Despite Our Transportation Failures There Is A Light At The End Of The Tunnel

A man who, beyond the age of 26, finds himself on a bus can count himself as a failure.

Margaret Thatcher

This was supposedly said by the ex-British Prime Minister in 1986, and is a quote that goes to part of the problem we seem to have locally in getting more people to use public transportation: people consider riding buses or public transportation something that is beneath them.

In London, perhaps where Thatcher or whoever made this remark, the notion is patently silly. People from all walks of life have to use London's buses or tube trains to get in and out of, and around the city. Whether you're wearing a bowler hat or your baseball cap askew with the price tag still dangling from it, if you need to get around, failure or not, you'd be a fool to resort to a car as your primary means to do so.

In the Seattle area we have the challenge of trying to create a public transportation system, not because of the terrain, but because voters have rejected attempts to start a true light rail grid for the past 100 years.

We read about how the upcoming Beacon Hill station's platforms will be 160 feet underground. This will be a marvel we're told. However, Hampstead tube station's platforms, that turned 100 years old just 8 days ago, are 192 feet underground. If the Brits could do this 100 years ago, let's not get all giddy that we're only finally getting around to solving similar problems for a station that won't open for another couple of years.

I harp on light rail because it tends not to have the same stigma as buses do, and in a couple of years we will see just how transformative the new Link Light Rail system will be. Already when you drive down MLK Jr. Way S. you can see just how the area is changing in anticipation of the new transportation service. A quick look at the placement of the stations on this section of the line and you can see that a station should be within 15 minutes walk for most people living along that stretch of road.

Still, buses will be a part of any solution simply because you can't run light rail to every neighborhood - yet.

I ride the 545 bus to work in Seattle from Redmond. Freedom in commuting is not having to drive. Freedom in commuting is being able to read the paper, or a book, or work on ones laptop, or simply rest. I can't do those things in my car, and when I get to work I have to pay at least $10 a day to park it.

So how do we get more people using buses?

We need more of them, so the routes can be serviced more frequently.

We need more parking spaces at the Park & Ride lots.

We need more routes so that people need to make fewer transfers to get where they want to go.

We need to make the buses quieter, cleaner and more comfortable, although for the most part they already are the latter two.

We need to generate more money through advertising. Ride the London Underground and you see a ton of advertising. Metro and Sound Transit buses have very little advertising, or space for it. Much of the advertising is of the non-profit type, and targets the very demographic Thatcher believes rides buses: the down and out, drug addicted, unemployed. Surely someone would like to try to sell me something through paid advertising. Even those that can barely afford such things stand in line to buy iPods and iPhones.

Regardless of what people think about advertising, it brings in money, and a considerable amount of money could be raised to help pay for the system through untapped advertising income. There is a market for it on these buses, so get the market involved.

All of this and more will help improve the service, and bring in riders. After all, I don't consider this aging, high tech worker who rides a bus a failure. Rather it is our collective failure to provide for better public transportation options and funding that we should all be ashamed of.

That can begin to change this November with the comprehensive regional roads and transit ballot measure.

We need to stop pussyfooting around on our regional transportation needs and fund them while we still can. The needs will not go away, and they will only get more costly as time goes by and raw materials and equipment become more expensive. Think how much cheaper this could all have been had we started work on it 20, 30, 50 or 100 years ago. Think how we would be benefitting from it were it already in place today.

This blog will try to cover this measure closely over the next few months in an effort to inform myself and my readers about the benefits of the package being proposed, and the necessity of it. I hope you join me for the ride.