Light rail construction impacts on the Rainier Valley

Last month my wife and I were invited to attend a party in Columbia City, sort of a restaurant opening. The timing worked out, we got child care for the kids, and we attended, just the two of us, for a nice date. The food was good, the company was good, and the music was good, but it was nonetheless a fairly unique experience for us, as everyone else at the party was African-American, and we're not.

No, this wasn't uncomfortable, and we both enjoyed ourselves quite a bit, even getting up to dance despite not recognizing a single song the DJ was playing, I have always enjoyed such rare and precious exposure to the warm generosity of other, parallel cultures, but in the past I've usually had to travel to get it. My wife and I got to sit and talk at our table like we would have on any other date, and which we have so few opportunities to do now as busy parents, but we also talked with others and got a little bit of the story behind why the restaurant had opened there. You see, the restaurant used to have another location in the Rainier Valley, which had its business destroyed by the light rail construction there. Yes, some money was made available to help mitigate some of these construction impacts on existing businesses there, and some may have been applied to this particular business, but not enough to save it. So they opened a second location and eventually closed the first one.

Last weekend an article came out in the Seattle Times titled "New light rail clears way for an MLK makeover", which related that all the expected new development spurred by this new light rail line's real estate boom would be "forcing out some businesses", much as has been discussed in many similar previous articles on the same subject.

Well, this has obviously occurred, but I wonder at the scale of business closures that have occurred, which do not seem to have been fully reported.

There is certainly some closure to the light rail system being developed to run through the Rainier Valley, which last weekend's Seattle Times article on the subject seems to explicitly address: its main beneficiaries seem to be developers, some of whom were interviewed explicitly on that account. Likewise, the Interurban line on which construction was begun in 1891 (and which ran through 1937) was also built largely to facilitate development in the Rainier Valley, though of course in those days the number of people displaced by construction was rather smaller. One hopes that Central Link light rail will provide somewhat safer, faster, and more reliable service than the old Interurban did, but I don't think anyone is under any illusions that operating such a transportation link will be any more profitable now than it was then, raising the question of which group will benefit from the construction of this new transportation link most. "Developers" seems to be the answer, though of course the benefit to future residents will be tangible, as it will be to some local businesses that are able adapt to change by spending enough to cater to the new and more gentrified clientele, and of course to anyone who owns property in that area.

Sounder, redux

OK, last week I'm buying my ticket for the Sounder at the Tukwila station for my second trip on the Sounder to Seattle. I've ridden to the station from my office on my bike and am looking forward to a speedy trip home. Not as fast as driving, but pretty good nonetheless. The ticket dispenser is under the platform. I put my first dollar in and start hearing bells from up above. Yes, that's the train arriving, on it's only afternoon trip in this direction for the entire day. I hurry up with inserting bills and coins, and my ticket comes out, dated 7:22 PM (I believe this is a transfer expiration time) The train is due to arrive at 5:24 PM. I start up the ramp to the platform, and as the train comes into my line of sight, it has already started moving. The engineer looks over at me and keeps going.

Well, there goes my $3.25 fare down the drain -- the back of the ticket states that it will be honored as "a one-zone fare on King County Metro bus services" but the one time I'd tried using it for that purpose in February, the bus driver would not honor it. 

I mount the bike and head to the nearest bus stop half a mile away -- the next bus to downtown Seattle leaves in 8 minutes. I could bike the whole way, but it's about a 16-mile ride and I want to get home to my family. On my birthday. The bus comes on time and I speed downtown, then ride home the 6 miles uphill from there.

My recommendation to Sound Transit: put the ticket vending machine on the platform itself rather than under it, so passengers don't have to go out of their way to buy tickets and risk missing the train, especially when it arrives and departs early, as it did last week.

Bike/bus wave-offs

OK, there's at least one issue that hasn't been working perfectly on my bike/bus commute to Tukwila: wave-offs.

That's right, even in March I'm already experiencing wave-offs, where a bus I hope to take from Seattle's bus tunnel already has two bikes in its bike rack and I get waved off to wait for the next available bus. I've already been waved off once from the International District Station, and nearly got waved off a second time there.

The actual wave-off occurred all the way back in February from a southbound King County Metro #150, which drove up with two bikes filling up its bike rack. The bus driver shrugged his shoulders and said the next bus would be along in 15 minutes, then closed the door and went on. Fortunately for me, a King County Metro #101 came along just one minute later and I'd done enough research beforehand to know that even though it took me down a different route and would require a 3-mile bike ride to my office rather than the 1-mile ride after getting off the #150, I could still do it. So this didn't cost me much, though it would have been a lot more difficult for someone who hadn't done their homework ahead of time.

The near-wave-off also occurred with a King County Metro #150 bus, which this time was preceded by a #101 bus, and so I would indeed have had to wait for 15 minutes for the next bus. Three buses came through the tunnel one after the other. The first was a #101 with no bikes on board. The third was a #150 with one bike on board. All three buses stopped in a line, with the first two opening their doors. I had my bike clearly visible to all three drivers close to the actual stop, where I'd been waiting for about five minutes. Another bicyclist came down the stairs and immediately moved toward the #150 bus, but the driver waved him forward to the actual stop. As the other bicyclist moved forward, the two lead buses moved out and the #150 bus came to the actual bus stop, where I mounted my bike into its rack and boarded, so the other bicyclist probably had to wait that 15 minutes instead of me.

I have been very fortunate in my bike-commuting in not getting waved off often, other than when I was attempting to board eastbound buses from the Montlake Freeway Station last year, when this started taking me 20-30 minutes of waiting even in March and April, and so I eventually quit trying to do so entirely, bicycling all the way around the north end of Lake Washington instead. Two (or three) bikes per bus really isn't enough, especially with wave-offs already occurring fairly frequently, with Seattle attempting to increase its number of bike trips by a factor of 3 over the next 9 years, and with even Central Link light rail unable to accommodate very many more bicycles per train (I understand from a presentation I attended last year promoting Sound Transit's failed East Link proposal that each light rail vehicle will be able to accommodate only 2 bicycles). One thing I like so much about Personal Rapid Transit (PRT) is that each vehicle can carry a bicycle, and system capacities are expected to be in the neighborhood of 30 vehicles per minute, meaning up to 30 bicyclists and their riders can be carried every minute (= 1800 bikes per hour) by each PRT line. Compare that to 3 bikes per bus every 6 minutes (= 30 bikes per hour, maximum), or even 2 bikes times a maximum of 4 LRT vehicles per train every 5 minutes minimum (= 96 bikes per hour at a theoretical maximum) for Central Link light rail, and PRT looks like a huge boon to enabling human-powered transportation, especially when you consider that PRT vehicle headways are expected to eventually drop to just a half-second, quadrupling the number of bicycles that could be accommodated from the two-second PRT headways mentioned above.

Bike/bus commute conversations

I'm bike-commuting twice a week these days, except during weeks with lots of rain like last week. I haven't ridden the bike for an entire 45-mile round-trip yet, but I'm working up to it. Yesterday was typical, where my bike ride on the morning leg was minimal -- I piggybacked on two express buses, only bicycling 1-2 miles at the beginning, end, and between the transfer bus stops, but I rode the bulk of the way home (16-17 miles), only catching a bus for 5 of the last 6 miles on the uphill finish.

I really don't have many complaints about the express bus/bike piggybacks except of course that they continue to take roughly twice as long as driving -- it's really quite remarkable that they work as well as they do: for all its imperfections King County Metro seems like a remarkably competent organization.

My one-sided conversation with another bus passenger yesterday afternoon reminds me that I've been having similar interactions on most of my last few bus trips with people who are either in trouble or who have some sort of disability. Whether it's my bicycling garb (wearing shorts in the winter?!) which makes me seem more approachable than the usual bus commuter is something I may never know.Yesterday after bicycling from Tukwila to the north extent of the downtown ride-free zone to catch my express bus home, I made my way back through the bus towards the back when a young man started chattering at me. He had an empty seat next to him (unusually, there were still quite a few empty seats, even though this is one of the busiest routes in Seattle) and looked harmless, so I sat down with him. This seemed to rev him up even more, and he started nattering on about some of his bodily functions and speculating on his own interspecies genetics, dropping the occasional f-bomb. He did notice that I was sniffly and sneezy (spring is hay fever time for me, which bicycling exacerbates), and so asked a few questions that allowed me a few words to contribute to the interaction, but it was mostly a nonstop stream of words from him that I (and the people around me) didn't really need to hear, though friendly enough.

Two weeks ago I got lectured by a man with Down Syndrome (for the second time) about nutrition and proper health maintenance. I let him augment my conscience on health issues, about which he is frankly rather well informed, now substituting fruit for a scone upon my arrival at work most days. I enjoy talking with him, actually, and I'm sure I'll do so again.

Also two weeks ago I sat across from two men who were discussing their rehab, love lives, and some of their near-term dreams, like buying a bed or a TV. One may have been advising the other as part of an AA-type group. The other discussed his girlfriend's jail time and the possibility that he might have some soon, too, if he ended up having to 'do something crazy' in order to pay his bills. There but for the grace of God, I suppose.

Between all these interactions, I can see how riding public transit could be an off-putting experience for some, certainly. I am large enough that I generally don't feel unsafe in these situations, but others might not, especially after dark. I keep in mind at times like this the experience a similarly large friend of mine had 15 years ago when he moved to Seattle and tried taking one of these same buses to his job downtown: when he got home he said he wouldn't be doing that again, I presume because he encountered some similar people on his trip and felt more deterred than I do.

Some years ago I read that the last time in modern America when all the classes mingle is high school. Well, as more people start riding public transit again, that may change. For the better, I sincerely hope.

A first winter bike-commute

I started a new job last month in Tukwila. I drove alone for the first two weeks, but as the weather improves and the daylight stretches further into the evening, I expect to spend more and more time bicycling to and from work. Last Friday was my first non-SOV commute to my new job.

There are some complications. Most noteworthy is that it's a 45-mile round trip, and part of the route has no good bike options, but I'm working up to it. I did some research ahead of time, not quite enough but still a fair amount, and learned that the best I could expect to do on my way to work was a 55-minute multimodal ride, which compares to 35 minutes by car including finding a parking space and then walking the usual 1/4 mile from that parking space to my office; I work in a really big building, for a really big employer. Today it took me 70 minutes, or twice as long as it would have if I'd driven. This seems pretty typical for transit: there can be many benefits to using transit, but in just about any West Coast city, getting where you want to go quickly is not one of them.

I took an express bus from North Seattle to the south end of downtown, the King County Metro #355. Nearly all the seats were taken but there were no standees, which is pretty typical in my experience for most of the peak-hour King County Metro bus routes I've ridden as well as the Sound Transit #545, but excluding the backbone King County Metro routes like the #358 on which it was rare for me to get a seat when I was regularly riding it as recently as a year ago.

After three stops in the U-District and a zing down the express lanes to downtown, I got off the 355 and hopped on my bike to search for the International District bus tunnel station. It only took a few extra minutes to find, but by then I'd already missed my next bus, which could have been either the King County Metro #101 or the #150. 

On my way through the train station, after getting off the escalator, I got asked (nicely) by a couple burly guys in transit jackets to get off my bike  ... I wasn't pedaling and was proceeding at barely more than walking speed, but rules are rules. I didn't know that rule at the time, but live and learn. It wouldn't be the last time I learned something today, and my next trip will go more smoothly. The next useful bus for me came along 10 minutes after I arrived.

My next bus, the #150, was another express that took me down the busway from downtown (where I passed a two-car Sound Transit light rail train moving north on what must have been a test through the graffiti-afflicted section on both sides of the busway and rail route near the stadiums), hopped onto I-5 at Spokane Street, and got off 10 miles later on Interurban Ave. The ride from downtown was wide open, which is as expected for a reverse commute at that hour. I rode the #150 to Ft. Dent Way, got off, and turned left on my bike at that intersection with traffic close on my tail, entered the Interurban Trail as it began just South of there, and crossed the Green River on a new bike/ped bridge.

The trail then took a big bend around the Fun Center at the intersection of Interurban and Grady Way, and halfway through that bend I came upon the railroad crossing I'd hoped to find there but hadn't seen on any of the (outdated) online maps I'd tried using. Best of all, there was no sign there saying "Do Not Enter" or "No Trespassing" or anything of that ilk, so I looked both ways (I grew up around midwestern railroad tracks, and so was comfortable in crossing when I was sure it was safe) and crossed. When I reached the other side I looked back and did indeed see a sign indicating that entry was prohibited, so I imagine this crossing will be the last of its kind for me, especially since I saw a news story later that day that someone was killed by a train in Carkeek Park two days before. About 1000 people are killed in the U.S. by trains every year -- entirely too many. Note to Burlington Northern: Please put up a "Do Not Enter" sign on the west side of this crossing!

This quick hop across the railroad crossing saved me a mile of bicycling, and of course I was able to save myself the trouble of parking and of walking the 1/4 mile from my parking space, but it still took me quite a while longer to take this pair of express buses in getting to work than it takes me to drive. Note to the city of Seattle and King County: Finish the Duwamish and Green River Trails, though I congratulate you for doing as much as you already have on these routes over the last several years.

And finally, a note to my new employer, which will charge me money to use the showers at its facility: charging people extra to commute via bicycle is bad policy!

On the return trip I tried something different: the Sounder commuter train, which I'd never ridden before. There is only one afternoon train per day going northbound to Seattle, but its timing is actually pretty good for me, and with a timely connection to a downtown express bus that would take me the rest of the way home, the return trip promised something that transit has never been able to deliver on for me in 20+ years of commuting: a trip time roughly comparable to driving. It isn't just the Sounder to credit for this unusual competitiveness: the Sounder actually takes just one minute less from the vicinity of my office to downtown than a bus that leaves several minutes earlier, but the combination of its speed on the southern leg of my return trip with the quick connection to an express bus downtown and that express bus' use of express lanes for most of its ride home means there is little time spent waiting at a transfer point, which I maintain can be a deal-killer for too many prospective transit users.

Anyway, I arrived at the Sounder station in the afternoon several minutes early, which turned out to be a good thing because I went straight to the platform hoping to buy a ticket, and then learned that the ticket-vending machines are actually down in the parking lot. So I went back down the ramp to buy a ticket and then hurried up to the platform to catch the train, which was just then pulling in. The cost of the ticket from Tukwila to Seattle was $3.25, about 60% more than the comparable bus ride would have cost, which was disappointing, but even more disappointing was the number of people on board: on the car I boarded there were roughly 95 seats, exactly ten of which were taken. It's no wonder the Sounder costs so much to operate, with that $3.25 fare paying only a tiny fraction of those operating costs! I was heartened to see that 3 of those 10 riders (including me) were bike riders: this car had six slots for bikes, all inside the car itself (unlike most buses which carry bikes on the front of the bus, exposed to the elements), though those spaces are shared with wheelchair users, with wheelchair users having priority. The train had five more cars like this one, too, which I imagine had even fewer people on board.

The train accelerated to about 60 mph for the first few miles of its trip, then slowed down to about 40 at the south end of Boeing Field, stopping entirely to let an Amtrak train pass by in the other direction in the SoDo area, and crawling the last mile or two at 15-20 mph to King Street Station. I counted four at-grade crossings in that area, each one stopping all cross traffic, and now I know why broadcasts of Mariners games feature such frequent train whistles!

I carried my bike to the entrance to King Street station and hustled north to the connection with the express bus that would take me the rest of the way home. It was drizzling by this time. It was only a five-block ride, with a dismount to climb the steep block on wet pavement between 4th and 5th Avenues on James Street, and I beat the bus to the transfer point by about half a minute. I can easily see how this transfer might not work as well in the future as it did on my inaugural ride -- my bus may have been as much as two minutes late --  but I wouldn't have made it in any case if I hadn't been using a bike. There were 20 people on board, with about 25 more empty seats, plus additional room for standees. The bus got onto the freeway a block later and flew up the express lanes to the U-District, made three stops there before getting back into the general purpose lanes for a somewhat slower and more congested two miles to its final exit, and dropped me off a block from my home.

All in all, I felt great about my first winter bike-commute, and I expect to build up to doing this several times a week by summer, with more bicycling and less transit-riding as my level of fitness catches up to where it was last fall. I hope to build up to bicycling the entire 45-mile round trip, but of course a bike trip at a consistent 15-20 mph will take a bit longer than the 60 mph assist I got on board this trip's express buses and/or train. It's still interesting to note the utility of a bike to make the timely connection on this initial commute possible at all. I'm also fortunate that comparatively few people are bike-commuting at this time of year -- I didn't have to compete with other bicyclists for any of the bus bike racks I used.

A bus to Hollywood

I was in Southern California for Christmas week. I flew into Burbank rather than LAX mostly because that's the best fare I could get, but also because LAX is such a zoo, and the last thing I needed was to get hung up on Christmas Eve at friggin' LAX.

Burbank was good. L.A. was good, as least as long as I wasn't driving there. I did meet the usual rich lunatic driver quota in the vicinity of Sunset Boulevard near Santa Monica, but at least this time the lunatic was only impatient, and not to the point of being either homicidal or suicidal, like last trip. Christmas with my wife's family was good, too.

One of the events my wife's family planned was a trip to the El Capitan theater in Hollywood to see the latest Disney film: "Enchanted". I decided to up the ante on the trip a little, announcing that I would be taking the bus with anyone else who wanted to come.

There was no response.

I asked around. "Would you?" I asked my wife's cousin. "The bus?" she asked incredulously.

Several similar responses followed. So I asked my kids, who usually enjoy taking the bus in Seattle. It's kind of an adventure for them, and one I actively encourage, though not on every route, and only during hours when I'm pretty sure they'll have a safe and positive experience. No dice. My two boys wanted to drive with their older cousins, one of whom has been on TV.

Only my five-year-old daughter was game, but by the time we got going it was too late to walk the mile to the bus stop, so my wife dropped us off there on her way. We hoped to be in time to catch the express bus from Santa Monica, but something didn't work out since the first bus we saw five minutes after arriving at the bus stop was a local "2" bus. This could have been unfortunate, as the "302" express was estimated to take 30-60 minutes to go the ~10 miles to Hollywood, and I hadn't scouted the "2" at all, other than to know it was heading the same way.

The people waiting at the bus stop were all Hispanic. The people on the "2" bus were all Hispanic, too. Every one. Note that I'm not saying this in any negative way whatsoever, nor did I feel any different about riding this bus with or without my daughter than I would have in Seattle with a different demographic. Truth is, these were very nice people, one of whom got up and changed seats, unbidden, just so my daughter and I could sit together. The woman in the seat in front of us thought my daughter was sweet, too, though she was very shy about expressing it. She smiled in a delighted way at us every so often, though, so I could tell.

A white man on a bike boarded about the time we were going past UCLA, getting off again several stops later. While he was still aboard, a black man on another bike also got on. The bike racks are just like those in Seattle (the older ones that still function, that is): two bikes fit on each metal rack.

Two things about these buses were different -- and better -- than Seattle's: scrolling monitors naming the next two stops, and TVs. The two TVs were similar to the ones on airline flights, including repackaged regular TV programming, albeit with many programs in Spanish, but also including snippets of a live map showing the bus' current position. This made it much more obvious to me when our stop was nearing, and as a stranger in town I really appreciated it.

Our total time on the bus had been about 45 minutes, with no significant traffic. We had a two-block walk from our stop to the theater. My wife called via cell phone as we walked -- she'd just arrived in line and was hoping and praying that we wouldn't be too late. Apparently, some of her relatives had been laying side bets on how late we would be. The consensus was that we had no chance to get there by showtime. We got there 10 minutes early. Ha!

Even better, we didn't have to hassle with parking, at least not on the way there. My wife parked across the street under the Kodak Theater, where the Oscars usually get awarded these days, and the whole process of finding a parking place and then coming out again is a big part of the reason that she only beat me to the theater by a few minutes.

After the show, we wandered around the Kodak Theater mall, then to the nearby Grauman's Chinese Theater, where a family member's footprints are in the concrete. It's kind of a zoo in that neighborhood, with lots of tourists and a few random people dressed up as celebrities  like Michael Jackson for reasons that I might still not fully understand (I didn't ask), but previous listening to songs like Rodney Crowell's "I Wish It Would Rain" may have at least partially cleared up for me. The upshot was that I really didn't want to take my daughter walking through the side streets of this neighborhood after dark, even for just the two long blocks from Hollywood Blvd to Sunset, so we drove home with the rest of the family. I was fortunate in this respect in that I had this option readily available. I suspect that many people who'd been riding the bus with us earlier in the day did not have this option, bringing me back to the central problem of transit for its ridership everywhere: its safety, convenience, and extended transit time compared to personal transportation options like private automobiles. Yes, I very much enjoyed taking my daughter on the bus to Hollywood, just as I enjoy taking my kids on the bus at home in Seattle, and just as they enjoy in their turn. Every trip can be an adventure!

But, of course, when you have no other transportation options, the potential for every trip to be an adventure can also be a drawback. I've had buses break down while I was riding them, or on which someone had a medical emergency, not often but still more frequently than any car I've ever driven, including some real beaters shortly after I graduated from college. I've also driven past somewhat more buses that had either broken down, or were surrounded by police cruisers with lights flashing, or which got stuck on slippery roads, and I've been on several buses so full that they drove right on past waiting groups that wanted to board. And, of course, transit almost invariably takes longer than driving, at least in the major cities of the western U.S., including Seattle and Los Angeles, though some of that time can be reclaimed by doing other work on the bus, or reading or writing, assuming a seat is available, which is another significant uncertainty at peak travel times.

All of these sorts of uncertainties and inconveniences work together to discourage many people from using public transit who might do so otherwise. If public transit ridership is to significantly increase during these times of skyrocketing energy costs and global warming, one thing needed is public transit that is faster, safer, more convenient, more immune to congestion, and capable of carrying volumes of passengers that are at least as high as the options we have available to us now, as well as being at least as energy-efficient as the transit options being used now, and not costing so much that they break the regional bank. This is one reason I'm so supportive of emerging public transit technology like Personal Rapid Transit, which is being built in London and outside Stockholm right now, with the first system scheduled to come online in Spring, 2009, with many more cities in the world anxious to implement it once they're convinced that it's viable, which it certainly appears to be.

The South Lake Union Streetcar, and shopping downtown

I took my family to ride the South Lake Union Trolley on the weekend before Christmas. My wife wanted to shop downtown, and we both wanted to bring the kids to see the gingerbread houses at the Sheraton. We ran some errands along the way and then drove to a parking lot in front of the Bluwater -- the trolley would add a bit of free family fun for the holidays (they started charging for the ride this month).

As we got out of the car, the trolley reached the end of the line nearby, so we all took off running after it, with me carrying my two-year-old son. The streetcar only stopped for a few seconds at the terminus, so we had to run quite a bit further than we'd anticipated, and arrived somewhat more red-cheeked than the December weather alone would've accounted for. It turns out that the north end of the line isn't actually a stop; the stop is actually several dozen yards up the line, but the streetcar doesn't move particularly fast (the driver might've seen us and waited the extra half-minute for us to catch up, too), so we were able to climb on. It started up the line as soon as we were aboard.

The first thing we noticed was the noticeable jolt the streetcar started up with. This turned out to be typical -- pretty much every time the streetcar started up, it did so with a more pronounced jerk than most buses I've ever ridden. The ride was otherwise very smooth, however. Not long after we started, my eight-year-old son turned to me and made the first of that day's out-of-the-mouths-of-babes pronouncements: he asked "how is this different from a bus?" I had to laugh, because of course the streetcar isn't really much different from a hugely expensive, too-infrequent bus (which also presents an undue hazard to bicyclists, several of whom have been injured while trying to negotiate its tracks already), though the infrequency wouldn't become fully clear until the return trip. I also noticed that the shelters at the stops are too small, especially in the rain: there isn't enough room for everyone to stand under them, even if they are nice to look at.

The ride to Westlake took about 12-13 minutes and the seats filled up to standing-room-only quickly, though it never got packed. The Westlake terminus is right under the monorail line, and the blue train passed overhead just as we disembarked, which I thought was charming. I asked the kids to count the number of different forms of transportation they saw, and they reached 10 within a couple minutes: streetcar, monorail, bus, walking, taxi, stroller, wheelchair, bicycle, a Segway(!), a horse-drawn carriage, plus several more in the toy train window at Macy's.

We stopped inside Nordstrom or Macy's or someplace, then went on to the Sheraton before making our way back to Westlake Center for lunch. We hung out at the monorail station on its third floor for several minutes in hopes of seeing a train pull in while waiting for elevator space to bring our stroller downstairs (there is far too little elevator space for that monorail!), but missed out. Returning on the streetcar required a longer wait than we expected: it didn't start up until about five minutes after we got on. My older son asked "when's it going to start?" -- another of those from-the-mouths-of-babes moments I mentioned -- while hanging from an overhead bar, as he wanted to experience that startup jerk while suspended from that bar. Eventually, it did start up, and I discovered that one of its drivers was in the car with us. It was running with all sorts of glitches, apparently, including one this trip where stops were being indicated in a confusing manner: apparently there was an operator error using the onboard software (which sounded really poor), so each stop it announced was actually one further stop down the line. I didn't find the onboard displays particularly helpful even before this issue cropped up, by the way. That driver told me that the startup jerk is normal, actually, saying that the drivers can't really feel it, even if the passengers clearly do. He also gave me the lowdown on why the onboard status board wasn't working right.

Turns out the status board (and the lack of a stop at the north terminus) fooled us, too -- we stayed on board (along with several other people) at the last stop, then once the change in direction let us know, we told the extra driver that we'd missed our stop. But the trolley didn't stop there again, as we'd neglected to hit the "stop requested" signal, so we ended up getting off at the next stop and having to walk about four times as far as we should have. We weren't in a hurry and were in adventure mode anyway, but I can see how this arrangement could be a major annoyance to some. Hopefully they get the operators trained to configure the onboard information system better, and do a better job of indicating when the streetcar has reached the north end of the line.

Bottom line, I hope the streetcar finds a larger ridership than a bus in the same alignment would: so much more was spent on it than would have been spent on buses doing the same thing (even more frequently!) that if streetcar systems are to have a future in the Puget Sound region, they'd better be able to justify that additional cost with higher ridership, and I would hate to think that so much money was just wasted on this system for nothing.