The County Council is hosting some public meetings about the proposed congestion reduction charge this month. One (in Kirkland), has already come and gone, but here’s the info on the other two:
Tuesday, July 12, 6:00 p.m.
King County Council Chambers
516 Third Avenue, 10th Floor, SeattleThursday, July 21, 6:00 p.m.
Burien City Council Chambers
400 S.W. 152nd Street
If you can’t make either meeting, you can submit your feedback here.
Back in April, the Bus Fam attended the Healthy Kids Day extravaganza at Meredith Matthews YMCA. Among the SWAG we took home was this handy little “ouch pouch” from Group Health.
It’s hard to tell from the photo, but it’s about the size and weight of a package of Kool Aid. Of course you know where it ended up.
A couple of weeks later, a family friend gave Chicklet and Busling a basket of Easter treats. It was a huge basket with tons of candy and fun, plastic toys—in other words, something we would never have bought for them ourselves. They were thrilled.
The best part from my perspective (given that the basket contained no chocolate), was this adorable little set of sand toys.
It’s got everything kids like to play with at the beach—bucket, shovel, rake, sifter, sea-themed molds—but it takes up only slightly more space than a kid’s cup.
Which brings me to last Friday, the occasion of our little friend Miles’s first birthday party. Since the celebration was being held at Madrona Park on a sunny day, we wanted to be ready for beach fun. We traveled to the party (on the 2) with only the bus bag and one small additional bag, which contained: food to share, a gift (books, of course), the tiny beach set, towels, sun hats, and sun screen. We also carried an additional package (books again) for the first half of our journey. (We stopped at the post office on the way to mail a belated Father’s Day present to Busling’s Godfather.)
I digress.
During the festivities, both Chicklet and Busling managed to take some pretty good spills. (They’re learning the hard way that running and sandals don’t mix.) Fortunately for them, their mama knows how to pack a bag.
Alki, here we come!
At a press conference yesterday, KC Exec Dow Constantine asked the County Council to approve a temporary $20 vehicle licensing fee (officially called a congestion reduction charge) to maintain service at current levels.
The recession-driven decline in the sales-tax revenues that support public transit leaves the Metropolitan King County Council with two choices – ensure interim funding to continue service at current levels, or face the reality of cutting 17 percent of bus service.
To meet that challenge, King County Executive Dow Constantine today sent the Council a proposed ordinance to enact the one tool recently authorized by the state Legislature for King County: a temporary $20 Congestion Reduction Charge on vehicle licenses for each of the next two years.
Or, there’s Option 2.
Should the fee not be enacted, the Executive also transmitted legislation for the Council to shrink Metro service by 600,000 hours of annual bus service over the next two years, or 17 percent of the entire system – the rough equivalent of eliminating all rush hour bus service for commuters, or all weekend service in King County. The ordinance covers just the first round of service cuts – a 100,000-hour reduction to begin next February.
Metro recently launched a new site that explains proposal in detail (check this FAQ for the quick and dirty), including the cuts that would likely happen if the charge is not enacted.
I was unable to attend the press conference, but not for lack of passion about the subject. The cuts Metro is considering are serious and will affect the quality of life of every resident of the county, not just those who ride the bus. I intend to lobby the council and do whatever else I can to make sure this happens.
If you want to send a message to the council (either all nine members or your local representative), start here.
I recently passed this Jacob Lawrence tribute shelter on Jefferson, somewhere between 18th and 21st.
I can’t believe I never noticed it before!
Thanks to my dad, I’ve known and appreciated Lawrence’s work since childhood. (Pops was both an admirer of Mr. Lawrence’s paintings and an acquaintance of the artist.) What I didn’t know until I read this HistoryLink essay is that both Lawrence and his wife, Gwendolyn Knight, were bus people.
In 1971, Jacob Lawrence accepted a teaching position at the University of Washington’s School of Art. … As part of the move and their effort to become part of the community, they bought a house that was near both the University and a bus stop.
[…]For apartment dwellers who had never owned a car or a freestanding home, all of this was an adventure. They walked or took the bus nearly everywhere they went.
The evidence is mounting, folks. There’s definitely a connection between transportation and inspiration.
I’ve neglected my bus glossary for a minute (OK, three years–last entry was May, 2008) and have really been meaning to return some focus to transit terminology. Fortunately, my Saturday 17 ride (home from celebrating my brother’s birthday) provided some much-needed inspiration.
The gentleman sitting directly behind me used one of my favorite transit terms, “bus legs,” in a conversation with his seat mate*. I wasn’t able to hear the context, given the general noise level on the bus (and the fact that I was trying to accommodate competing story requests from my tiny travel companions), but I’m guessing it was related to the heavy traffic and somewhat erratic driving. (What is it about the 17 and erratic driving?)
“Bus legs” is a term I use often but have never bothered to formally define. So, for those who don’t know:
Bus legs, n: The ability to effectively balance oneself while standing or walking on a moving bus, no matter how unpredictable the traffic or inexperienced the driver. Ex. I’ve got bus legs, so I don’t need to hold on.
I guess that’s one way to ride the wave.
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* Speaking of transit terminology, there’s got to be a better way to describe the person you sit next to on a bus or train.
If you’ve read this blog for any length of time, you probably know that I’m not a gadget person. I’m no Luddite (hey, I appreciate a useful tool as much as the next bus chick), but I’m no early adopter, either. I believe in using stuff “till the wheels fall off,”* if you’ll excuse the auto-inspired metaphor, and it feels wrong to get rid of something that works perfectly fine just because there’s something newerfasterbetter out there.
But folks, on Friday my Bus Nerd surprised me with a fancy new smart phone (which, by the way, he managed to obtain gratis), and I think I’ve found religion. Yes, I can use the phone to check e-mail and find restaurants and update my Facebook status and blah blah blah, but none of these is a good reason (in my book, anyway) to upgrade. What is a good reason? One Bus Away!
OBA makes an app for my fancy new phone, which means I am (finally!) able to experience its true power. I realize that this is old news for all you gadget geeks and hardcore transit nerds (Bus Nerd has to work not to roll his eyes every time I start a sentence with, “Did you know it can…?”), but bear with me. This is the best thing that’s happened in my bus life since I stopped experiencing motion sickness.
In the old days, checking bus times on my phone meant looking up a stop number or searching through a huge list of stop locations to find the one I needed. Most of the time, doing that work was more of a hassle for me than just waiting for the bus (and usually took just as long). Now that I have One Bus Away, I don’t have to do much more than tap my screen a couple of times. After I open the app, the GPS locates all the stops within a half mile of me, then tells me which routes stop there and which directions the buses are traveling. I click the stop I want, and it tells me how many minutes I’ll have to wait for each route. The end. The entire process takes less than 30 seconds.
The uses for this amazing (free!) application are almost innumerable. Some recent examples from my world:
Sunday, after church: It’s pouring. We’re close to missing the next 48 and don’t want to stand out in the weather for 30 minutes (or schlep kids + stuff +umbrellas back to the church building) if it passes the stop before we get there. OBA tells us that the 48 is three minutes late, which means we have time to make it. And we do.
Today, late morning: I have a meeting downtown shortly after the babysitter arrives at our house. I need to catch the next bus heading west, but the three options all serve different stops that are several blocks apart. I use OBA to determine my best option and make it to the stop seconds before the bus, which gets me downtown in plenty of time for my meeting.
I could go on, but I’m too lazy.
Every bus rider should possess this kind of power. Real-time arrival info at stops is helpful (Can we have this now, please?), as is real-time info in businesses and public buildings (using “transit appliances” like this one), but neither is as empowering as having the information at your fingertips.
I know I just said this about the 8 a few weeks ago, but I’m with Lily: One Bus Away has changed my life.
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* For example: my laptop, which, after many years of regular use, has started making a frightening crunching/grinding sound every time I turn it on
Back in the day, my friend Char called me “Card-la” (better, I guess, than some other nicknames I’ve had) because of my tendency to give and send cards. I’ve toned it down since then, but I still send thank-you notes–more often, according to some of my friends, than is necessary. (My mom was big on manners, OK?) Ah, but this is a good thing, since I’m going to need plenty of excuses to use a stamp. Fellow bus chicks, behold.
It's a bus stamp!
Yes folks, it’s a bus stamp (!)–part of USPS’s Go Green initiative. There are 15 others, which are cool and all, but I’m going to need a book with just the buses, please.
One of the biggest benefits of riding transit with little ones is that you can actually pay attention to them while you travel. Instead of hollering in the general direction of the back seat (or worse, resorting to an in-vehicle entertainment system to keep order), PT parents can have meaningful, even educational, interactions with their little darlings. Here are some examples of brain- and bond-enhancing ways to use transit travel time.
I am not naïve enough to believe that my children will always be thrilled about taking the bus every-dang-where. What I do know is that, so far, our bus time has been great for just about every aspect of their development. (Folks, for your sakes I have exercised restraint and not mentioned even one of their many demonstrations of genius.) It has also been great for our relationships. Bus time is as much about togetherness and adventure as it is about getting from point A to point B, and every time we travel, we create amazing memories. As I’ve said before, I could never trade that for easier access to the mall.
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*Tip: Always carry a few tried and true favorites, but make sure to keep your selection fresh. The library is your friend.
**As my friend Aileen would say.
