How Seattle Got More People to Ride the Bus

https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2017/10/how-seattle-bucked-a-national-trend-and-got-more-people-to-ride-the-bus/542958/?utm_source=SFTwitter

by colinprince • 9 years ago

164 198 9 years ago

citylab.com

paule89• 9 years ago

Well. If people start to invest into public Infrastructure and Busses, Trams, trains. The quality will increase and more people will use it. The same thing with dedicated bike lanes. Not for every scenario. But it helps the people. The low and middle class and that is the best we can do. Help those who don't have the money.

selectodude• 9 years ago

The irony is people who need better public transit are the ones more virulently against bike lanes.

mulmen9• 9 years ago

Can you substantiate this claim?

icebraining7• 9 years ago

Is it ironic? If you live very far due to housing costs, bike lanes probably don't help you that much.

tynpeddler• 9 years ago

Ironically, between the poor weather, the hills everywhere, the high traffic and the poor road surfaces, bike lanes are the last thing that Seattle should be worried about.

At a given intersection downtown per cycle, you will see dozens of cars and people, and MAYBE one bike. Almost all of Seattle's bike infrastructure is very underutilized. But Seattle cyclists are loud when it comes to local politics, because most seattleites think of themselves as temporarily inconvenienced cyclists.

Animats• 9 years ago

Maybe the monorail plan will come back.[1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seattle_Monorail_Project

curtis• 9 years ago

I think it's unlikely, although I personally would like to see some sort of elevated solution re-visited.

r00fus• 9 years ago

That reminds me of one of the protagonists from the movie Singles

pkamb• 9 years ago

Just please don't make us vote for it.

akhilcacharya• 9 years ago

I wonder how much this has to do with employers giving their employees ORCA cards

adamnemecek• 9 years ago

My experience has been less than stellar. Busses coming 20 minutes late or not at all. 545 at 6 pm on a weekday is so over packed I feel like I’m going to second base with half of the bus.

Seattle should look to a city like Vienna or Prague. The transportation systems are surprisingly well engineered but that might be due to the fact that a larger part of the population takes it.

mulmen9• 9 years ago

I'm not a transit engineer but I think this is because we are asking buses to do too much. When a route sends a bendy bus every 10 minutes it's no longer a bus route and is now a really expensive train. The Rapid Rides are packed at rush hour as well. What we need is something like light rail that can go between neighborhoods and then let buses move people within those areas.

taeric2• 9 years ago

There are a multitude of answers. All require space. And building any of them will spike the problem for a time.

That said, I think we are getting there. I'm somewhat confident that the current problems are the spike.

samsolomon• 9 years ago

Are several of those extended buses really more expensive than light rail? There's a lot of upfront cost for light rail and if demand changes, routes are pretty inflexible.

koenigdavidmj2• 9 years ago

We're getting there. Slowly. The 545, the route he mentioned, is the downtown-Seattle-to-Microsoft bus, next in line to be replaced with light rail.

Buttes2• 9 years ago

"Expensive trains" seem in style, for whatever reason. There are routes that run buses every 4 minutes here. There are other routes that run every 10m, with electric buses on caternary wires. I'll take a good bus line over a non-existent rail line any day. I love trains but if bus lanes and BRT infra are politically expedient, good enough for me.

exadeci• 9 years ago

The sad truth is that many cities around the world had light rail 50 years ago, they removed them saying that buses were much flexible and better and now they are bringing them back.

taeric2• 9 years ago

I think the road work has been the main offender. A single lane road due to construction is just as bad for the bus as for anything else.

That said, crowded is as much a by product of the crowd. Easiest way to avoid that is to adjust your times.

stephengillie8• 9 years ago

ST 510 (Seattle - MLT - Everett, to reach Premera in MLT) was routinely 30+ minutes late, because buses would get stuck in traffic each way. So the common "2 buses at once" would occur. Or sometimes the 1st would be over-stuffed and the 2nd would be 5 minutes behind and almost empty.

MT 550 running 6 buses an hour felt the same in 2016 - packed in like a mosh pit during rush hour. That's when I gave in and bought a truck, and dealt with parking 6 blocks away instead of hiking 9 blocks down Cherry (and past the perpetual tent city) to the tunnel.

news_to_me• 9 years ago

You do realize that by driving, you're making the problem worse? The real solution is to just get more cars off the road. There are few excuses to be driving alone in a city.

Eridrus• 9 years ago

I lived in Seattle in 2011/2012; the bus was so bad that I bought my first car. So maybe it was worse before, but I did not find it a very good way to get around.

somethingsimple2• 9 years ago

Seattle should look to a city like Vienna

+1 on this. The Vienna transit system is so fantastic that I was able to get around the entire city without even speaking German. I remember one day I was riding the U-Bahn with a local friend and asked him what it was like during rush hour. He said, "this is rush hour". There was still plenty of space for people in all wagons. Simply amazing.

stephengillie8• 9 years ago

Seattle feels like numerous tangentially-connected villages, mostly based on how it was formed:

- Downtown's financial district and retail core, with the jail, hospitals, churches, and other services (like the methodone clinic and drunk tank) on First Hill.

- Capitol Hill's "crazy night life".

- Queen Anne Hill with normal-ish people.

- Magnolia's rich separation.

- Ballard the Scandinavian fishing village.

- Fremont and Wallingford - the artist and hippie communes, the University District, and Ravenna.

- The International District and The Jungle.

- Beacon Hill and Rainier Beach, where the action happens day or night.

- SoDo (Southern Downtown)'s industrial core.

- Lake City feels like the "northern SODO".

- West Seattle feeling closer to Seatac than Seattle.

Twirrim• 9 years ago

There's just no way to efficiently ship that many people on that route virtually simultaneously.

So many people finish work around the same times that you get this massive spike of people on the hour, and then it's dead quiet once that on-hour spike has been fulfilled. You don't want to be trying to get on the 545 at 5pm or 6pm. Shift your leaving time so you're at the bus stop 10-15 minutes earlier and it's a whole other story. Although I no longer do the 545 any more, for that, and for my current route I switched to arriving early in the office and leaving 4:30ish. I'm almost always guaranteed to get a seat and have less rush hour traffic slowing down my return home.

One thing that the city could do to help, and has helped elsewhere, is to encourage city businesses to shift their starting and finishing hours, especially those businesses that are a bit more regimented. This spreads out the peak over a bigger period of time and allows both more overall flow and less disruption.

Buttes2• 9 years ago

Forgot Vianna, the buses in Boston aren't great but 20m late is exceptional here.

Spooky23• 9 years ago

That’s awesome. The bus authority in my area saw massive ridership changes when they added BRT to one trunk route. It dramatically improved transfers and has been a boon to them.

narrator• 9 years ago

I think what Muni in SF has done with putting cameras and microphones everywhere has kept the thug problem under control. I used to ride Muni a lot before that and would regularly watch and overhear people graffiting, planning some sort of gang violence, screaming in ecstacy while obviously extremely high after refilling their opioid prescription at sf general, openly smoking their crack rocks across from me, etc. That's why people don't ride public transit.

dawnerd• 9 years ago

I’ve been harassed a few times in Portland and that stabbing that happened a while ago stopped Me from using the max trains completely. There’s like no law enforcement on them.

DrScump7• 9 years ago

Both Muni and BART are also getting more crowded due to the new California law[0] that exempts juveniles from fare evasion enforcement; they can effectively ride anywhere for free, now.

[0] SB882 (Hertzberg) This one change costs BART alone $25 million per year (Matier & Ross, SF Chronicle, May 8 2017, page C1)

njarboe10• 9 years ago

Personal, on-demand, point-to-point, high-speed, low-cost, environmentally-friendly, and quiet transportation seems to me what people want. This is what we as a society should be working towards. Not making using a car so broken that a train or a bus in dedicated lane is the better option.

I hope Elon Musk can get his tunnels with electric vehicles going and remove most of the problems with our current transportation systems. By taking the shortcut of making using a car a moral failing, instead of the negative externalities of car use, we end up condemning a great tool that just needs improvement to remove its current negative aspects.

icebraining7• 9 years ago

It's very hard to make a car anywhere as space efficient as a train or bus, though.

njarboe10• 9 years ago

Space efficient in what way? Parking. I don't think this is a limiting problem. It is the gridlock on the roads. Tunnels can be put underground with a large number of levels if need be. People don't really like the space efficiency of standing packed right next to each other for an hour.

With an automatic system of vehicles you can build a tunnel/track and can put into the system any size vehicle you want. One passenger, two, three, ten, twenty, one hundred. What is the difference between a car, or a bus, or train anyway in this system? Without a driver needed you can have vehicles of any capacity.

mulmen9• 9 years ago

Is that scalable?

e: I could see it working if the self-driving ride-share fantasy ever becomes reality. Right now everyone owning their own car wastes too much space.

What happens to surface streets with the electric car tunnels? Are the tunnels a supplement or a replacement?

PhasmaFelis3• 9 years ago

Mass transit will always be cheaper than individual transport, and we often can't even get taxpayers to fund that. I love the idea of efficient, on-demand, self-driving vehicles, but a world where everyone has access to them is an impossible utopia for the foreseeable future.

njarboe10• 9 years ago

When you don't have to pay a driver, I don't see why that is the case. A bus costs around 1/2 to a million dollars. A very good used car is 2 grand. Electric car motors are expected to last a million miles and the rest of the car, excepting tires, brakes, and batteries, can be made to last that long also. Electric cars are likely to be less expensive that ICE cars in the long run.

Automatic vehicle systems today could easily run in a tunnel or other highly controlled road today. Small and large vehicles (cars and buses) could both use such a system. This would be a mass transit system that could work for everyone.

Tiktaalik• 9 years ago

Also a world where everyone has access to efficient, on-demand, self-driving vehicles will result in a traffic congestion nightmare due to the poor space efficiency of cars. Even the smallest Smart FourTwo is much larger than a cyclist or person standing on a bus.

lmm2• 9 years ago

Having lived in the kind of city that non-car-design makes possible, no. The negative externalities are inherent to personal, on-demand vehicles: they just take up so much space, even with tunnels the loading and unloading areas would take up a huge chunk of prime locations.

It is a moral failing, but moralising rarely works; better to make drivers pay the true costs of car use (in particular, making sure they pay a fair price for the land they're taking up) and let them decide whether it's worth it for them.

njarboe10• 9 years ago

I'm not against dense cities that were designed before cars. Those can be great and I really am happy they exist. I just think that trying to make Los Angeles into a Manhattan or a Paris should not be the goal of the urban planners of LA. Houston and Atlanta are also not going to be able to change that much. It would be very hard to do; really impossible without some kind of wholesale destruction by war. Maybe some other way of city living can be a great also. Let humanity try it out. There are lots of cities in the world. If Elon Musk leads a group to start building a tunnel from his house to SpaceX as an experiment, I'd say encourage that effort. LA with lots of tunnels should be much better that what it is now and could be something great and completely unexpected.

pavel_lishin2• 9 years ago

I don't like taking out the trash and sorting my recycling. Being able to just dump garbage out the window is what I want, but unfortunately, there are many factors which prevent this from being the most optimal option.

loukrazy• 9 years ago

For some commutes in Seattle the bus is way faster than trying to drive out of downtown. The bus tunnel is pretty fantastic.

vkou• 9 years ago

That bus tunnel also makes trips on the LINK take way longer then they should.

lh7777• 9 years ago

Which is one of the reasons why they're going to be kicking all of the buses out of the tunnel as soon as 2019. Good for light rail, but I don't see how 3rd Ave won't become total chaos.

ronnier• 9 years ago

The problem in the Seattle area (including Kirkland and surrounding areas) continues to be 1) Park and rides are completely full by 8:30 2) street parking was stopped in many areas by making it 2 to 4 hours only 3) many waiting areas have no cover -- so you'll stand in the rain waiting for a late bus.

somethingsimple2• 9 years ago

many waiting areas have no cover -- so you'll stand in the rain waiting for a late bus.

This is something I don't get about the Seattle area. It's like people here are in complete denial about the fact that it rains for 9 months a year. It's not just bus stops - my daughter says recess at school sucks most of the year because the playground and other play areas are all uncovered. So all the kids have to stay stuck in a very limited covered area where there's nothing for them to do. Same thing with parks - no covered playgrounds or places where people can sit and relax without getting wet.

matt_the_bass• 9 years ago

My city “solved” the bus traffic issue by reducing bus coverage during rush hour. No wonder no one finds the bus in my area convenient.

jlmorton3• 9 years ago

I don't want to take away from the good things that Seattle has done with transit, but it's worth pointing out that Seattle is far and away the fastest growing city in the US, with an astonishing 3.1% (21,000 people) between 2015-2016.

If ridership increased by 4.1% between 2015-2016, then population growth alone may account for a significant chunk of that.

https://www.seattle.gov/opcd/population-and-demographics

https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/data/seattle-once-...

keepkalm5• 9 years ago

And some of the worst housing affordability. People who move out of the city can't justify to drive and park in Seattle.

It would be near impossible to navigate Metro, SoundTransit, and surrounding transit agencies without OneBusAway or Google Maps. Idk, SoundTranist also tried a massive money grab on car tabs on inflated valuations. They are doing just as much to undermine support for transit as anyone.

aaronbrethorst5• 9 years ago

Thanks, I appreciate the kind words about the utility of OneBusAway for you. You may not know this, but the people who make OneBusAway for iOS and Android are unpaid volunteers.

n.b. I'm the maintainer of OneBusAway for iOS.

techsupporter7• 9 years ago

Idk, SoundTranist also tried a massive money grab on car tabs on inflated valuations.

Sound Transit didn't "try" anything. They're running the MVET the way that the legislature told them to do it and that the voters approved.

(Full disclosure: I voted yes on Sound Transit 3, knowing full well what my vehicle registration would cost after the vote.)

shorttime• 9 years ago

They could be certainly correlated but why would you assume that growth automatically means an equal (or slightly higher in this case) ridership? After all, the out of towners all didn't take the bus there. Most public transportation I've experienced (subways, buses, trollies, local trains, etc) have a lower-band economic class, for reasons that I could only assume and is an entirely different topic. These lower economic classes aren't pushing the growth of Seattle's population. If Seattle is getting the middle and upper classes to take the bus then they very-well deserve kudos.

hcho3• 9 years ago

Indeed, many riders on Seattle buses are middle and upper class:

From 2016 Riders Survey (http://kingcounty.gov/~/media/depts/transportation/metro/acc...):

Household Income

* < 35k/year: 25%

* 35k-100k/year: 34%

* > 100k/year: 32%

Also, 93% of the riders have access to a personal vehicle.

hudibras• 9 years ago

And, of course, the linkage between population growth and transit use could go the other way. Maybe more people are moving to Seattle because it has a good transit system (among other things.)

baybal2• 9 years ago

Does any US city have private run in-city public transport?

krallja• 9 years ago

Not in-city, but Fishers, IN has a privately run express bus to Indianapolis http://www.fishers.in.us/DocumentCenter/View/1665

lovich2• 9 years ago

There's EZ-ride in Boston which has a few routes and uses the same model of buses as the mbta as far as I can tell[1]. There was also Bridj in Boston and DC, which wasn't buses but Vans and it was supposedly changing it's routes to meet demand on a frequent basis[2]. Bridj did shut down however.

[1]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/EZRide [2]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bridj

tomjakubowski3• 9 years ago

Denver does for two rail lines. https://www.bizjournals.com/denver/news/2017/06/07/rtd-put-o... (edit: not actually "in city", I guess, since it's commuter rail)

The heavily urbanized San Gabriel Valley in the LA metro is serviced by—amongst a few public transit agencies, including the county's system, Metro—the privately operated Foothill Transit. Foothill also runs commuter bus lines to/from downtown LA.

jorblumesea• 9 years ago

All of these are great things, but I think there's a few other practical considerations the author missed:

1) Paying for parking is really expensive compared to other cities. A downtown parking spot is easily ~$300/month.

2) Most employers subsidize orca cards (transit pass) but do not subsidize parking spots

3) With Seattle traffic being as bad as it is, most buses are just as fast as cars because of the prioritization they get. In any other city the bus takes twice as long. In Seattle it's on par with driving.

4) Seattle's natural geography encourages density which makes public transit more effective. Most new hires and population growth is also happening in the closer in neighborhoods which are already well connected to transit.

5) Suburban commuting is harshly punished by the above geographical and societal pressures. If you live in Woodinville and commute to the SLU you're looking at 1hr, one way, on a good day. Similar point about population growth happening close in to the city.

TulliusCicero• 9 years ago

Re: 4, it's funny because while Seattle is somewhat dense by American standards...it's still got tons and tons of areas that are restricted to only low-density detached single family homes. A major city like Seattle should have few if any areas like that.

(Not that SFHs should be illegal of course, but they shouldn't be mandated)

mikeytown2• 9 years ago

If the park and ride lots didn’t fill up the bus would be viable for our household. We actually went from using the bus to not using it because of this issue.

mschuster91• 9 years ago

They added bus bulbs on the side of the road to pick up passengers without blocking traffic.

Interesting. Here in Munich new bus stations are explicitly not in bulb form, because buses tend to pick up too much delay from morons ignoring the bus while it blinks and blinks and blinks until finally someone has the sense to let the bus merge into traffic.

On the other hand, the "blocking" way has its own downsides. I live on a 1-lane-per-direction road, directly next to a recently converted bus station - and now I have angry honking whenever there's a load of school kids or wheelchair-bound people, and morons trying to overtake the car on the other direction's lane... so far no accident has happened but I'm waiting for it.

jsolson• 9 years ago

I would describe the bus drivers in Seattle as assertive. They make their own way if nobody yields.

userbinator• 9 years ago

because buses tend to pick up too much delay from morons ignoring the bus while it blinks and blinks and blinks until finally someone has the sense to let the bus merge into traffic.

That would be easily solved by making buses always have the right of way --- when it starts signaling, traffic behind it has to stop if safe to do so and let it merge in.

brewdad2• 9 years ago

In Portland, they already do have right of way. Still drivers often don't yield. Most experienced bus drivers learn to just play a game of chicken and pull out anyway. Makes for some exciting conflicts.

piokuc• 9 years ago

Transportation is a big and growing problem and this exceptionally interesting HN discussion is a testimony to that. But, no mention of a potential to reduce the problem by increasing the number of people working remotely from home and eliminating part of the transportation demand. Any thoughts on this?

uberstuber• 9 years ago

Tax breaks for companies that implement 4 day work weeks / off peak commute times / WFH days?

If I ran a company I'd want my employees to have shorter commutes anyway. A stressful drive in the morning can't be great for productivity.

zanny• 9 years ago

I can't imagine remoting will be that huge a chunk of the market for a long while. Even in software whenever I go over postings its usually only about 20% that offer remote as an option - and in practice software development is one of the most remote friendly careers.

leyth• 9 years ago

The Seattle bus system is pretty good, they’re always improving. I know that a lot of people won’t ride the bus because they complain about homeless people sleeping in the back, it is an over exaggeration. Lately, I’ve noticed an influx of tech bros who refused to ride the bus because it “smells bad.”

I’ve been using the Seattle public transit over 7 years to mostly commute to downtown, it has been a good experience.

paxunix• 9 years ago

It could get even more people to ride the bus if they extended the idea of dedicated lanes for buses farther into the suburbs and along major corridors (like I-5, but they'd get crucified by all the car drivers if that were to happen).

I absolutely hate my commute because on the very best of days (i.e. minimal traffic, which is almost never), it's 1h20m long (were I to drive on that exact same day and conditions instead, it would be 30 minutes--that's a steep price to pay for me to prefer public transit). 10 years ago it was great--40 minutes max by bus, but commuting from point A to point B almost only ever gets worse over time, never better. I'd love to take the bus all the time if it was much more consistent--but it never will be.

bensonn2• 9 years ago

How did Seattle get more people to ride the bus? 1. They made coummuting by car miserable. Average commute time for Everett to Seattle (24 miles) is 76 minutes, Federal Way to Seattle (22 miles) is 66 minutes... Reducing congestion is not a goal of WA DOT. 2. They make driving really expensive. $30 car tabs that cost hundreds (if not thousands) and one of the highest gas taxes in the nation. 3. They subsidize the heck out of it. Bus fares cover less than 1/3 the cost of operating the bus.

Ironically, if it weren't for all the cars the buses couldn't afford to operate. For every driver that switches to buses cost go up and revenue goes down. Maybe this is fine, but I don't think it should be ingored.

This article seemed to praise Seattle and Metro but the area is always ranked as one of the worst traffic areas in the nation. If it is working so well, why is it so bad?

Is there something Seattle or King County Metro has done well that makes people want to use it? Does it smell nice, is it quiet, are the drivers really friendly, do they offer good coffee..? Or is mass transit around here "good" compared to all the other bad options.

One thing that is not transit's fault that makes traffic bad around here- Seattle area is filled with some of the worst drivers I have ever seen. Born and raised here so I think I am allowed to criticize, we collectively suck at driving!

techsupporter7• 9 years ago

Commuting from Everett to Seattle via single-occupant car has taken forever since the turn of the century. 405 and I5 simply don't have the space for all of those cars. That's what transit does: it provides an alternative--primarily through the use of HOV/HOT lanes--to slogging along in your own car.

Also, on those car tabs, voters approved them ourselves. Every single transit-related charge on your vehicle registration was approved by a measure put in front of voters. (Same for sales tax.) I disagree strongly with our legislature's predilection for punting hard tax issuers to voters but if you're gonna blame anybody, you've only the voting public to blame. (Full disclosure: I've voted "yes" on every single transit tax measure--except for the monorail--I've ever seen.)

Oh, and on farebox recovery: very, very few transit systems recover their cost of operation. In the United States, only the Las Vegas Monorail recovers 100% of its costs. The only widely-used system that comes close is San Francisco's BART at 71%. (All figures courtesy Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farebox_recovery_ratio)

It may come as a surprise to you, but vehicle owners don't directly pay the cost for the roads they drive upon, either. The motor vehicle fuel tax basically pays for the Washington State highway system (including part of the Washington State Ferries...which also has approximately a 70% farebox recovery ratio[0]). County and local general fund taxes pay for local roads, including basically every road you drive on inside a municipality.

This is the same for transit. County and city taxes pay for the bulk of the service and fares and grants cover the rest.

Oh, and public transit taxes in Washington State are almost universally put in front of the voters because the legislature won't let transit agencies impose taxes on their own authority. Road and fuel taxes? Pfft, those are somehow different and they get imposed by the legislature with no vote. I want the legislature and our representatives to handle taxation and spending; that's why we elect them. But this double standard of approval-required-for-transit-but-not-for-roads is galling.

0 - http://www.wsdot.wa.gov/NR/rdonlyres/A72D0350-674E-4D50-8483...

bensonn2• 9 years ago

At the turn of the century HOV lanes were rare (1 on I-5, 0 on 16) and Sound Transit was almost non-existent (sure they were there but they just quietly taxed us and nobody really saw them and no light rail around here. At the turn of the century I didn't dread going anywhere near downtown or the airport. At the turn of the century it took 30 minutes to go the 30 miles door to door from Tacoma to Auburn. By 2010 it took 45 minutes to try and meet somebody half way. That is why I quit meeting my friend to play tennis after work, which is why I got fat. Thanks mass transit for making me fat.

Only tolls really pay directly for the roads- and now more and more tolls are being charged, in addition to the other taxes and fees.

I agree we (not me) voted for $30 tabs, many times and never saw them. And yes we (not me) voted for the new Sound Transit. Since we did pass the last one I actually stand behind it, if we sold bonds based on the taxes we have to pay them now.

"I want the legislature and our representatives to handle taxation and spending; that's why we elect them." -Agree with you there!

I am perfectly fine having transit subsidized. The transit agencies love to adverties what a bargain it is and many of the comments mentioned how much they use the bus. My only point is transparency. If the true, unsubsidized fare were charged would people still ride? Would it still seem like a good deal? Would it still seem like the best plan?

I often don't care if it is left or right, red or blue- just if it works. Seattle seems to be a shade of blue that doesn't work well, at least in transportation. Something Seattle and King County are doing, or not doing, is failing miserably and keeps getting worse. We keep giving the transit agencies with more and more money and they keep delivering more and more congestion. This is the commonly accepted relationship we have with them, the cycle will only continue until something gives. I wouldn't be surprised if Seattle bans cars soon, except for the rich and government employees of course.

CalRobert2• 9 years ago

In a well designed city 24 miles is a ridiculous commute. How much of your drive is through a) the middle of nowhere or b) land itself dedicated to automobiles?

Unfortunately, if you haven't lived in a well-designed city it's hard to truly understand the lunacy of US urban "design". Cities there are as though they were built for 100 foot tall collosi, with everything spread insanely far apart. Of course, the collosi in question are cars, and in serving cars we made them a necessity, while destroying places that actually served humans.

kwhitefoot• 9 years ago

For every driver that switches to buses cost go up and revenue goes down.

How does that work? Surely the marginal cost of an extra passenger is less than the total cost divided by the number of passengers? Not only that but if the bus is not already full one more passenger is very nearly pure profit.

I'm genuinely curious.

locusofself• 9 years ago

Riding the bus in Seattle is usually a bad experience (olfactory, auditory, etc). Hobos, wangsters, creepers, stinkers, etc.

But it costs ~$40 to park downtown for work day. How could anyone afford/justify that? I had a parking pass that my company paid for for about $250 a month for a while. The lot was crazy packed and was valet only (but not in a nice way).

I work from home now, and we got an office in Lynnwood. Not as cool, but it works for us. Parking was too expensive, bus far too time consuming..

mseidl• 9 years ago

I used to Work in Seattle. I just moved to Belltown a few blocks from work. Saved a lot of money on gas and commute time. Parking was a pain, but then again my company offered a subsidized 90$/mo pass. My rent did go up a lot, but when factoring in gas/time saved it was worth it to me.

But this was quite some time ago.

matty22• 9 years ago

I live on the Eastside, so not sure that my experience qualifies as "Seattle", but bus transit is so good here that I sold my car and my wife and I reduced down to a single car household.

I bus commute to work 5 days a week and couldn't be happier. My bus is nearly never late, my connections are short, the buses are clean and comfortable. I have no regrets on selling my car.

juancn• 9 years ago

78000 passengers a day? Isn't that too low? I'm from Buenos Aires and buses alone move 1.7M people each day.

How Seattle Got More People to Ride the Bus

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