Ten Years Later: Seattle Shout-Outs, Metro Edition

On August 27, 2001, I flew from New York City to Seattle. I moved, sight unseen (site unseen!), to a duplex across the street from I-5, with 3 gals I'd never met, one of whom was also going to be in my AmeriCorps program. I'll barely celebrate my 10th anniversary in Seattle when it will be time to move again, this time for grad school.

These upcoming events - the anniversary and the move - as well as a friend's recent post about her one-year anniversary here - have put me in a contemplative mood. And the recent announcement that a 17 percent cut to Metro bus service will be averted has me in a thank-you-public-transit frame of mind. So, born of that mix:

To the other downtown-bound Metro riders at the corner of Eastlake and Lynn on the morning of September 11, 2001: I still think about you sometimes and am grateful for your combination of sobriety, sympathy, and dark humor, and the way, when the bus finally arrived, we all sat at the back, strangers compelled to stay together.

To the Metro driver whose sign read Ryerson Base but who stopped at the Ballard Bridge and picked me and a man up anyway, drove us downtown, and deposited us exactly where we wanted to go even though those places weren't bus stops: you are awesome.

To the driver who spontaneously let my friends and me turn your 44 into a party bus, complete with flashing interior lights, dancing in the aisles, and Right Said Fred accompaniment on the PA: you are even awesomer.

To every driver who saw me in their rear view mirror, running and running late, and stopped: your ordinary kindness makes the world a better place.

The Perks of Being a Pedestrian

A few months ago I saw a former boss with whom I hadn't interacted in awhile.

"I see you every day," he said by way of hello, "walking down the street as I drive to work."

"Yeah," I agreed, a little thrown off and not sure how to respond, "I'm a pedestrian."

Over the last few days I've done a lot of walking, and it has reminded me of this conversation, the eerie fact that just because you don't see someone doesn't me they haven't seen you, and that odd gap between what you notice as a walker and what you see as a driver. As Mr. Redanz told us repeatedly in Drivers' Ed (when he wasn't proclaiming that he wanted to start an organization called Fathers Against Radical Teenagers, or FART), you do 90 percent of driving with your eyes. Of course my old boss notices me: I live near where he works, and it's his job while driving to be alert to his surroundings.

In some ways, bus riding is more closely related to walking than driving. Sure, it's hard to read, write or sleep while walking, but you get to do the pedestrian equivalents: pause to check out a band poster on a telephone pole, stop and smell the roses (seriously - they're in bloom everywhere right now!), or zone out because you can, because you walk those sidewalks every day and don't need to pay attention.

And I will admit to a less noble reason why I like the discrepancy between what drivers and pedestrians see: I like the idea that certain individuals might be forced to see me occasionally and remember how they wronged me (in my scenario, of course, they never feel righteous about their own perspectives, only chagrined). I like to think that they've even had to grant me right of way in a crosswalk once or twice, powerless before traffic law.

Reliable Transportation = Discrimination?

I have two part time jobs currently, but I still keep my eye out for work. Lately I've been encountering more job descriptions that sound good until I get to the Minimum Requirements section: "must have access to reliable transportation"; "must have access to a reliable vehicle"; or the blunt "must have a car."

I ride the Metro and have ever since I moved to Seattle in 2001. Is it reliable? Well, most of the time it actually is. There are delays, breakdowns, inclement weather, belligerent riders and all the other myriad reasons why it might not get you where you hoped to be when you planned to be there. But any form of transportation will include some degree of uncertainty.

Part of my beef is semantic: If these ads said "must have FAST transportation" instead of "reliable," I would not only be more understanding, I might even be amused. I often have to budget an hour for a bus trip across town - a distance that a car will usually be able to traverse in, oh, 15 to 30 minutes.

But my biggest problem is money-related. Like I said in an earlier post, a lot of people, including me, ride Metro because it's less expensive than driving. Through one of my jobs, I pay just $55 every three months for an Orca card. Collectively, these reliable transportation caveats feel like an additional societal kick in the shin during a recession that's already hurting already vulnerable people. Don't have a job? Can't afford a car? Well too bad!

Do some jobs require cars? Yes. For example, for some of the nanny and babysitting jobs posted in The Daily, the University of Washington's paper, this "must have a car" language makes sense - families who want multiple children to be picked up after school and driven multiple places in the span of two hours, for instance.

But a message to the other families: your kids can ride the bus too.

It Makes All the Difference (With Apologies to Al Gore)

Metro, the Seattle city bus service, started running a series of ads last summer that are deceptively simple. They each feature one person, smiling out at the world, with the words, "I do make a difference by riding the bus," printed in large type. At the bottom of the rectangular ads, posted on the outside of buses, are the words, "Travel Green. Get On Board."

Simple, right? Appeal to people's desire to help the environment AND feel good about themselves...at the same time!

But do environmental concerns lead to greater ridership, and can they account for the motivations of current riders?

In Transit, the newsletter for King County Metro Transit employees, did not address these questions in its July/August 2008 article about the new ads. "We all benefit from cleaner air and healthier living conditions when people choose to use Metro services," the unattributed article states. (In Transit is edited by Anna Clemenger). True. But, ideally, riders can also save on car expenses, Metro can bring in more revenue, and transit operators can have greater job security when people choose Metro.

I want a name for focusing on one motivation for a decision to the exclusion of a far likelier motivation. Why doesn't Metro run a series of ads with smiling people proclaiming, "I do make a difference by riding the bus - I save money"?

The Sound of One Mouth Yapping

Yesterday on the bus I overheard a young man on his cell phone telling someone that he had agreed to let a stranger shave his head and that he was going to get $150 for it. Intrigued, I actively tried to listen, to learn more.

Why was this one-sided conversation not annoying or grating? Was it merely a matter of volume and content - he spoke at a normal level and had unusual things to say - or was he just a fluke exception to my hypothesis: a pair of people talking on the bus is never as annoying as the sound of one person on his cell phone?

I would like to see a study wherein participants must ride a bus and listen to two people talk in the next seat and then listen to one person talk on her cell phone. It would be the same conversation topic, with some identical words or phrases, and then the participants would rate their level of annoyance. I would like to see if my theory holds up.

And then there's the otherwise-charming kid who emitted the sound "Ahhh" continuously for 3 minutes on the # 5 yesterday. You win, kid.