5 ms·

Seattle-area commuter here. I have to agree, transit seems mostly designed for people who don't value their time. Which don't tend to be the highly paid tech wo

by qwerpy 2y ago

Seattle-area commuter here. I have to agree, transit seems mostly designed for people who don't value their time. Which don't tend to be the highly paid tech workers with families. I tried so many times to give transit "one more try". The straw that broke my back was when they silently canceled 2 buses in a row for my route, on the coldest day of the year, for a route that has 20 minutes between buses. And my suburb commuter route doesn't even have the big city problems that plague the Seattle buses. Now I drive my single occupant 6603 lb truck to work once or twice a week, and WFH the rest of the time.

mrtesthah 2y ago
You could choose to ride an e-bike instead.
- seanmcdirmid 2y ago
  E-bikes are great in Seattle until they are stolen. Bike theft is the one single issue that is driving down bike ridership in the city, since police and the city government don't really care about it.
  - Empact 2y ago
    There are various ways to hide an airtag on a bike. Consequences are the way to deter thieves.
    - SoftTalker 2y ago
      The cops don't do much about bike theft. The perpetrators are the homeless, and they're basically untouchable. They have no assets, they can't pay any fines, and it's too expensive to keep them in jail. Edit to add: It would be nice if they at least recovered the bikes and returned them to their owners but it seems like if they can't collect fines or put someone in prison they aren't interested. It woudn't be hard. Go to the local homeless hangouts. Any bikes nicer than what you could buy at Walmart are stolen, and most of the other ones are too. Run the serial numbers against theft reports and load them out.
    - HDThoreaun 2y ago
      Cops here in Chicago will not do anything about bike thefts. Multiple cases of vigilantes getting arrested after they took the law into their own hands when cops wouldnt retrieve their airtagged bike.
      - stocknoob 2y ago
        The trick is for the vigilante to also appear homeless so it just looks like another unenforceable bike theft.
  - mrtesthah 2y ago
    This may surprise you, but not every ebike is guaranteed to be stolen. Get a heavy chain or angle-grinder-resistant U-lock, don't leave it out overnight, and you'll greatly reduce probability of theft.
yellow_postit 2y ago
Seattle making the Link a chore to take to and from the airport is a perennial disappointment — painfully slow.
- sakras 2y ago
  And then them making to along I-90 instead of 520 also doesn't make a whole lot of sense. I'd LOVE a fast line from the east side to U-district. But I don't understand the logic behind the current scheme.
  - techsupporter 2y ago
    It's for a few reasons, let's see if I remember them all from the run-up to the Sound Transit 2 vote in 2008: Mercer Island exists and has political clout (even though they tried to use that clout to force Sound Transit to not use the express lanes on I-90) and would demand a station no matter what. Running across a floating bridge is hard enough and the Governor Albert Rosellini Bridge (SR 520 Floating Bridge to the Yanks) is the longest in the world. Going across the dual-named bridge that carries I-90 would be shorter and was seen as easier back then. You don't have to turn around to serve Bellevue and then Redmond. Coming up from I-90 you hit the big part of Bellevue then you turn right and keep going northeast to Redmond. Coming from SR 520 you'd go south into Bellevue then have to U-turn to go back to meet BelRed and Overlake. At the time, we didn't know when, if ever, the SR 520 bridge would be replaced. The previous span was a nightmare. It had a movable bit in the middle, the road deck sat at roughly water level, and would routinely sway so hard in strong winds that the bridge would have to be blocked off so the midspan section could be opened to relieve stress and prevent the thing from sinking. The I-90 bridges have no such issue (considering the damn thing had already sunk once in the 90s). There was no way to use the previous SR 520 bridge for light rail, though the new one is built to support it. You also catch a lot more potential riders in station areas around I-90 and South Bellevue. The Points cities are basically HOAs with delusions of grandeur. There's no hope they'll gain more people in any of our lifetimes, meanwhile the areas the 2 Line passes through are already fairly populated by Eastside standards and have room to grow (also by Eastside standards). Meanwhile, the 542 and 545 are comparatively very fast.
genghisjahn 2y ago
Public transit people don't value their time? I wonder about the people stuck on I-76 as I pass over them on the regional rail here in Philly. Sure I deal with a late train now and then. But those people deal with center city traffic every day twice a day.
- SoftTalker 2y ago
  Yeah in dense urban areas in the US we have transit. Maybe it could be better but we have it. Other places are too spread out. There are not enough people going to the same places at the same times for a really useful transit system to exist.
- Eddy_Viscosity2 2y ago
  Many city buses just use the same roads as cars so if the cars are stuck in traffic so are the transit passengers. Some cities do have bus-only lanes, and others have full on subway systems which is great but most do not.
  - lotsoweiners 2y ago
    Yeah this is true in my city, Phoenix. We don’t have commuter rail just commuter buses. They take the car pool lane but so does every Tesla so that isn’t as big of an advantage as it sounds. We have light rail but it is a specific route in surface streets and much slower than driving on the freeway.
  - rsynnott 2y ago
    > Some cities do have bus-only lanes, and others have full on subway systems which is great but most do not. So, er, maybe a first step is installing more bus lanes? They really can make a tremendous difference, and they can transport far more people in a given amount of space than cars can. For instance, look at the picture on this article: https://www.independent.ie/regionals/dublin/dublin-news/private-cars-to-be-banned-from-dublins-college-green-by-the-end-of-this-month/a267065164.html https://www.independent.ie/regionals/dublin/dublin-news/priv... That’s transport for 360 people in the four visible buses, plus 400 in the tram. And, er, four in the taxi, I suppose.
fmobus 2y ago
In comparison: my commuter train in Germany comes every 30 minutes (even a bit more often at peak), but travels at 160km/h. Door-to-door, it's about 20% quicker than driving, with no parking stress, no unpredictable highway conditions and I can even get some work done on the WiFi. Sure, there are issues with those trains sometimes, but it is really an easy decision.
- rickydroll 2y ago
  I also experienced the same thing when traveling in Europe. When you're on the line and traveling from one stop to another, it's fast and easy. However, we discovered that most of the things we wanted to visit were nowhere near the transit line for medium distances; it was faster to take a bike and, for long distances, to drive.

by qwerpy 2y ago

mrtesthah 2y ago

You could choose to ride an e-bike instead.

seanmcdirmid 2y ago
E-bikes are great in Seattle until they are stolen. Bike theft is the one single issue that is driving down bike ridership in the city, since police and the city government don't really care about it.
- Empact 2y ago
  There are various ways to hide an airtag on a bike. Consequences are the way to deter thieves.
  - SoftTalker 2y ago
    The cops don't do much about bike theft. The perpetrators are the homeless, and they're basically untouchable. They have no assets, they can't pay any fines, and it's too expensive to keep them in jail. Edit to add: It would be nice if they at least recovered the bikes and returned them to their owners but it seems like if they can't collect fines or put someone in prison they aren't interested. It woudn't be hard. Go to the local homeless hangouts. Any bikes nicer than what you could buy at Walmart are stolen, and most of the other ones are too. Run the serial numbers against theft reports and load them out.
  - HDThoreaun 2y ago
    Cops here in Chicago will not do anything about bike thefts. Multiple cases of vigilantes getting arrested after they took the law into their own hands when cops wouldnt retrieve their airtagged bike.
    - stocknoob 2y ago
      The trick is for the vigilante to also appear homeless so it just looks like another unenforceable bike theft.
- mrtesthah 2y ago
  This may surprise you, but not every ebike is guaranteed to be stolen. Get a heavy chain or angle-grinder-resistant U-lock, don't leave it out overnight, and you'll greatly reduce probability of theft.

yellow_postit 2y ago

Seattle making the Link a chore to take to and from the airport is a perennial disappointment — painfully slow.

sakras 2y ago
And then them making to along I-90 instead of 520 also doesn't make a whole lot of sense. I'd LOVE a fast line from the east side to U-district. But I don't understand the logic behind the current scheme.
- techsupporter 2y ago
  It's for a few reasons, let's see if I remember them all from the run-up to the Sound Transit 2 vote in 2008: Mercer Island exists and has political clout (even though they tried to use that clout to force Sound Transit to not use the express lanes on I-90) and would demand a station no matter what. Running across a floating bridge is hard enough and the Governor Albert Rosellini Bridge (SR 520 Floating Bridge to the Yanks) is the longest in the world. Going across the dual-named bridge that carries I-90 would be shorter and was seen as easier back then. You don't have to turn around to serve Bellevue and then Redmond. Coming up from I-90 you hit the big part of Bellevue then you turn right and keep going northeast to Redmond. Coming from SR 520 you'd go south into Bellevue then have to U-turn to go back to meet BelRed and Overlake. At the time, we didn't know when, if ever, the SR 520 bridge would be replaced. The previous span was a nightmare. It had a movable bit in the middle, the road deck sat at roughly water level, and would routinely sway so hard in strong winds that the bridge would have to be blocked off so the midspan section could be opened to relieve stress and prevent the thing from sinking. The I-90 bridges have no such issue (considering the damn thing had already sunk once in the 90s). There was no way to use the previous SR 520 bridge for light rail, though the new one is built to support it. You also catch a lot more potential riders in station areas around I-90 and South Bellevue. The Points cities are basically HOAs with delusions of grandeur. There's no hope they'll gain more people in any of our lifetimes, meanwhile the areas the 2 Line passes through are already fairly populated by Eastside standards and have room to grow (also by Eastside standards). Meanwhile, the 542 and 545 are comparatively very fast.

genghisjahn 2y ago

Public transit people don't value their time? I wonder about the people stuck on I-76 as I pass over them on the regional rail here in Philly. Sure I deal with a late train now and then. But those people deal with center city traffic every day twice a day.

SoftTalker 2y ago
Yeah in dense urban areas in the US we have transit. Maybe it could be better but we have it. Other places are too spread out. There are not enough people going to the same places at the same times for a really useful transit system to exist.
Eddy_Viscosity2 2y ago
Many city buses just use the same roads as cars so if the cars are stuck in traffic so are the transit passengers. Some cities do have bus-only lanes, and others have full on subway systems which is great but most do not.
- lotsoweiners 2y ago
  Yeah this is true in my city, Phoenix. We don’t have commuter rail just commuter buses. They take the car pool lane but so does every Tesla so that isn’t as big of an advantage as it sounds. We have light rail but it is a specific route in surface streets and much slower than driving on the freeway.
- rsynnott 2y ago
  > Some cities do have bus-only lanes, and others have full on subway systems which is great but most do not. So, er, maybe a first step is installing more bus lanes? They really can make a tremendous difference, and they can transport far more people in a given amount of space than cars can. For instance, look at the picture on this article: https://www.independent.ie/regionals/dublin/dublin-news/private-cars-to-be-banned-from-dublins-college-green-by-the-end-of-this-month/a267065164.html https://www.independent.ie/regionals/dublin/dublin-news/priv... That’s transport for 360 people in the four visible buses, plus 400 in the tram. And, er, four in the taxi, I suppose.

fmobus 2y ago

In comparison: my commuter train in Germany comes every 30 minutes (even a bit more often at peak), but travels at 160km/h. Door-to-door, it's about 20% quicker than driving, with no parking stress, no unpredictable highway conditions and I can even get some work done on the WiFi. Sure, there are issues with those trains sometimes, but it is really an easy decision.

rickydroll 2y ago
I also experienced the same thing when traveling in Europe. When you're on the line and traveling from one stop to another, it's fast and easy. However, we discovered that most of the things we wanted to visit were nowhere near the transit line for medium distances; it was faster to take a bike and, for long distances, to drive.