Sounder follow-up

Last week’s blog, recounting my experimental first-time-ever ride on the Sounder, though written on that Friday, didn’t get posted until the following Monday. Today’s blog will also go out this week, since next week is Spring Break, when I’ll be working out of state. The blog will be a follow-up on the preceding, as a commentary on Monday’s and Tuesday’s Sounder commute. This time I took the Sounder because of the rain forecast. Rain may slow down I-5 traffic with inconvenient accidents, but not the Sounder. Yet the more important reason is that when it rains, I tend not to want to walk Pacific Avenue, being not a “singing-in-the-rain” -sort-of-person. Brief explanation: my choices when catching the Seattle-Tacoma Express Bus, is the one leaving shortly after 6 AM and the one leaving shortly around 6:15. But for the latter I have to wait around for 15 to 20 minutes, which is a bore, and for that reason have never been attracted to the idea of standing around fishing. The earlier bus service, however, goes directly from the Dome Station to I-5, skipping downtown, so I get off at the Jack-in-the-Box on 25^th and walk down Pacific and Commerce at 10^th to wait for the #11 bus. A wonderful, sight-variegated walk. Sometimes another Seattle commuter, accompanies me part way, a lawyer who works at the Federal Court House and who shares an interest in history, as well as a boss who is married to one of our deans. This commuting blog should be about what the pass allows you to do on foot, not just on the bus, or Sounder train. More about that in some future posting.

However, for now, back to the Sounder To catch the one leaving the King Street Station at 6:10, I have to leave about 15 minutes earlier than the usual 5:40 AM deadline for catching the first bus. (People who groan about getting up at 7 AM bring no plaintiff strains of sympathetic violins out from me, having grown up on a ranch where before-dawn risings to feed cattle and to check on pregnant heifers were normal.) Now once you are aboard the Sounder, you don’t need to worry about sloppy drivers and bad weather fouling up the traffic on I-5. Though the ride won’t be a smooth one (see previous blog), what you can do, is spread out. You have the run of the roost. Most seats are empty, even the ones with tables. If some yahoo is yakking away on a cell phone, you can find escape into another level of the train carriage, or into another carriage altogether.

Monday morning, because of the change in time, the trip started and ended in darkness, and the upper train level has lost its scenic advantage, so on Tuesday I moved down to the bottom train level, to a different riding experience. Down there the train doesn’t seem to lumber along, but instead seems veritably to race along, without many bumps and grinds. When “rosy-fingered dawn” and visible daylight eventually reappear, I may move back up, or perhaps not. A question of comfort vs. scenic vistas.

Wallace, Faculty

Sounder

Last week, I spoke poetically or Homeric ally of rosy-fingered dawn increasingly lightening up the view and distractions visible from the bus windows during the morning commute from Seattle to UPS. Since the clock change this weekend will for a while darken the commute again, this Friday I took advantage of the soon-to-end dawning daylight to use the Puget pass to ride the Sounder train, even though I had to leave at 5:20 rather than 5:40 to catch it. Fortunately there was a rosy-fingered dawn this morning, rather than the furry-paw fog of yesterday which enfolded us in dense mist. Mt. Rainier today was readily visible, and looked even more spectacular than usual. The train ride was a first time experiment, which I was eager to compare with the similar double-decked trains I’d recently ridden between Dallas and Ft. Worth My findings: trains in both systems are similarly double-decked, roomy and new, and the stations along the way are also new. However, the rail tracks here are not new, in contrast to those in Texas (or Europe). Along the old tracks, the Sounder lurches and sways, creaks and clacks, more so if you are elevated in the upper deck. The ride, in other words, has “character,” like the character lines one acquires after a certain age. But no problem, unless you are like the princess distressed by the pea under her lowest-most mattress. No one will ever be asked to perform brain surgery on the Sounder. Will I repeat this “experiment” in the future? More on my next blog. One has to ration these reports, since most commutes are usually so uneventful and not worth reporting, thank heavens.

Wallace, Faculty

missing the bus

Yesterday I stayed late at work, and so was particularly eager to get home and start studying for those looming midterms.  My normal bus, the 1, passed right in front of me and left the stop before I could get there.  Feeling antsy, I decided to walk down to the depot on Commerce and take it from there.  As I approached I crossed the street--to watch it pull away without me, on the wrong side and to far too flag it down.  I wound up catching the 11, the first bus that came that would go near UPS.  Once on board, I realized how much I appreciate being able to zone out and let someone else handle the road.  We went through neighborhoods of Tacoma I don't normally see and passed a pub a friend had mentioned in conversation; it renewed a desire to just jump on a random bus one day and see where it goes (especially now that I can do it for free).

Jennifer, student

Wait or walk...

Ever wonder whether you should wait for that bus to arrive or walk one stop further down the line?  Well, some mathematicians have and they  worked out the answer.  Too bad they didn't talk to Stephen Dubner first.  I think he's got it right, if anything, walking back one stop makes the most sense.  It raises the probability of getting on a bus at a very crowded stop and/or at rush hour and raises the probability of getting a good seat, or any seat for that matter. 

I think this is a bigger issue in more urban areas where buses are more crowded in general and the stops are closer together.  When I lived in Toronto I'd often do this bus stop leapfrog.  Of course there, there are more overlapping routes so going forward or back one stop may increase the number of possible buses (or streetcars where they exist) you might hop on.

Of course, there's nothing worse (OK, maybe some things are worse...) than getting caught between stops and watching your bus roll by as you look on forlornly or break into a sprint in a futile attempt to catch it.

Perhaps this is a bigger issue around here for we bus/bike riders due to the real scarcity of bus rack space (2 per bus generally on Pierce T.).  Again, as a grad student in Santa Cruz (OK, so I'm getting carried away with the links, its just such an amazing place), I often would see several fellow bikers who had arrived ahead of me at a stop and I (self interested economist that I am) would pedal on to try and grab that bike rack spot a stop before.  I've never seen this happen but the game theorist in me wonders what might happen if two (or three) cyclists were to each attempt this strategy (in some sense its like the centipede game), competitively pedaling further and further up the route away from their destination.

Garrett, Faculty

bus riding thoughts

One of the chief pleasures of riding public transport, especially on the long Seattle-Tacoma run, is freedom from the worries of single car drivers. No one is going to subject bus riders to drive-by shootings, probably because we’re not very individually visible, sitting high as we do behind darkened windows. Some car driver who wants the thrill of road rage will take it out on someone of equal or lesser size. What car, even a Hummer or Escalade, would challenge a bus to a game of chicken? At least those were some of the things I was speculating about the other morning, in between moments of reading, and also gazing at Mt. Rainier. Though I still start my morning commute in the dark of night, by the time the bus is half-way to Tacoma, rosy-fingered dawn has brought the mountain to visible life. Did Homer use epithets for mountains, as for the dawn and the sea? Hmm. Any epithet for Mt. Rainier would have to have some heft, like his “earth-shaker Poseidon” or “big-hearted,” “much enduring” Odysseus. In a bus one can speculate about such matters, and gaze wonderingly at the mountain, and not have to worry about inadvertently running one’s car off the road, or instigating road rage.

Wallace, Faculty