That was the word from KUOW traffic this morning. No accidents to speak of. Just rain. Rain? Rain snarls traffic in a region where there are seven months of rain? What did I get myself into?
I take the Sounder 545 Express Bus to work. I started by loading my bike onto the bus, and riding the 6.75 miles from the east side of the 520 floating bridge to Microsoft and back. But it’s been cold recently, and rainy, and dark, and I’ve been just taking the bus.
But the bus isn’t a hair faster than a car in the morning. There are no express lanes in Seattle on the bus route, so I’m stuck on a crowded bus, inching along as five or six lanes of traffic merge into two lanes to cross the 520 bridge. Why bother even taking the bus? Yeah, I can read the paper, but it’s not faster, and it’s incredibly crowded from 6am to 830am.
I’ve actually started working from Bauhaus coffee shop down the street in the am and taking a bus btw 8:45 and 9:15. I thought traffic would be easier, but it’s not. True, the bus is less crowded but… P******* tells me you might as well not get on the bus until 930am.
Then there’s the return. It’s bad no matter what. The bus is always standing-room only between 5pm and 6pm. Then, the traffic is horrible, and it’s horrible from 4pm to well past 7pm. The HOV lane is the right lane, so at the 520/405 interchange, single-passenger vehicles clog the bus lane as they cross the former HOV lane and try to exit 520 to get on the 405. It’s also clogged as they get off the 405 and line up trying to get into the left lane before the right lane turns into an HOV lane again. Yeah, you save time after the 405 interchange, because traffic in the non-HOV lanes is still slow getting onto the 520 bridge. But it can take anywhere from 15-35 minutes to get from MSFT to the bridge. It takes me 25 minutes by bike. But it’s dark, and half the ride is on surface streets, and even in a bike-friendly place like the Puget Sound area, drivers still don’t pay attention to anything that isn’t a car.
I think the key to the crowding thing is that people come to the bus stop at a constant rate, starting at 6:30 am, and continuing until 8:30, and then from 5pm to 6:30pm. Thing is, the buses come every ten minutes only from 8:02 to 9:12, and from 5:48 to 7:08. So 6:30am to 7:52am, and 5pm to 5:38pm–when the bus comes every 15 minutes–is crowded.
But that’s just about getting a seat. It doesn’t address the traffic.
Jono has decided it makes sense to get in at 5am and leave at 3pm. But that’s not a solution.
If I could split lanes or ride in the shoulder in Seattle, I’d buy a 250cc Vespa, and scoot in most of the time. But I can’t. I’m stuck in traffic like everyone else.
We also thought that Microsoft should just demand that entire divisions work from home one day per week. No choice, you can’t come in. You work on Office? You work from home on Tuesday. You work on Windows? Live? Every group has a day. That’d be 10K+cars off the highways each day.
Seattle just hasn’t figured it out. And based on the transit plans I’ve seen, it will only get worse, because no one has the guts to get people out of their cars. LA knows you can’t add more freeway lanes. Build it, and they will come. You have to encourage different behaviors. Seattle still thinks more lanes are the answer, not providing EFFECTIVE alternatives to cars. Like HOV lanes for the bus that single-passenger cars can NEVER enter. Or rail.
I’m one less car on the road. In San Francisco, that behavior was rewarded. The train was brilliant. In Seattle, I suffer just like people in their own cars. In fact, my commute takes longer than a car, because of the bus stops. The only difference is that I get to read. While stuffed in like a sardine in a bus.
I recently bought the 
