Wednesday, August 12, 2009

Not-free Light Rail

I missed my downtown bus connection this morning. I'd taken a mostly-full King County Metro #355 from North Seattle to 5th & James, then biked to the International District Station, but arrived just one minute after my connecting bus, a King County Metro #150, had gone past. My next bus wasn't due for another 14 minutes.

The roads were wet from this morning's rain, so I didn't want to take the King County Metro #101, my usual alternate, because it has a pretty ferocious downhill and my bike's rear brake was disconnected -- the rear wheels on both my commuter bike and my road rocket have gotten out of true over the past month, and I would be dropping off my commuter bike at REI for repairs this afternoon, but in the meantime the only way to keep the rear wheel rolling was to unhinge the rear brake, making it non-functional.

A light rail train went by a couple minutes after I arrived. This gave me an idea. I work in Tukwila, after all, even if nowhere near the Tukwila light rail station. I'd scouted a bike route from the Tukwila light rail terminus to my office a couple weeks ago, and while it didn't look great, and I find the Southcenter area notoriously unwelcoming to bikes, I'd heard that bike lanes had recently been painted on Southcenter Blvd, which is the route I'd scouted.

I didn't catch this particular train, as it stopped too far away from where I'd been waiting, but I figured if the next train arrived before my bus, I might take it.

So I did. I hadn't thought about how to pay for the train ride before I climbed aboard, but I had a transfer slip from my earlier bus, which I hoped would be enough. There were a total of six passengers on the vehicle I boarded, which was the forward vehicle in the two-vehicle train. I'd looked into the previous train as it passed, and counted four passengers in its second vehicle, though there were more in its first vehicle.

A couple transit cops got on at SoDo Station, calling for tickets. I pulled out my transfer slip. One cop glanced at it as he passed and thanked me. Sweet, Seattle's light rail apparently accepts bus transfers after all. The two cops got off at Beacon Hill Station. Later in the day I learned that bus transfer slips will be sufficient payment on light rail trains for the rest of the year.

A few passengers boarded while others got off as the train proceeded south. I don't think the number of passengers in my vehicle ever exceeded eight, which I might say is outrageously poor ridership, especially in light of Sound Transit's revelation that its first-week ridership averaged just 12,000 boardings per weekday. But this will improve as more destinations come online, increasing slightly when the segment to the airport opens later this year and more significantly to the UW seven years from now, and as more massive housing developments get built in the immediate vicinity of stations in the Rainier Valley, though of course Sound Transit could drastically increase light rail ridership by following through on its 1996 commitment to build a demonstration PRT system and then extending that to neighborhoods near those light rail stations. That would be nice.

It's also unfair to judge system ridership by counting passengers on two reverse-commute trains even if those counts were taken during peak hours -- I should note that the one train I saw coming into the ID Station while I was waiting there looked like it had considerably more riders, with as many as 2/3 of the seats taken, similar to the 355 bus I'd ridden earlier this morning.

With so few passengers on my train, I felt freer to look around the vehicle, and counted only two bike slots in it-- that's just four bike slots for the entire train, though I suppose additional bikes could still be brought aboard even if they couldn't be stowed properly. My bike protruded halfway into the aisle. The train really has quite a violent shimmy as it speeds along the fast section nearing Tukwila -- I have to think that'll be addressed someday.

When I got off the train in Tukwila, only five other people got off the entire train with me. Yes, this is abysmal ridership, though I feel certain that Sound Transit will contend that ridership is ahead of estimates anyway. Again, it's too soon to make a lasting judgment, but this is not what I'd call a good start.

My bike ride from the station turned out surprisingly well. Southcenter Blvd had a bike lane for more than a mile, all the way to where it crossed under I-5, and traffic after that was light enough that I was able to change lanes as they turned to side roads the rest of the way across Interurban Avenue, where I caught the Interurban Trail, which I rode the rest of the way to my office. I was surprised to see that the ride had taken 10 minutes longer than it would have if I'd taken my usual #150 bus.

I should also say that last Friday, while I was driving with my 12-year-old son to climb Mt. Adams, my wife repeated my light rail trip to Columbia City with our other kids, stopping at Jones Barbeque and having lunch with them there. She says the food is better when it's hot, which it hadn't been after I used light rail to carry a batch up to a ZooTunes concert a few weeks ago.

P.S. A couple transit cops boarded my return #150 bus at Stadium Station this afternoon, one through each door. One walked from the rear to the front, then both climbed off again. In 20 years of bus riding in Seattle I don't think I've ever seen transit cops board a bus like that before. I appreciated it, actually.

1 comment:

Mr_Grant said...

You really should get a universal spoke wrench.

With the wheel mounted, find a pair of spokes where the rim is centered relative to the brake pads; use these as reference spokes. Then tighten or loosen the others by quarter-turns until the rim is trued.

If extremely out of true and out of round, you can unscrew all the nipples (keep the rimstrip on so the nipples don't fall out). Then go to the Initial Spoke Adjustment section here and follow the instructions.

At some point, you ought to try buying a rim and spokes for your hub and building the wheel yourself. It is a fun and kind of artistic thing to do.