Upcoming events for transit types

MEHVA Santa’s Lights Tour
What: Metro Employees Historic Vehicle Association‘s annual, vintage-bus tour of “Seattle’s best holiday lights.”
When: Saturday, December 12th, 7 PM – 10 PM
Where: Buses depart from–and return to–2nd & Main.
How much: $5 (Children under 5 are free.)

First Hill Streetcar Community Open Houses
What: The First Hill Streetcar (which we Puget Sound voters approved as part of ST2) is now scheduled to break ground in 2011. The open houses will present the streetcar’s “alignment options” and provide an opportunity for public feedback.
When/where:

Tuesday, December 15, 2009
6 PM – 8 PM
Seattle Central Community College
101 Broadway

Wednesday, December 16, 2009
6 PM – 8 PM
Yesler Community Center
917 E. Yesler Way

Thursday, December 17, 2009
6 PM — 8 PM
Union Station
401 S. Jackson

How much: Free, of course

Link’s Seatac Station opening
What: Light rail service to the airport begins.
When: Saturday, December 19th, 10 AM
Where: Seatac Airport, my holiday-traveling friends
How much: Train fare

Holiday decorating, bus-chick style

Spotted at 15th & Thomas* at 8 AM(ish):

Christmas trees for car-free types
“Delivery services offered by Zipcar”
Transporting a tree--car-free!
Or not

(And again, sorry for the low quality phone photo.)

*Wondering what I was doing out in the cold early on a Saturday morning? This Saturday was haircut day, and–thank the Good Lord–Metro extended the 8’s service just in time for my beautician‘s move to Capitol Hill.

Evidence that driving less helps cure cancer

On Monday, my brother, Jeremy, was chosen as December Employee of the Month at his workplace. (As if I needed another reason to be proud of him.) The reward for this unexpected honor: a choice parking spot near the entrance of the building. Though Jeremy’s not exactly car-free (he shares a car with his girlfriend), he lives a few blocks from his office and walks to work every day. So, being the resourceful (and kind!) soul that he is, he decided to pass on his temporary parking privilege to whichever coworker pledged the most money–in memory of our mother–to the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation. The winning pledge was $75.

Good work, little brother. Mom may not have been down with undriving, but I know she would have been proud.

Fifty-four years ago today…

A very brave woman started something big.

Not surprisingly, segregated city buses weren’t Mrs. Parks’ only experience with unequal transportation. During her school years in Pine Level, Alabama, white students were provided with school buses while black children were forced to walk.

“The bus,” she said in an interview, “was among the first ways I realized there was a black world and a white world.”

Certainly, there are remnants of this separation today (including on the bus*), but I am so grateful that Mrs. Parks (and many, many others) sacrificed their livelihoods and personal safety so that I could take for granted my right to ride.

Detroit's Rosa Parks Transit Center
The new Rosa Parks Transit Center, as seen from the Detroit People Mover (photo courtesy of My Gail‘s husband, Hodge)

“Memories of our lives, our works and our deeds, live on in others.” – Rosa Parks

RIP, Original Bus Chick. Much respect.

*I just read an interesting (if not particularly recent) article about the state of Montgomery transit (and equality) at the Millennium. (via: Streetsblog Network)

Bus Chick is thankful for Metro

This year, we bus folks are hosting Thanksgiving at our place, so we won’t have the pleasure of riding anywhere on this rainy, November day. Still, in honor of the holiday, I’m posting some food-transporting photos from last year’s bus trip to my brother’s place. (As usual, the pics aren’t very good, but this time, we have an excuse: We were transporting a baby and food.)

Busing with food

Busing with food
Busing with food

Heading home (or, Can I fix you a plate?)

Busing with food
Busing with food

Alas! I haven’t spotted (or transported) any fried turkeys of late.

Happy day, everyone!

Bus fouls: an update

One I forgot to mention—twice–back in ’06 (an egregious oversight for a Seattle-based bus chick):

Placing a wet umbrella on an empty adjacent seat. Hey, when’s the last time you enjoyed planting your behind in a huge puddle of cold water? For optimum bus citizenship, shake off your umbrella before entering the vehicle and then store it under your feet or in your bus chick bag* for the ride.

*I have lost many an umbrella by leaving them on the floor, so I now always put them back in my bag. My current bag has a mesh outer pouch that seems to be made expressly for this purpose, but if you don’t have one, you can carry a plastic bag or umbrella cover to avoid getting your other stuff wet.

Positioning for bus luh (or, How to increase your chances of finding romance on the ride)

Earlier in the week, Bus Nerd hipped me to this Slate piece about subway psychology. It didn’t turn out to be as interesting as it sounds, but it did contain one useful (and fascinating) tidbit: Apparently, parking yourself in the seat closest to the door* “offer[s] the best opportunities for falling in love with the proper stranger.”

Talk about a revelation! If only I’d known this back when Nerd was a “proper stranger,” it might not have taken us so long to meet.

Unfortunately, the article does not propose any theories about what seat choice has to do with bus mack success rate. Anyone got ideas?

*On the subway, anyway. No word as to whether this works on the bus.

P.S. – For those not familiar with bus luh: a definition.

Saving service, part II

Assuming its final budget passes next week, the King County Council will not–I repeat not–cut bus service in 2010. From yesterday’s PI:

The council’s soon-to-be-released budget plan will not cut Metro Transit bus service next year as first proposed to fill a projected $213 million revenue shortfall over the next two years, councilmembers announced.

Instead, the council says its final 2010 budget plan will sufficiently plug the gap by diverting money from the King County Ferry District and by adopting recommendations from an audit that found $44 million in potential savings through running more efficient bus routes and other changes. In addition, Metro will eliminate 43 staff positions unrelated to bus service and start selling full bus-wrap advertising.

This is goodness–well, maybe not goodness, but not nine percent across-the-board cuts, either.

Though I happen to love the Water Taxi, I’m all for putting the Ferry District expansion on hold while we figure out how to keep existing transit service afloat. (Sorry, couldn’t help myself.) I have a feeling that the audit “efficiencies” they’re proposing to implement will actually negatively affect on-time performance, but that’s just a hunch, and regardless, I’ll take ’em.*

I am very (very!) glad to see that bus wraps are back in the mix. When the Council banned them in 2006, Metro lost three quarters of a million dollars in painless** annual revenue. At roughly $100 bucks per service hour, that’s a lot of service to give up over a handful of complaints.*** And since the program capped the number of wrapped coaches at 25, it affected a very small percentage of riders on a given day.

Me? I’d ride a wrapped bus every day (shoot, for every ride) before I’d give up service. But I digress.

The no-service-cuts budget also includes a 50-cent fare increase over the next two years: the 25-cent increase planned for January and another in 2011. Eh–so it goes. Ideal transit scenarios aside, I guess we all have to be willing to pay our fair share.

Update, 11/23: Looks like the budget was unanimously approved today.

*That is, assuming they don’t involve adopting the proposal to replace trolleys with diesel/electric hybrids.
**A vendor managed the selling and installation for a cut of the profits.
***Less than one percent of all of KC Metro’s complaints that year

Speaking of kids…

1) Another car-free parent, Jeremy Adam Smith in San Francisco, shares his reasons for riding (and walking) with his son (via: Carfree with Kids):

You can buy eco-products from here to the end of time; you can recycle and reuse everything you can; you can even buy a hybrid. But most scientists and engineers agree: The single best thing you can do for the Earth, the greatest positive change you can make, is to give up owning a private vehicle altogether.

Many people will see this as a terrible sacrifice — and in some places, it is almost impossible. But after fifteen years without a car — five of them as a parent — I don’t think we’ve sacrificed a thing. And in fact, our carfree family has gained a lot…

Jeremy goes on to list many of the same benefits that my family–and the (few) other car-free families we know–have experienced: quality time; contact with community; improved health; resourcefulness; and a real, on-the-ground knowledge of one’s city that simply cannot be duplicated from the isolated bubble of a car.

Can I get an “amen!”?

2) Some fun gifts for Chicklet and Bus-Baby-to-Be from my cousins-in-law, Erin and Eli, in NYC:

Transit Museum SWAG
Cute SWAG from the New York Transit Museum

Transit Museum SWG
The important parts of a subway car, or, as Chicklet calls it, “a light rail”
Transit Museum SWAG
“Chew, chew, chew!”

So far, my gratitude is overcoming my envy (I wanna go to the Transit Museum!), but the emotions are pretty much neck and neck.

Thanks, guys!