Transiting Publicly

My trip to Seattle this weekend was my third long trip on Pugetopolis Public Transit, the four (that I know of so far) transit systems that serve the Olympia-Seattle and beyond area. Maggie figured out how to get to Sea-Tac airport for three bucks in about the same time—two hours—as the $43 shared ride shuttle from Olympia. I made the bus run on both ends of my last Phoenix trip and it went like clockwork. After that, it wasn’t hard to find connections to Seattle. Round trip from Olympia is $7 per head. Travel time is five hours total, maybe two hours more than driving. Fuel for my truck round trip would run $24 and parking is another five to ten bucks downtown so public transit is a lower cost option than my vehicle. (Unless I’m traveling or hauling, I don’t think the Red Truck will see much of Seattle.) If three of us carpool in my friend’s sedan and can park free (not downtown any time), the cost is about even and we save a couple hours.

Public transit worked well for Maggie and me this weekend. Since we were planning to attend Northwest Winter Soldier on Saturday and she was flying to Seattle on Friday, we decided to meet there and stay at the Green Tortoise Hostel rather than drive back and forth. Maggie came to downtown Seattle on a King County Metro bus from the airport. I came in from Olympia via Inter City Transit and Sound Transit. The trip from Olympia can be tedious, especially waiting yet again while the driver explains the fare system to some one who cannot or will not understand. It’s much less private; you pretty much can’t help but meet people of various circumstances. It’s easy enough for me to pass the time, though. I can either read or just zone out if I don’t want to engage other passengers.

Not having a vehicle in Seattle was very liberating. We walked everywhere we needed to be, which consisted of Town Hall and the hostel. The distance was about a half mile, mostly straight up. We only had to make that climb once. Otherwise we wandered the Pike Street and Pike Place Market area adjacent to the hostel. The area was bustling throughout our stay. Saturday and Sunday were a market festival of some sort which may have brought even more people than normal. Hard to tell. Lots of folks were about, especially late Saturday afternoon when our boisterous contingent of Northwest Winter Soldiers and supporters marched through the middle of it all.

This was my second trip to Seattle for an event. I went last month to see Danny Schmidt perform for the Seattle Folklore Society at the Phinney Neighborhood Center. The trip also involved broadcasting About Face from the studio of an affiliate station in Seattle, which was also pretty cool. I traveled with a friend in his sedan and no parking fees were involved so it went pretty slick. I was glad not to be making that 2.5 hour trip back to Olympia on the last bus out of Seattle at 11:00 pm.

So I have now been to the big city and not only survived but enjoyed the visits. Still, I like coming back to Olympia. The scale and pace of life here are much more tolerable. Far fewer people and cars. Even better, I can get by without driving much at all. I can typically go for days without even getting in my truck; I work at home and walk or ride my bike on most errands. In the preceding week, I drove maybe 50 miles, including one 15 mile round trip. In these days of four dollar gasoline, I seem to be well positioned to do with far less.