Hey Metro!

...and Sound Transit and other bus operations: Do you want more people to ride the bus, or not? If so, here's how to make busses better for bus riders

by Doug Collins

Busses are beautiful. My little kids love them, not just because they are large, powerful machines, but also because they provide good sightseeing, and are often fun and social. Also, my kids are not bound and restrained like they are in car seats.

I love bus riding for similar reasons. I can meet some of the same people when I take the bus to work each day. I've known some of them maybe ten years now. They're my "bus buddies." When I'm not talking to someone on the bus, I can do paperwork or read a magazine, things that I can't do while driving a car.

I also prefer the bus because I feel like I'm minimizing my responsibility for global warming and air pollution. I could always drive my car and contribute extra smog to the atmosphere, but I usually don't because I can catch a bus going my way. A lot of the rides I take in the city are on the "electric trolley busses" and produce no smog at all.

I'm a frequent, willing user of the bus systems around Puget Sound, largely because I've lived in the same house for many years, in a city neighborhood with many bus routes. Over the years I've figured out the connections I can make with other routes, and greatly expanded my bus repertoire. But I also need to mention that my familiarity with the busses in this region has unfortunately resulted in a fair amount of contempt. I can certainly understand why most people don't use the busses here often.

A good bus system is like a network that is dependably and frequently moving. In a good system, you don't have to know a large amount of details about the bus network. At any link in the network (i.e. a bus stop), you just catch a connection toward another link you want to arrive at. As long as you know which way is North, you can get from point A to point B dependably, without having to consult any oracles.

In Puget Sound, and probably in many American urban areas, the bus network is really instead a patchwork, with lots and lots of holes in it. To proceed blithely to the nearest bus stop and assume that you will be able to get to your destination--or even figure out how to get to your destination--is usually a big mistake.

Following are some ideas about how to improve our bus system. I invite readers to please send in letters or articles on their views of our busses and public transport--or lack thereof.

* Instead of spending untold billions of dollars on a 300-foot-deep Seattle subway train that will only go along one route, why not spend a fraction of the amount to improve the frequency and organization of bus service all over Seattle and Puget Sound? We should be able to go to a bus stop and know that we would not have to wait longer than 20 minutes (10 minutes for busier routes) to catch a bus, at least from 5 am till midnight. Then we wouldn't need to lug around all the confusing bus schedules all the time. Then a lot more people would feel it was convenient to take public transport to most places at most times.

* Consistency and dependability are very important for transit. If people see the busses as not being dependable, they won't depend on them. One measure of consistency is whether you can count on a certain route from week to week or month to month. One aggravating factor about King County Metro Transit is that they print new schedules at least three times a year, in the form of scores of separate route leaflets. Can't we have at least six months or maybe a year of consistency for the schedules, and a combined booklet to use? I've noticed that Community Transit (Snohomish County) is a bit more consistent in this regard, because they print comprehensive new schedule booklets only twice a year.

* It's pretty hard to get from point A to point B with Puget Sound area transit without using the "online trip planners" on the internet. I've been to many urban areas in the world that have straightforward, frequent networks of busses with fairly easy maps at most stops. Puget Sound is not one of these areas. We should have simple, readable maps at each bus stop that show where each route there will take you, and what connections you can catch on the way.

* Transit agencies should pressure local governments to provide pedestrian access for bus stops. Sometimes, for example, I and my family take the bus up Aurora Avenue North to the Sears and Central Market in Shoreline. The trouble is, there are no sidewalks leading to the stores. You have to walk through parking lots, on busy sidestreets without crosswalks, and in muddy gulches to get where you want to go. It's ironic for busses to stop in places where you are not welcome as a pedestrian, and this certainly discourages some potential riders.

* For gosh sakes, please simplify the routes. There are so many foot-note-coded variations on some routes that you have to be lucky not to make a mistake: routes with the same number that end and start in different places, routes that sometimes--but not always--continue to other routes. There are whimsical routes that come only three times a day. There are gerrymandered routes that follow the most circuitous paths. Confusing! Whatever happened to normal routes that are the same all the time and go in clear directions?

View of a Tokyo city bus, looking forward. Note the wide aisles with plenty of flexible space for items such as strollers, or for standing room during rush hour. Photo by Doug Collins.

When I took a trip to Europe a few years ago, I got back to SeaTac airport and then used the bus to get home. I was struck by how terribly slow the bus here was compared to European busses. Even the express route, which used the freeway much of the time, was very slow. There are various ways to speed up the process.

* One way to speed things up would be to eliminate about a third of the non-freeway bus stops. There are stops roughly every two blocks on most neighborhood routes. These are too close. One every three blocks would be better. We could all walk a tiny bit farther and consolidate our stops a bit. It would give us a bit more exercise and prevent a fair number of unnecessary stops.

* Another reason that busses here are slow is that we frequently have car traffic congestion. The problem is that too many people are using cars for too many trips. One way to lighten the car congestion and encourage more efficient bus use would be to have an urban-area tax on car mileage. Mileage is already routinely checked every two-years for car emissions tests. A modest mileage tax would still let people have cars, but would encourage them to use the bus. The tax need not be high at all--just enough to get people to think about using the bus more. Revenue from the tax should go--you guessed it--to the bus system.

* Dedicating freeway lanes to busses would be a boon. Sound Transit and county bus systems could basically constantly run busses up and down every major freeway, with stops at every exit ramp and local feeder routes constantly looping off from each exit, taking people to their neighborhood destinations. The dedicated freeway lanes, with some remodeling of exit ramps for quick re-entry, would basically be like train lines. Many Sound Transit stops have already been constructed this way for quick re-entry to the freeway.

* Ambulances and other emergency vehicles have special remote-control equipment that can change traffic lights to green as they approach. Busses in other countries have the same equipment, which gives them priority over cars and makes them much faster. We should do the same, so that people see more advantage in riding a bus over riding a car.

* This is 2006, and our region's busses still only have "exact change" fareboxes. Heck, even soda machines already for decades can take money and make change! Why can't busses? The other day, I and some family got on a Metro bus together. The "peak time" rush-hour cost was $1.50 each for three adults and 50c for a teenager, an even $5 total. I had a five dollar bill. The driver said, "The farebox can't take fives, so just ride for free." Nice free ride, but it's kind of dumb for a bus not to be equipped to quickly take money for groups of people.

* Why have a higher fare for rush hours? Aren't we supposed to be encouraging people to take the bus to and from work? If so, does it make any sense to make riding more expensive at these hours? Worse, it just complicates matters. Let's have an easy and straightforward fare arrangement with no "peak time." The "pay as you enter" and "pay as you leave" variations in Seattle also add other unneeded complications. Why not just always pay as you enter? It seems as though the bus system designers are trying to make things complicated.

* Our local transit agencies have made many strides in the development of swipe-card bus passes attached to various workplaces. People who are lucky enough to work for participating employers can get extremely good rates on the passes, far less than the cost of bus passes available to individuals. They can also forget about fumbling with change each time they ride. That's important, because it simplifies and speeds-up passenger loading considerably. But what about all the people who aren't so lucky to work for one of these employers with a bus-pass program? Currently, the individual bus passes make little financial sense. You'd have to use the pass about twice every weekday to make it worth the cost. The bus passes are mistakenly aimed at only dedicated bus commuters, not at the general population. That's why so many people are still always fumbling with their nickels, dimes, and quarters--slowing the route down--whenever they ride the bus. Transit could speed up its fare-collection quite easily by discounting monthly and quarterly bus passes sold to individuals

* Similarly, discounting books of pre-paid tickets should be a priority. Ticket books are now currently available at Bartell drug stores, but with no discount and only payable by cash. People should be able to buy discounted books of ten prepaid bus tickets for the price of nine (or at peak-rate value for the price of non-peak). Espresso carts all over the region do the same sort of "buy nine get your tenth one free" deal because it works. Discounted ticket books and bus passes need to be available not just at Bartell, but at every major drug store and grocery outlet. The idea is to minimize cash transactions in the bus, so that operating the bus is quicker.

* Another way to minimize cash transactions is to sell day-passes every day in the bus. Currently, you can buy a "Regional Day Pass" from a bus driver only on weekends and holidays. The cost, $2.50, is double that of a single trip, and it is good on Metro, Sound Transit, and transit systems in Snohomish and Pierce counties. It's a good deal. You can buy a similar day-pass called a "visitor pass" on a weekday, but it is only available from Metro offices or by special order, and is only good on King County Metro transit. The cost of this pass is an unappealing $5 (I wonder how many of those they sell a day!). Why not provide the same lower-cost Regional Day Pass on weekdays as on weekends?

* People with little kids are always having to get kids out of strollers and fold up the strollers before getting on the bus. This causes a lot of unnecessary delays. Why not have more open space in the middle of the aisle, and let parents keep their kids in the strollers? If the bus company feels this is a safety concern, then they could provide little straps to tether the strollers, though even that seems excessive on low-speed neighborhood routes. Strollers do have wheel locks, you know. One Pierce County Transit bus driver in Tacoma had no qualms about my kid in a stroller. That's how it should be.

* It would be good to provide a lot more open space in the center aisle, for purposes of standing, extra bikes, wheelchairs, airport luggage, etc. In most countries, there are wider aisles and fewer seats, leaving lots more flexible space (see photo of Tokyo-area bus).

* Speaking of bikes, Metro used to allow bike riders to bring their bikes inside the bus if the two outside rack spaces were already taken. Now this is not allowed. The unlucky bike rider simply has to wait for the next bus. This is a particular problem in and around the U-district in Seattle. Again, more open space inside each bus would allow for extra bikes.

Bus Tips for the Wise

Once I was planning to catch a Community Transit bus out of Edmonds, WA, and just missed it because it left ten minutes early. I had to wait for the next bus, scheduled an hour later, but almost missed that because it left about 12 minutes early. The bus drivers apparently didn't mind because hardly anyone ever waits there. No wonder! People need both more consistency and more frequency from transit systems before they will start using them a lot.

Years ago, when I was rather new to Metro busses, I was walking toward a bus stop in Bellevue and just missed the bus I wanted. It was a minute early, or I was a minute late, depending on the clock. The next bus on that route was in one hour, and I was pretty much in the middle of nowhere. After a very boring wait of an hour with a couple other busses going by, the bus I needed came again down the street. I stood out in front of the stop, quite visible to the bus, expecting it would stop. The bus went right past me, not even slowing down. It was then I learned that it is very necessary to wave the bus down in such situations, otherwise you will wait for two hours, like I did that day.

A co-worker told me a great tip for how to squeeze an extra free ride from a bus transfer ticket that is somewhat past its time limit. She told me, "Smile, look directly into the eyes of the driver, say 'Hi' nicely, and hold your transfer up right in front of you. The driver will look at you instead of the transfer." She is absolutely right.

Doug Collins