rider is actually as a companion with other peers or relatives.”
It may depend on your personality. I usually travel alone because I’m the only one who wants to go to that place at that time. When I meet others somewhere, we’re all coming from different places.
Yeah I mostly have ridden alone. I just didn’t initially.
I will say that there are social benefits to riding trains! I may ride with a coworker and have a nice after-work chat. I may see a colleague that gives me news or marketing leads. I may see an old friend who is not talked to in awhile and enjoy reconnecting. I’ve even gotten dates through flirting on the train when I was younger!
“I’ve even gotten dates through flirting on the train when I was younger!”
Cue the Trolley Song! Judy Garland in “Meet Me In St Louis”!
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=hwP6kNIDg30
PS. There’s even flirting instructions in the song!
“I will say that there are social benefits to riding trains! I may ride with a coworker and have a nice after-work chat. I may see a colleague that gives me news or marketing leads. I may see an old friend who is not talked to in awhile and enjoy reconnecting. I’ve even gotten dates through flirting on the train when I was younger!”
That’s what Jane Jacobs says is the secret of why cities are essential. In The Economy of Cities she argues that cities allow people to encounter others they never would otherwise (e.g., in-person encounters with business contacts, people in a hobby group, a new acquaintance on the bus, or Mrs or Mr Right), and that this interaction generates creative ideas and skill sharing that creates new companies and industries, leads to breakthroughs in science and arts, and generates wealth and keeps the economy dynamic. I should write an article about this. She has a whole theory about city economics that goes far beyond this, and her views on urban neighborhoods (“The Death and Life of Great American Cities”) fits into it.
In case the expression is too old-fashioned to be understood, Mrs Right or Mr Right is somebody you meet and fall in love with and marry — the right one.
I agree with the benefits of cities that you mention, Mike.
I actually think it’s unhealthy to sequester oneself and rely on social media instead. You just get fed back your perspective on the world and fail to encounter broader humanity. It’s made worse with things like home schooling and gated communities. It’s almost like the thing people are told to fear the most is encountering someone who’s outside of their little corner of the world.
Take this year’s horrific assault on trans people and drag performances. Both have been around for a long time. Heck drag has been a basic part of comedy from the earliest motion pictures and TV and on stage for centuries before that. And now it’s evil? Or it’s too “adult” even though our parents watched Ray Waldron perform “Honey Bun” in South Pacific in 1958? Or rainbow flags should be banned like they’re obscene even though they’re just stripes on cloth? We live in weird and hateful times.
I agree Al. And kudos for the old musical references. So much fun! Keep ’em coming.
I started riding bus alone since my second grade (age of 8). That was a different time in different country, so there was no law against it. I remember this very well because my mom had to keep this from my grandparents for a while because they thought it was too young for me to go to school by myself.
My mom managed to get me into neighboring school district when I started elementary school, so my trip to elementary school was slightly longer than normal but not crazy. To put thing to perspective, it was sort of like living in Ballard but going to Wallingford for school.
In the early 2000s, car ownership was still low in my hometown in China and e-bike and even regular bike still required license plate. Taking bus was population option while most bus routes charged the same and sometimes higher (in summer when they turned on AC) fare rates as they do today, so at that time, the public transportation system doesn’t need much funding.
When will metro buses stop saying GO SEAHAWKS ?
“my independent mobility was based on a ten speed back in the days before helmets”
It took me a minute to remember what a ten-speed was. I had a 5-speed bicycle; my mom had a 3-speed. Why did bicycles in the 1970s have only 1, 3, 5, or 10 speeds, while now they have 20 or 22? Was it technically infeasible to have more gears then? Or was there just not enough knowledge of and demand for it for prices to come down? Or is it because it was all road bikes and kids’ bikes then; mountain bikes didn’t become common until the 80s. Is there something about mountain bikes and cross bikes that made more gears common?
In 1993 the 247 had 3 or 4 rush hour trips. Mornings it ran from Redmond P&R to Boeing Space Center in Kent. And reversed that in the evening. Boeing I believe provided some funding for it although less than half of riders were obvious Boeing employees.
The routing from Redmond P&R was up Bel Red rd to the Overlake P&R then cross Bellevue on 148th to Eastgate P&R then plodding thru Factoria. Then it got on I-405 to Renton covering Boeing , Downton Renton , and the Renton P&R. Then it travelled down Lind Ave past the flashcube building to where IKEA is now which was the site of a Boeing facility in buildings leased from Benaroya. Then down was valley blvd to S212th taking that across the valley to the Space Center. Not very direct but oddly useful.
I think the derailer tech has improved a lot. I always was running it to reliably hit the high and low gear cogs on the bac wheel. When we kids would go for an evening ride with Dad we rode our cool sting ray bikes. He had a Raleigh 3 speed from England. When I lived there in the early 90’s it was still the regular bike used in the cities. And most came equipped with the in-hub generator for electric lighting still.
In the 1980s Metro fares were 40 cents one zone, 60 cents two zones. Crossing the Seattle city limits was two zones. You paid cash or got a book of cardboard tickets (no discount). There were annual passes but I don’t think monthly passes. My parents gave me money for bus fares/tickets. There was an all-day discount pass on weekends so I got those. I don’t think there was a youth discount, but an adult could bring a few children and pay just one adult fare, and on weekends or Sundays they could bring a few teenagers.
When I was at UW and worked at Harborview I got subsidized monthly passes from them but I still had to pay part of it. This was before the U-Pass and multi-agency PugetPass started. Otherwise I’ve paid full price because none of my other employers offered subsidized passes.
“(I instantly loved how the round glass-covered bulbs under the platform edge would flash when the train approached in DC!)”
I like that too: it’s an effective indicator and other cities should do something like it.
The light-fixture style is starting to get a bit old-fashioned though. The recessed lights are a bit large and plain white. A contemporary style might have smaller lights with a black rim, and maybe somewhere other than in the “mind the gap” row.
If I was designing it from scratch, I would have an LED strip light up on the inner edge of the yellow rubber stripe.
I would also try to incorporate a line indicator too, like with introducing colored lights in DC or adding numbers to painted lenses or laser signage projecting the Line number here. Overhead signs are nice, but foot lighting is to me more attention getting.
I’d love to see repeated 1 Line or 2 Line colored balls light up all over the station when a train pulls in. People rush for trains and don’t always see what line it is until they’re already on-board, especially if it’s only indicated with three overhead signs and an LED strip on the train that may be blocked by other passengers. I’ve been known to rush from the stairs to the train and get in — only to discover that I’m on the wrong train!
This has been a great idea for a thread! Thanks, Mike
One morning I started thinking about how I got into transit, and then I realized it could be a Roundable article and open question. Michael Smith suggested scheduling it today right before the Crosslake opening, so that people could think about the concept then and compare the two times (earlier and now, and what it might be for people in the future). Then I started asking others for their stories and put them in.
Here’s why the 40 is being split to a different bus stop in Fremont from the 31, 32, and 62:
“Since the late 1800’s there has been a transit stop at Fremont Ave N. and N. 34th St. A new northbound protected bike lane is being added at this location, filling a gap and enhancing safety. The new northbound stop for Route 40 will be at the Lenin statue on Fremont Place N. This work will also shift the northbound stop for Routes 31, 32 and 62. The new stop for those routes is on North 35th St. Both new stops will be in service on Saturday, March 28. The existing southbound detour and temporary stop on the Fremont Bridge remain in place until further notice.”
From Metro’s weekend update.
The original plan called for the stop to be closer to Fremont for better transfers. Unfortunately, it was also outside Show Pony, and they and a couple neighboring businesses raised a stink directly with Mayor Harrell about “undesirable bus people” being bad for business. Obviously, Mayor Harrell didn’t care at all about transit but did care a lot about people with money, so he agreed to overrule SDOT and Metro, and move the stop.
Hilariously, Show Pony went out of business last year, long before that stop opened. They almost certainly were struggling before and just wanted something else to blame than their own bad luck/poor choices. Unfortunately, it seems it’s too late to move the stop back, though if it does happen maybe we can get it named the Show Pony Memorial Bus Stop.
“I actually think it’s unhealthy to sequester oneself and rely on social media instead.”
There are reports that GenZ or GenA is turning away from social media and AI and rediscovering in-person time and events and paper books, due to bad experiences and loneliness and concerns about the future. I don’t know how widespread it is, if it’s just a niche a few people are doing or the start of something bigger.
For us oldersters, to the extent we do it. it’s just going back to what we always did. I never transitioned that far to social media, ebooks, or phone apps, so there’s little to reverse. But it’s amusing to see young’uns getting into vinyl records and cassettes. I switched to digital music ten years ago (though I buy CDs of my favorite bands to support them). Why? Because I got so tired of records skipping or warping, and tapes that get chewed up in the machine and become unrecoverable.
I used to be an audiophile. My brother still is. There was a transition over time in the habits of listeners. In the 60s and 70s, the focus was on being as accurate as possible. Over time, convenience became more important. MP3s were never as good as CDs, but they were a lot more convenient. Now it is a mix. There are audiophiles that swear by high end vinyl. But the standard for a lot of audiophiles is digital recordings at a very high sampling rate (higher than CDs). For most systems there isn’t that much difference — the quality of the speakers/headphones are the crucial thing.
It was obvious that social media was a double edged sword for a long time. The recent court cases remind me of the tobacco lawsuits. Anyone who has been paying attention knows this stuff is bad (especially for kids) and known it a long time. But the industry was making too much money — they didn’t want to change. My grandkids have avoided social media but like you said — I don’t know if that is a trend or just a niche. Obviously it isn’t all bad, but much of it is. Personal contact is essential — especially with people who come from a different background and don’t agree with you.
[I write as a comment online — no, the irony isn’t lost on me] :)
“the focus was on being as accurate as possible. Over time, convenience became more important”
I noticed that in the switch to cell phones and MP3s and earbuds (from full-sized headphones): the sound quality isn’t as good. With cell phones it’s harder to hear and understand people and you have to repeat more often. MP3 is poor, but AAC (MP4), WEBM, and OPUS have mostly superceded it. CD quality is fine for me, and now that even the cheapest sound chip generates CD quality or better, that has become a non-issue.
There’s a video on the real difference between how records and CDs reproduce sound. It’s not that one is better but they do different things. CDs and digital audio handle too-low and too-high sounds by clipping them — silencing the part beyond the range. Records do it by compressing the entire range narrower. Records can’t do a low sound because the groove would be so wide the needle would jump out of it. (I don’t remember if it’s low pitch, high pitch or loud sound that makes the groove wide, but looking around it seems to be low pitch.) People accustomed to records are used to the compressed sound, so when they hear the clipped sound they think it’s worse or wrong.
I was born in Madison, WI in the 80s and my parents took me around by bus and bike quite a bit. My first transit memory was riding the bus, probably to the library, my favorite non-home indoor place. I remember my parents would let me put the coins in the fare machines, and being fascinated watching the coins get sorted. Then I got picked up at the right time to pull the cord. :)
Sadly, we moved to northern WI when I was 3 to a city that had far worse public transit than Madison. It was enough for me to take to school when I needed it, or the library (but I could also walk or bike). Unfortunately, these days it’s in a death spiral with no Sunday service and Saturday service ending in the early afternoon, with “replacement” service offered by way of “flex service” that doesn’t even accept transfers from the fixed-route service. It wouldn’t surprise me if even the off-peak weekday service consisting of a variety of hourly one-direction loops is slashed soon.
It was almost 20 years after leaving Madison that I finally made it to Seattle, and got to experience even better public transit. We’ve been lucky here in that we’ve had stalls, but no serious cutbacks aside from Pierce Transit’s long-running woes.
Thanks, this is great article.
I grew up in the U District (Seattle) with a parent riding a 7n bus downtown every work day and what I remember to be 55¢ fares. I was definitely traveling around town independently on the bus by about fifth grade in the pre-internet days when you either had a paper timetable and route map for trip planning or called Metro’s customer service line. (553-RIDE?) for advice. The lobby of the University Bookstore had what seemed like a complete assortment printed of route maps and timetables that one could collect to plan future adventures.
Yeah, I remember the assortment of route maps and timetables at the University Bookstore.
I grew up in Denver and had a brief brush with independent public transit when I was in early middle-school, due to after school activities. I didn’t get into full dependency til my first job at a bakery, and got to hike two suburb miles to get to the once every three hours bus. It was the second-class position and it showed. The opening of the light rail and flying past the idling cars on the highway was my first actual enjoyment of the experience. I still don’t know the true joys of actual urbanization, as I live a fair piece away from any urban center. But the ability to come to them without a car is worth its weight in gold.