I really don’t like bringing my bicycle to downtown Seattle on the bus. I don’t carry much of a lock on my bike, but I do have a lot of other good, easy to steal “stuff” hanging off, such as lights, bike bags and the wheels themselves. I also wouldn't want to leave my bike parked all day (in the rain or sun) in a bike rack at a park & ride. Yet the nearest commuter bus stop is 2 miles from my house – 10 minutes by bike, 40 minutes by foot, a lot of unnecessary pollution and driving by car. The solution? A box at the park & ride that fits bikes called a “bike locker.”
Community Transit manages 92 bike lockers at 15 park & rides around Snohomish County. Those same lots have 6,458 car parking spaces. Given that bicyclists make up less than 2 percent of our passengers overall (see Part I), that might be about right. But the most popular places to park a car are also the most popular places to park a bike: Lynnwood Transit Center and Ash Way Park & Ride have (years) long waiting lists of people hoping to get a bike locker.
The good news for Lynnwood is that Sound Transit (locker purchaser) is working with Community Transit (locker manager) to place 10 more locker spaces near the commuter bus bays. I’m not sure of the timeline, but I’m excited.
Both agencies install bike lockers at new facilities as a matter of course. But we’ve been slower to respond to demands at existing park & rides.
About 70 percent of Community Transit’s bike lockers are currently leased. Unlike a car parking spot, a bike locker is “yours” for the length of your contract. That’s why some agencies charge a small fee for lockers – something Community Transit is also considering.
The next evolution in bike-transit technology is easy to install, easy to administer “pay per use” lockers. They exist, but have not yet been tried in the Puget Sound region (see where some are in use). King County Metro Transit plans to test on-demand lockers next year. Another way to expand capacity is a simple bike cage or room, a concept in use for employees at the Snohomish County Campus.
A more sophisticated version is the Bike Port in downtown Seattle – that’s one place down there where I have left my bicycle without trepidation.
Friday, August 13, 2010
Tuesday, August 10, 2010
For emergency transportation, who do you call?
The terrible fire at the Lynnview Apartments in Lynnwood was all over the news last night. Everyone who lived there lost their homes – and had to find a place to sleep after watching their belongings burn. The Red Cross arranged for a church nearby to act as a shelter. Firefighters needed help getting people there.
Who did they call? Community Transit. We sent two buses to the scene and transported 30 people to the Trinity Lutheran Church. Some families will be staying there until other accommodations can be arranged.
The Lynnview Apartments are just blocks away from the Lynnwood Transit Center, and I expect many of the residents are regular Community Transit riders. I’m glad we could help them last night. If you’d like to help as well, consider a donation to the local Red Cross.
Who did they call? Community Transit. We sent two buses to the scene and transported 30 people to the Trinity Lutheran Church. Some families will be staying there until other accommodations can be arranged.
The Lynnview Apartments are just blocks away from the Lynnwood Transit Center, and I expect many of the residents are regular Community Transit riders. I’m glad we could help them last night. If you’d like to help as well, consider a donation to the local Red Cross.
Friday, August 6, 2010
Proposed 2011 service changes impact south county
Affected Routes include Routes 110, 112, 116, 130, 408, 413, 414, 415, 416 and 477
Community Transit is seeking public input on several proposed service changes that would take effect in 2011.
The proposed changes affect service in south Snohomish County to coincide with two new Sound Transit projects on the Edmonds waterfront and at the Mountlake Terrace Transit Center.
With Community Transit sales tax income still low, the agency does not plan to restore Sunday or major holiday bus service in 2011.
Mountlake Terrace Transit Center
In February 2011, Sound Transit is scheduled to open the Mountlake Terrace Freeway Station on I-5. This will add bi-directional Sound Transit bus service to the Mountlake Terrace Transit Center and will increase the number of bus trips at the transit center from 62 to 201.
Community Transit is proposing to move its downtown Seattle commuter service through Mountlake Terrace to the freeway station and to realign local service on city streets. With these changes, residents of Mountlake Terrace and surrounding communities will have more transit options.
A few of the proposals have multiple options and we are asking for public input to help determine which options are selected by the board of directors.
Edmonds Station
Sound Transit’s new improved Edmonds Station is scheduled to open in mid-2011 and will provide an easy location to transfer between Community Transit bus, Sounder rail and Washington State Ferries service. When Edmonds Station opens, Community Transit proposes to move most of its service in that area to new bus stops east of the railroad tracks, eliminating potential delays and facilitating transfers to Sounder trains.
Details on the various route proposals are available online and in a brochure that will be placed on buses the week of Aug. 16. Public comment on these proposals will be accepted through September 6.
A public hearing before the Community Transit Board of Directors will take place at 3 p.m. September 2 at the Community Transit Board Room, 7100 Hardeson Rd., Everett (accessed by Everett Transit Route 8).
A community meeting will take place at the Mountlake Terrace Library (23300 58th Ave. W., accessed by Routes 112 and 130) on Thursday, Aug. 19 from 5-7 p.m. In addition, staff will be at park & rides and will ride on affected routes to help get the word out and solicit feedback.
Comments also will be accepted
via email: 2011changes@commtrans.org
via regular mail: Community Transit Service Change, 7100 Hardeson Road, Everett, WA 98203
via phone: (425) 353-7433
Community Transit is seeking public input on several proposed service changes that would take effect in 2011.
The proposed changes affect service in south Snohomish County to coincide with two new Sound Transit projects on the Edmonds waterfront and at the Mountlake Terrace Transit Center.
With Community Transit sales tax income still low, the agency does not plan to restore Sunday or major holiday bus service in 2011.
Mountlake Terrace Transit Center
In February 2011, Sound Transit is scheduled to open the Mountlake Terrace Freeway Station on I-5. This will add bi-directional Sound Transit bus service to the Mountlake Terrace Transit Center and will increase the number of bus trips at the transit center from 62 to 201.
Community Transit is proposing to move its downtown Seattle commuter service through Mountlake Terrace to the freeway station and to realign local service on city streets. With these changes, residents of Mountlake Terrace and surrounding communities will have more transit options.
A few of the proposals have multiple options and we are asking for public input to help determine which options are selected by the board of directors.
Edmonds Station
Sound Transit’s new improved Edmonds Station is scheduled to open in mid-2011 and will provide an easy location to transfer between Community Transit bus, Sounder rail and Washington State Ferries service. When Edmonds Station opens, Community Transit proposes to move most of its service in that area to new bus stops east of the railroad tracks, eliminating potential delays and facilitating transfers to Sounder trains.
Details on the various route proposals are available online and in a brochure that will be placed on buses the week of Aug. 16. Public comment on these proposals will be accepted through September 6.
A public hearing before the Community Transit Board of Directors will take place at 3 p.m. September 2 at the Community Transit Board Room, 7100 Hardeson Rd., Everett (accessed by Everett Transit Route 8).
A community meeting will take place at the Mountlake Terrace Library (23300 58th Ave. W., accessed by Routes 112 and 130) on Thursday, Aug. 19 from 5-7 p.m. In addition, staff will be at park & rides and will ride on affected routes to help get the word out and solicit feedback.
Comments also will be accepted
via email: 2011changes@commtrans.org
via regular mail: Community Transit Service Change, 7100 Hardeson Road, Everett, WA 98203
via phone: (425) 353-7433
Wednesday, July 28, 2010
Bikes and Buses, Part 1: Bike Racks
If you travel by bike and bus, you know what it means to “get bumped.” That’s what happens when you’re waiting at the bus stop with everybody else, the bus arrives with a full bike rack, and everybody gets on board but you. You are left standing there with your bike waiting for the next bus or wishing you’d just ridden home to begin with.
This doesn’t happen to me as much as it used to, thanks to Community Transit’s policy to allow bikes inside the bus if it is not too crowded. In the past week I have had my bike both inside and outside of buses. It is not as care-free to hold your bike inside a bus as to have it in a rack, but it is far better than wondering if you’re going to get to work in the morning.
If you’d like to see how easy it is to use a bike rack, the fun way, see this bike rack rap. Most of Community Transit’s racks work just like this (without the dancing).
Community Transit has had bike racks on all of our buses since 1996, and people have grown to rely upon them. Passengers with bikes make up about 1.3 percent of our boardings overall, but some routes have much higher usage.
This doesn’t happen to me as much as it used to, thanks to Community Transit’s policy to allow bikes inside the bus if it is not too crowded. In the past week I have had my bike both inside and outside of buses. It is not as care-free to hold your bike inside a bus as to have it in a rack, but it is far better than wondering if you’re going to get to work in the morning.
If you’d like to see how easy it is to use a bike rack, the fun way, see this bike rack rap. Most of Community Transit’s racks work just like this (without the dancing).
Community Transit has had bike racks on all of our buses since 1996, and people have grown to rely upon them. Passengers with bikes make up about 1.3 percent of our boardings overall, but some routes have much higher usage.
- We had six bikes on a Swift bus recently out of 34 passengers.
- Routes 201/202 and Route 275 had 4.5 percent of customers board with bikes in April.
- My former Route 207 had 9 percent of boardings with bikes that month.
Friday, July 16, 2010
Transit Advertising Helps with Bottom Line
Community Transit’s Swift bus rapid transit vehicles are intentionally different from the rest of our fleet. They are longer than most buses (62 vs. 60 feet), quieter because they are hybrid electric and they have a unique graphic design.
That carefully-crafted look changed a little this month with the advent of advertising on Swift. We kept Swift vehicles free of ads for the first six months to help people recognize our new service. That moratorium is over, and 10 of 15 Swift buses are available for advertising, both outside and in. So far, Titan Outdoor has placed ads on four Swift buses.
Titan just won Community Transit’s bus ad contract this spring. They are excited about reaching new markets in Snohomish County, and we are hopeful of increasing the revenue we get to help support our service. Ads on Swift buses will be very targeted, for instance, since Swift travels the Highway 99 corridor from 5 a.m. to midnight six days a week. With more than 75,000 residents and 30,000 jobs with 1/4 mile of Highway 99, that’s a good place to be.
Our Double Tall buses, expected to hit the streets this fall, will also become rolling billboards. They provide extra value to advertisers because they provide an especially large canvas, so to speak, and those images will roll through Seattle and up and down I-5 easily seen above traffic.
Bus advertising done right can be very striking and memorable. I especially like ads designed specifically for their application on transit vehicles – like the one that showed a smoker’s mouth positioned around the bus tailpipe. A more pleasant image was the “Lifesaver bus” on articulated coaches. Someone on Facebook recently recalled Community Transit’s blue Orca Run bus that served Tulalip as part of a Route 222 promotion in 2003. Those community-themed bus wraps wore out years ago, but they were fun while they lasted.
Bottom line – we’re hoping transit advertising can make a difference in our bottom line, as it does for other agencies. With these new additions to our fleet on top of existing ad opportunities, our contract with Titan could provide us with an estimated $2.4 million in revenue over the next three years.
Titan just won Community Transit’s bus ad contract this spring. They are excited about reaching new markets in Snohomish County, and we are hopeful of increasing the revenue we get to help support our service. Ads on Swift buses will be very targeted, for instance, since Swift travels the Highway 99 corridor from 5 a.m. to midnight six days a week. With more than 75,000 residents and 30,000 jobs with 1/4 mile of Highway 99, that’s a good place to be.
Our Double Tall buses, expected to hit the streets this fall, will also become rolling billboards. They provide extra value to advertisers because they provide an especially large canvas, so to speak, and those images will roll through Seattle and up and down I-5 easily seen above traffic.
Bottom line – we’re hoping transit advertising can make a difference in our bottom line, as it does for other agencies. With these new additions to our fleet on top of existing ad opportunities, our contract with Titan could provide us with an estimated $2.4 million in revenue over the next three years.
Thursday, July 8, 2010
Facebook community pages confuse Community Transit community. Confused?
Fans of our page on Facebook may have noticed other Community Transit-ish pages pop up within the past couple of months. It's not just Community Transit -- businesses from Coca-Cola to colleges face these new doppelgangers on the social networking site.
Back in April, Facebook launched a new "community page" structure. Now, when a user's info section lists an employer, a favorite band, or even a general activity like hiking, these listings link to separate community pages for each topic. These community pages draw their information from Wikipedia, as well as what other Facebook users are saying about that specific topic. So in addition to our official Facebook page, there are now two of these community pages listed for Community Transit. We didn't create and don't operate these other pages, which causes some confusion for our audience.
We created our Facebook page in October 2008, to connect with our customers and share information with them. Unfortunately, these new community pages don't offer any interaction opportunities for the brands they appear to represent. Just like here on our blog, our official Facebook page has a comment policy to ensure that posts follow basic civility. But many posts that show up on these community pages don't fit our official page's please-keep-it-nice policy, and we can't moderate because we don't own these pages.
Other organizations are experiencing the same frustration over community pages diluting their presence on Facebook and confusing their fans. Facebook indicates that their eventual goal is to merge these community pages with "official" pages, but to date we haven't seen that happen with ours. As of July 2, Facebook finally added some fine print to the bottom of the community pages that reads "Community Pages are not affiliated with, or endorsed by, anyone associated with the topic."
What we'd like you to know:
If you're interested in connecting with us on Facebook, we're featured at www.facebook.com/communitytransit. If you're not sure which page you're on, check the URL or look for our info box on the left side that welcomes you to the official Community Transit page on Facebook.
Community Transit doesn't endorse or operate any other pages on Facebook.
Just a tip on personal Facebook use: take a minute to review your privacy settings -- allowing "everyone" to see your status updates and wall posts means that what you post on your own profile (or to your friends) could be featured on any community page without your knowledge. If you don't want that to happen, keep your settings on "friends only," at a minimum.
Friday, July 2, 2010
Where's Oxy Gene?
By Kristin Kinnamon
Community Transit’s super hero Oxy Gene has been a fixture at summer parades and festivals for the past decade. With his trademark greeting of “Hello, good people,” he’s been an ambassador for “truth, justice and really clean air.”
However, no Sunday service also means no Sunday or holiday parades or events for Oxy Gene. On other days of the week, Oxy will still represent Community Transit, but there will be no buses in his entourage due to the expense.
There is a silver lining for Oxy Gene, who usually marches in at least two parades on the Fourth of July. “Isn’t that the first time in 10 years you’ve had a hot dog without your suit on? “ his supermom asked.
Oxy Gene will manage to keep busy this summer teaching day camp kids how to ride the bus, participating in a Mill Creek kids fun run to raise money for Haitian relief (Aug. 14) and, of course, being a judge at the Taste of Edmonds. “It’s glove-lickin’ good,” he said of the food there.
Where else might you find Oxy this summer?
July 27 – Edmonds Night Out Against Crime
August 3 – National Night Out Against Crime, Mukilteo YMCA and McCollum Park
August 13 – Taste of Edmonds (noon tasting)
August 28 - Monroe Fair Days Parade
September 11– Mukilteo Lighthouse Festival Parade
Community Transit’s super hero Oxy Gene has been a fixture at summer parades and festivals for the past decade. With his trademark greeting of “Hello, good people,” he’s been an ambassador for “truth, justice and really clean air.”
However, no Sunday service also means no Sunday or holiday parades or events for Oxy Gene. On other days of the week, Oxy will still represent Community Transit, but there will be no buses in his entourage due to the expense.
There is a silver lining for Oxy Gene, who usually marches in at least two parades on the Fourth of July. “Isn’t that the first time in 10 years you’ve had a hot dog without your suit on? “ his supermom asked.
Oxy Gene will manage to keep busy this summer teaching day camp kids how to ride the bus, participating in a Mill Creek kids fun run to raise money for Haitian relief (Aug. 14) and, of course, being a judge at the Taste of Edmonds. “It’s glove-lickin’ good,” he said of the food there.
Where else might you find Oxy this summer?
July 27 – Edmonds Night Out Against Crime
August 3 – National Night Out Against Crime, Mukilteo YMCA and McCollum Park
August 13 – Taste of Edmonds (noon tasting)
August 28 - Monroe Fair Days Parade
September 11– Mukilteo Lighthouse Festival Parade
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