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First, let me say that after months trying to add credit to my ORCA card, much of it the fault of that system, I was finally successful thanks to some help from ORCA telephone support when all other forms of advertised support had failed, where I spoke with an someone who said she gets calls like mine all the time. Many thanks to her not only for applying the credit that their system recognized, but also the earlier credit that had been invisible to them, even though they charged my credit card. See earlier chapters in my overlong saga here:
ORCA
ORCA again
ORCA, Part 3
ORCA, Part 4
The fix finally happened a few months ago, and I've been using my ORCA card largely without trouble since then. I sincerely hope that disappearing credit purchases like mine are an ORCA card issue of the past, and that people don't continue to see them going forward!
However, ORCA card usage is still not entirely smooth sailing. I spent most of July on vacation, taking three separate long trips, two of which had transit components, one of them significant. More on that in a later post. On two of those trips, I took a bus/light rail combo to Sea-Tac Airport on my way out of town. Both times I saw new and unexpected behavior from light rail and from my ORCA card.
In a previous post I wrote that every trip I've taken on light rail I've seen transit cops go through the train and verify that every passenger had paid for their trip. Well, on one early-morning trip to the airport last month, that didn't happen. I paid for our whole family to get on a bus to downtown using my ORCA card, with the bus driver manually indicating to his console that I was using it to pay for multiple people. But there were no transit cops on the light rail trip from downtown to the airport. No big deal, right?
Except that on my next trip on light rail to the airport, I learned something else interesting. I took a bus to downtown with my son, paying for both of us with my ORCA card. And then on the light rail train from downtown to the airport, when a security cop took my card to verify that we'd paid for that trip, he told me that ORCA cards can't accommodate transfers on trips made by additional people. It recognized my personal transfer just fine, but apparently I was supposed to pay for my son's trip on light rail separately, even though it should have been a simple, no-additional-fare transfer for him as well as for me.
Major hole in the ORCA system here, it seems like.
On the return, my wife used my ORCA card to pay for her trip from the airport to downtown on light rail, knowing from me that she needed to buy separate tickets for the kids, which I believe were recognized as transfer slips by the King County Metro bus driver who drove her the rest of the way home from downtown.
On Bike-To-Work Day last month I biked to work and most of the way back. I would've biked the entire 45-mile round trip except that I got a flat tire about halfway to work, which made me late, which made me stay later at the office, which made me have to piggyback on a bus for part of the way home at an hour early enough for our family's evening plans to stay on track.
Otherwise, Bike-To-Work Day was as fun as it is every year, though a bit chillier and wetter. I stopped at three commute stations along the way and got some of the usual swag and registered for the usual giveaways that I won't win. I missed Mayor McGinn's ride to downtown from the Fremont Bridge by a few minutes, but no big deal -- at that point I still had a long way to ride and more swag to pick up along the way.
My flat was due to a tire failure; a belt in my tire snapped, with one end of a metal wire then protruding into the tube and the other out through the tire. I had a patch kit and all the tools I would've needed to patch the tube, but I went flat right at the Tukwila Park and Ride, and decided the better course was to ride the bus from there to within half a mile of my office, and in the afternoon see about heading to REI for replacement items -- tube and tire. Which made me late getting home, as previously mentioned. Not the best Bike-To-Work Day I've had, but not too bad. I ended up riding my bike about 27 miles on my commute that day.
The following Monday I biked to work again, on my road bike this time, and sure enough I got another flat. Unfortunately I left my frame pump on the other bike, and so I had to rely on the kindness of strangers to finish my morning commute. Fortunately this was not in short supply, and not long after I started taking my bike apart in some unknown company's parking lot right off the sidewalk, a woman drove in, asked if I needed help, and when I said I needed a pump, she brought me inside and introduced me to another bicyclist there who had one. Turns out the unknown company was a Parks & Recreation office, which seemed highly appropriate. Many thanks again to all our Parks & Rec employees and all the great work they do!
2-3 miles further down the road in South Park I had one of the closest calls I've ever had on a bike. I was cruising along a wide, quiet residential street when a medium commercial truck pulled up to an intersection a little ahead of me -- he had a stop sign and I didn't. The driver didn't see me and pulled out to make a left turn in front of me. I hit the brakes immediately and started a guttural shout that began rising in pitch: "aaaaAAHHHH!"
About the time I reached the front of his vehicle, dodging into the oncoming lane to postpone it the collision, I'd slowed to walking speed but the driver would've hit me if he hadn't finally seen me or heard me, or used whatever sense he finally used to tip himself off to my presence. I stopped a car length away, seething. The driver seemed amused, sharing grins with his passenger. "I didn't see you, sorry," he said.
I could've given him an earful at this point, telling him to watch for all road users and not just the ones that could damage his truck or threaten his own life, but said only "Be careful." And I hope he does.
Another few miles down the road, along the Green River Trail in Tukwila, approaching the same Park & Ride where I'd gotten my flat the previous work day, there was a Parks & Rec truck sitting in the middle of the trail, taking up nearly the entire path. As I wasn't able to see anyone and there was space behind the truck for someone to pop out, I dismounted and walked the bike past it. Sure enough, the driver was behind it. He apologized, pointing to a graffiti-ed warning sign on a pole. "Sorry about that," he said, meaning he was sorry for taking up the whole trail with his truck.
"No problem," I said. "Have a great week." And I hope he did.
A couple things that haven't yet been mentioned in my saga of trying to get an ORCA card to work (See Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3 for previous history):
1. I lost the card for more than a month. It was right after I purchased my second credit for it back in February. I did it from my laptop in bed just before going to sleep, and the next time I went looking for the card a couple days later, I couldn't find it. The card showed up in April on my desk. I think my wife found it someplace and moved it there, knowing I was looking for it. I still don't know where she found it.
This complicated my attempts to get resolution on having made this $20 credit purchase, which at that time appeared as "pending" on the ORCA card website, to say nothing of the $15 I'd spent which had never been acknowledged at all.
2. My first attempt to resolve this situation was via e-mail, back in early March (or maybe even February). I laid out the situation in brief, including the fact that the card had gone missing, and requested that the credits be applied to one of the other two ORCA cards we had and which appeared on our online account. The e-mailed response was simple and sunny: tap the card and all will be well. However, since we couldn't even find the card at that point, this response was no help at all. A polite request for further guidance to this "help" e-mail was never answered.
Needless to say, after trying three different methods to try and get resolution on this issue by mid-April (e-mail, talking with a representative at the Downtown Seattle Transit Tunnel's Westlake Station, and on hold for 15 minutes on the telephone), all of them fruitless, I was getting quite annoyed.
In my bike commutes over the past several weeks I've noticed something I hadn't really encountered since last fall: headwinds. I've observed the typical warm-weather wind pattern in the Puget Sound region is for winds from the south or southwest in the morning, shifting to winds from the north or northwest in the evening. Since my current office is south of my home (about a 45 mile round trip), what this means for me on a typical warm-weather day is headwinds on both legs of my bike commute. Usually these are not particularly significant (I only really notice when sustained winds are more than 10 mph and/or have higher gusts), but they certainly don't make bike commuting easier.
Well, for the past few weeks, and after six months without significant wind on the days I've bike commuted (usually 1-3 times per week -- I also telecommute twice a week), the typical Puget Sound warm-weather pattern seems to have returned. The first time I noticed this was about three weeks ago. I took a bus downtown, then biked from there to my office in Tukwila. For most of that bike ride I had to drop a gear because of the persistent headwinds, and along one stretch alongside Highway 99 south of South Park, I had to drop two gears.
Two weeks ago I biked the entire distance to my office and arrived pretty well spent from the relentless headwinds. And Monday, just as I started climbing the Dexter Hill southbound from the Fremont Bridge towards downtown Seattle, on a day when windstorms littered my route with tree branches and leaves and caused a lot more mayhem elsewhere in the region, a gust hit and forced me to drop a gear, which I never was able to make up. I felt almost as out of shape as I had been back in January.
On the other hand, maybe my commuter bike's semiannual tuneup is overdue, or maybe I really am getting too old for this. I will have to try breaking out my road bike later this week to see how much it helps -- I haven't ridden the road rocket since about October.
One fun note about that first windy bike/bus commute three weeks ago: at the stop after I boarded my morning bus to downtown, new Seattle Mayor Mike McGinn boarded too, loading his bike behind mine on the bus' bike rack. He greeted me by name when I gave him a wave hello -- we know each other from our intersecting neighborhood work on issues of bicyclist and pedestrian safety and urban planning over the past few years, but I hadn't seen him since before last summer's primary election when I was working on his campaign. It was nice to see him again. No one else on the bus seemed to recognize him, which surprised me.
A week ago Friday, on another bike/bus commute, I biked downtown from my home in Greenwood, went downstairs to the Downtown Seattle Transit Tunnel's Westlake Station, had a nice chat with Tito the Tunnel Flautist, even buying a copy of his new CD, then descending further to the ORCA Service Center to see if I could get them to apply the $35 in charges I'd added to my ORCA card this year, none of which has appeared on the card to date. (See Part 1 and Part 2 of this developing saga for details on what came before.)
The woman behind the window seemed a little nervous about my reaction. I can understand why, as I imagine she's been yelled at before by people in my situation -- probably more than once -- because of the appalling hoops that ORCA customers must jump through in order to get their charges applied, but I'm a bit more civilized than that -- it's not her fault that her employer's service system is FUBAR. Basically, what I learned was partly what I already knew, and partly that the ORCA infrastructure is even more screwed up than I'd realized. No, she couldn't apply the charges I'd purchased for my card. I would have to call their service center for that. Yes, she found one of the two purchases I'd made in their records, but not the other one. Yes, both purchases were charged to me by my credit card company, but ORCA will not recognize one of them, though I will be following up on this. This much I hadn't known before.
What I did already know (or thought I knew) was that I need to "tap" my card in order for the purchases I'd made to be applied. Unfortunately, when I did so later that day, even the purchase they acknowledged was not applied.
Last Monday morning I got on the phone with their service center. And I stayed on the phone -- on hold -- for about 15 minutes before finally hearing a message that call volumes were unusually high. Until I had to hang up or miss my Monday morning bus.
To be continued in a Part 4, I guess ...
I have to say, since about a month ago I've noticed that Central Link light rail ridership seems to be up from its dismal 2009 numbers. The last 7-8 times I've seen a southbound train go by from stations in the downtown Seattle transit tunnel, they've seemed to be carrying about twice as many riders as I was counting last year, or even in January. Yesterday morning the one train that went past me while I was waiting for my bus to Tukwila had 33 riders on board. This isn't nearly as many as were on the articulated bus that brought me downtown in the first place, which was carrying about 50 passengers with hardly a single seat free, much less the articulated bus that brought me home from downtown that evening, which had 65-70 people on board, about 10 of them standing, but it's a nice improvement nonetheless.
This is as expected, of course, now that the King County Metro #194 has been canceled; people who used to take it to the airport now have to take light rail instead even though it's several minutes slower and drops you off twice as far from the nearest terminal. I will miss that #194. But at least King County Metro can save a little money by not having to operate it any more.
I forgot my bike helmet yesterday morning. Caught my bus to downtown with half a minute to spare, but I'd hurried getting out of the house, and in my haste forgot about three things that would make for a much more comfortable bike ride: my helmet, my fingerless gel gloves, and an unmentionable. Once on the bus but while still digging for change to pay for it (the bus was already moving towards the next stop), I bonked my head on the high handrail, which immediately brought to mind the fact that I was not wearing a helmet.
So at the next stop, transfer slip already in hand after paying for it, I dismounted my bike from the bus, rode the 3 blocks home, and got all the stuff I'd forgotten earlier.
As a bike commuter for the past 25 years, even though I've never had a significant accident during that time, I can't say enough good stuff about bike helmets. As a little background, there's some debate within the bicyclist community about whether bike helmets are a good idea. The argument against requiring wearing bike helmets is, as near as I can puzzle it out, that in communities where bike helmets are not required, and are in fact often not worn, that bicyclists are actually safer than they are where they are required. The cost of a helmet is also characterized as a barrier for some who would otherwise bike.
There is some merit to these arguments, of course, and I'm doubtless not relating all of their subtlety (if not entirely omitting other arguments against requiring bike helmets), but the fact of the matter is that you are dramatically safer from head injury -- especially catastrophic head injuries -- while wearing a bike helmet. Which is good enough reason for me. Sure, it would be great to be able to live in a city where drivers are aware enough of bicyclists, and where bicyclists have safe enough bike facilities (and ride safely on them!), that the danger of such a head injury is so small as to make bike helmets unnecessary. But we don't live in such a community, however much progress we might be making in the right direction … the greatest threat to adult bicyclists in Seattle, as it is most everywhere else in the United States, is from drivers who don't see them.
Wear your bike helmets, people!
Once back on the road, I biked towards downtown along the Greenwood/Phinney/Fremont corridor towards the Fremont Bridge. As I rode south past N 80th Street, I spied a King County Metro #5 bus almost half a mile ahead, and thought how nice it would be to put my already-purchased bus transfer slip to good use by overhauling that bus sometime before it made its turn onto Aurora Ave, then riding it the rest of the way downtown -- I might be able to shave 5-10 minutes from my commute by doing so. At that point, my bike ride was mostly flat, and I can almost always outrun a local bus on the flat, much less downhill, even though it has a higher top speed than I do, simply because it has to make all those stops.
Sure enough, I'd nearly caught that bus just after it crossed the N 46th Street arterial, but unfortunately there was a red light between it and me, so it receded into the distance again. The green light came a minute later, and I caught the bus again just as it was turning from N 43rd Street onto Fremont Ave N. Then I passed it as it stopped a little ways down that hill, and pulled into its last stop before it entered the Aurora Ave expressway. So I got to ride a #5 bus to downtown after all, then biked from its stop on Wall Street to Westlake Plaza. At Westlake, a pedestrian asked if I was cold, as I was wearing my usual swim trunks and T-shirt (plus a thin day-glo vest), but I hadn't thought about the temperature at all, and found that I wasn't cold. Then down the first set of stairs where I normally see Tito the tunnel flautist (who has a new CD out!) there was a fellow with a blind man's cane and a guitar, playing a very credible Ray Charles blues-y version of "Mamas Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up To Be Cowboys", which made me smile so I dropped a buck into his guitar case. Then when I got to the platform, my connecting bus was just pulling in. It ended up being a great morning commute -- this is just not the sort of great experience I get while driving!
It was considerably colder on the ride home, but I still biked about 10 miles of my return commute even though I was still wearing just swim trunks and a t-shirt with a thin nylon dayglo-vest over it. But my experience with the #5 bus getting home was the flip side to the excellent timing I'd enjoyed in the morning; as I was passing that #5 bus at its last stop in Belltown it abruptly pulled out alongside me and I came to a screeching halt to avoid a collision -- it had not signaled its intent to merge back into traffic until the very moment it began moving. I sat behind it as it waited to turn right onto Battery Street and then again at its next stoplight, but there was only one person waiting to get on at its next stop just before Denny, and as I rode up on the sidewalk alongside, it took off without me. So I ended up biking the rest of the way home, which I hadn't really wanted to do in this cold while wearing as little as I was. I could see that it had even snowed that day along my route, though that snow hadn't stuck. Ah well, the hill-climbing did me good (and kept me warm!).
