A New View of Tacoma on the '16'

Wow, I got so busy telling everyone else about my bus adventures that I totally spaced posting in the blog.  Here's the latest update:

After living close to 6th avenue for a year and a half, I moved this semester to a house on the Alder side of campus. Although I soon noticed the bus stop near my new house was for the "16" bus and it went downtown, I assumed it was inferior to my standard "1" bus and continued to walk to 6th Ave so as to avoid change.  I finally decided to look at other options when my 7 minute bike commute turned into a 30 minute house to downtown commute that always resulted in me being 20 minutes early for work.  The "16" has solved all of that.  Not only is the bus stop right out my door, it also leaves at a better time, is less crowded and, to my great surprise, showed me a great new side of Tacoma.  Don't get me wrong, I love 6th Ave, having walked a failing bike up it's hills more than once I have become acquainted with all of its glory. That being said, a little change is good.  The '16' started out its journey downtown through some pretty narrow neighborhood streets.  Since driving my little Saturn through these same streets still scares me, I was amazed that the bus was able to make it without incident.  Views of the sound and Mount Ranier were up next followed by some Tacoma classics- Stadium high school, Rankos pharmacy and Frisko Freeze. It was a lovely start to my day and while the route may not have been the most direct way downtown.the views were definitely worth it.

Liz, student