In honor of the 545 bus (the last bus of the night back to Redmond!!!) that never showed up on Saturday night, Seattle will no longer be the “Emerald City.”
It will now be called “The City That Sleeps.” Because a transit system that stops working at midnight on a Saturday is totally Squaresville, baby.
That’s what happens when transit schedules are written by 8-to-5 bureaucrats (who, however, for all their faults are not as greedy or arrogant, and do not cause nearly as much damage, as 9-to-4 bankers). For public transportation to be truly viable, it has to recognize that some folks must work while everyone else gets to sleep. Like the janitors who empty those bureaucrats’ and bankers’ wastebaskets and vaccuum the carpets so their offices look fresh the next morning, for instance.
Transportation breakdown, it’s always the same.
Havin’ a nervous breakdown, drive me to Redmond.
Cars>Buses
Ah, yes…the 545, also known as the “Microsoft Express”. That has historically been Sound Transit’s Holiest of Holies–after all, we can’t have anything keeping Bill and Steve’s techno-serfs from coming and going whenever they like, as long as it involves lots and lots and lots of overtime. The otherwise-straightforward route goes snaking around First Hill to pick a few of ’em up before it hits the freeway, and over on the other side the Microsofties have their own private waiting lounge at the Overlake P&R.
Well, that wasn’t good enough for Microsoft, so now they’re running their own private bus network. So maybe we’re going to see some of that nearly around-the-clock schedule go away. Maybe the 545 will be reduced to something like a great many of the other Eastside commuter routes, with only a few runs in one direction in the morning and a few going the other way at night.
The less rolling twinkies the better.
Just get a car like most of the sensible parts of the human race.
so’d you camp out next to the courthouse? sat night was pretty nice out.
So will…
How did you get home?
Cab?
Walk?
Rent a bike?
Swim?
1974: Pre-Sound-Transit days, the last bus back to Tacoma — routed down old highway 99 all the way — passed us by at a 2nd Ave. bus stop.
We phoned the bus company (from a “phone booth” — remember those?) and within 15 minutes we were riding south in a supervisor’s car, catching up with the last bus somewhere near SeaTac.
Did you take personal responsibility for the bus not showing up?
So, is this maybe more of a saying about the eastside, that there’s not really a need to send a bus out to Squaresville (aka Redmond)?
And despite the Microsoft Connector buses, if you try taking the 545, you’ll see it’s reguarly packed. Those are all folks for whom Microsoft has paid a yearly bus pass for. That’s a huge revenue stream for Metro/Sound Transit.
The bus driver was a government employee.
No responsibility or accountability.
@9
I rode Greyhound from Ballard to Tacoma in the early 80’s when my dad’s Gill-netter had engine problems and we had to dock at fisherman’s terminal.
Remember when didn’t have the internet and listened to records?
When I was 14-15 I’d ride my bike 15 miles to the Southworth ferry dock ride the ferry to west Seattle, bike to Tower Records on Mercer to by a record then repeat the process to get home.
There were easier ways for me to get that record, but when I was a teen you got major cool points for:
1. Going to Seattle
2. Hanging out at any Tower Records.
3. Extra bonus points for going to the Mercer Tower.
4. Being self reliant.
5. Doing shit the hard way.
6. Doing shit nobody else thought of.
I’ve been thinking that we need to need to bring some of that vibe back for a while now.
So the bus didn’t come? So the fuck what. Walk and write a cool story about your midnight trek. Or hangout a 7-Eleven all night and write about the graveyard shift workers and the homeless folks you met.
People whine too much.
It seems the phrase ‘personal responsibility’ is a behavioral phrase that trips a certain sort of commenters Pavlovian response mechanism — as long as it is not them that is being asked for the personal responsibility.
I think The Rabbit got it about right @#1. People work all hours (I work 2 to 10) and services like buses need to be there for them. And buses shouldn’t just not show up. How many bosses are going to believe that excuse?
I’m not so much talking about ‘personal responsibility’ @14 as I am about about looking at the world a little differently. Buses will get missed, snow days happen, the wind will knock out power and despite those things the sun will come up in the morning and life will go on. Rather than looking for someone to blame or find fault with maybe we could acknowledge that shit happens and find a way to turn an inconvenience into an adventure?
@17
No shit Sherlock, they’ve been going down since ’72. They would have gone up if congress hadn’t blocked a bunch of crap your guy wanted to pull.
[Deleted]
I Googled it.
That’s one thing I love about living in Reno – the buses run 24/7 here, and in Vegas as well. That’s the consequence of living in a 24-hour community, y’know. But that’s not to say that buses back home aren’t that bad. We did take the bus to SeaTac up from Olympia for a flight to Vegas (ironically enough) several years ago, and only having to pay $5 for the trip for both of us was a fair trade-off for about 2-1/2 hours on the bus.
I don’t know why you are blaming the basic closure of Seattle at ~10:00 or so, on the crappy Metro schedule.
Seattle has ALWAYS rolled up at 9:00 or 10:00. Anyone wanting to wine and dine (or what ever) into the later/early hours has always been on their own, or been reliant on the local cabbies.
Metro-beyond-express-hours sux, and has always sucked.
Oh,and the Microsoft Connector vehicles are proving to be some of the rudest, most likely-to-be-involved-in-an-accident vehicles on 520 in the morning. True, the evidence for this is currently empirical, nonetheless, it will likely all come together in a neat package one day, if local injury trial lawyers have anything to do with it.
Lowering taxes for 95% of the population is such a big lie…
WASHINGTON (AP) — Joe Six-Pack may have to hand over nearly $2 more for a case of beer to help provide health insurance for all.
Details of the proposed beer tax are described in a Senate Finance Committee document distributed to lawmakers before a closed-door meeting Wednesday. Senators are focusing on how to pay for expanding health insurance for an estimated 50 million uninsured Americans, a cost that could range to some $1.5 trillion over 10 years.
At least the stupid poor people that voted for obama will feel the effects of taxes on the rich.
Of course, increased cigarette taxes didn’t hurt the rich as much as the poor since smkin is more of a poor thing than a rich thing. And a beer tax will hurt the poor more than the rich. I doubt any of those rich alcoholics are beer drinkers.
A good learning lesson for poor democrats, you will always feel the effect of “higher taxes on the rich.”
When huffington post is talking abut low ratings of a liberal show you know the end is coming.
Much was made last week when Tuesday’s broadcast of “The Rachel Maddow Show” drew the smallest audience Maddow had seen since she joined MSNBC last summer, averaging 789,000 total viewers. According to Nielsen Media Research, Friday’s (May 15) program drew just 763,000 total viewers, setting a new series low. Friday’s program also drew Maddow’s smallest Adults 25-54 audience ever, averaging just 163,000 demo viewers.
Time for an obama bailout. Anything to keep his press corp happy and supporting him.
Why aren’t liberals watching her show? Why didn’t liberals support air america?
Hi Will.
I commuted the Metro 48 and Sound Transit 545 combo for a while. (I had to get a new job in Seattle to save my relationship.) Off peak, sometimes buses just don’t show up. I’d call to complain and sometimes the explanation would be the “driver didn’t show up”. Huh.
Since then, those silent radios installed at bus stops have emerged. It’d be nice to be told when an individual run is late or canceled.
@25
onebusaway.org has real time arrival information for all Metro routes. (I think it does metro operated ST express buses like the 545 too) Though the information isn’t accurate if there is a reroute.
Will,
You supported ST2 in 2007 and 2008. East Link LRT is expected to serve Overlake in about 2023 and it will have a good span of service. In the meantime, you could lobby ST to spend more on longer spans on routes 522, 545, 550, and 545.