The #21 bus runs from downtown to West Seattle (and back, of course). For my review, I’m riding southbound from downtown, but as soon as we leave the heart of the city, the route does something stupid.
It goes on the elevated portion of Edgar Martinez Drive, right past right field at the Mariners’ ball park. That’s not stupid, it’s brilliant — ideal for fans going to a game, or even for ballplayers if they want to take the bus instead of driving their Maseratis.
When there’s a game, though, tens of thousands of idiots drive to the stadium, get stuck in traffic, wait in long queues to pay $40 to park, and then they’re stuck in traffic again after the game. Allow an extra 45 minutes whenever there’s baseball (or football, another block to the north).
That’s the #21’s first stupidity, because the whole point of transit is beating the dull horrors of driving, not being part of it. The #21 very obviously needs dedicated bus lanes near the ball park, with expensive traffic citations for driving cars in those lanes.
Transit first, always — that should be a fundamental principal of urban planning. There are 60 of us aboard the bus, and only one or two of you in your unsafe, polluting, deathmobiles clogging the streets. Give the bus the priority it deserves.
And it gets worse, dozens of times every summer, when there’s a daytime ball game during the week. In addition to the sport fans’ traffic, there’s commuter traffic — and Metro Transit’s response is to surrender entirely: #21 buses are re-routed away from the stadium, down 4th Avenue instead of 1st Avenue — an aggravating inconvenience for regular bus riders, or anyone who needs to get on or off at any of affected stops.
Further grumpy observations: Southbound on 1st Avenue, the bus goes past a big ol’ Krispy Kreme, and I always wonder what was ever the big deal about that chain? Here, have a slightly worse-than-average doughnut for a slightly higher-than-average price.
Out the bus’s right-side windows, there’s an ancient, elegant brick skyscraper that was once the downtown Sears Roebuck, and also the location of Sears’ catalog fulfillment center. If you ordered pillowslips or a goldfish bowl or anything else from a Sears wish book in the 1930s-70s, your package was sent from that building, via trains that came right to the building’s back door.
Sears is gone, of course, but the building still holds happy memories — Christmas shopping, and the bargain basement, and definitely sneaking away from Mom & Dad so’s I could climb the giant wooden bridge behind the store, and watch the trains roll past underneath.
That grand old building is now world headquarters of Starbucks Coffee, an evil conglomerate that doesn’t even know how to make coffee. Walk by any of Starbucks’ far-too-many locations and smell the stink of burnt beans, or whatever they do to make their product so famously unpalatable.
At Horton Street, what was once the Western Steel Casting Company is now a strip mall called Western Steel Casting Park. It has three businesses — workwear, flooring, and a frame shop. I don’t need anything like that, so I’ll never stop there, but it looks nice, by strip mall standards.
The bus goes up a ramp, and onto the West Seattle Bridge, a high-level freeway that runs only a few miles, towering over the very industrial Harbor Island and the sad, polluted mouth of the Duwamish River.
On that freeway stretch of the ride, looking out at the cars in the next lane, a couple of drivers were texting or surfing the net while going 50 mph, 140 feet above the ground. It’s not surprising. You see it all the time. What’s surprising is only that more of the drivers checking their messages don’t fly over the edge and into the water below.
After the bridge, the #21 turns south onto Avalon, and if you hop off here and walk a block north, you’ll be at Emerald City Pet Rescue, a no-kill place for pet adoptions. They also run the adjacent Emerald Kitty Cafe, where you can get coffee and a better-than-Krispy-Kreme doughnut.
On this ride, I needed neither a cat nor caffeine, so I stayed aboard the bus as we rolled along 35th Avenue for several southbound miles.
It’s largely residential, but there are some possible destinations on the way — Grillbird Teriyaki at 35th & Morgan has always looked interesting, though I haven’t tried it yet. Across the street from Grillbird is the West Seattle Food Bank, which I also haven’t tried.
There’s a library at Henderson Street that I’ve visited many times, and there’s the West Seattle Fish House, a fish’n’chips place I’ve almost gone to almost every time I’ve been to the library. It’s always almost because they don’t have a menu posted for sidewalk walkers, and there’s no indication of prices, so I’ve always assumed the place is expensive. Guess what, though? Looking them up online now, the prices seem reasonably reasonable.
The bus turns west onto SW Barton Street, approaching the end of the line at Westwood Village, a sprawling shopping mall to be avoided.
The mall is served by seven routes: our #21, and the #22, #60, #125, and #560, and two very frequent ‘RapidRide’ lines, the #C and #H.
Printed schedules and Metro’s website pretend that there are easy transfers between these routes, but it’s actually brutal for transfers, one of the most inefficient bus setups in the city, because these seven routes never converge at any point.
My #21 makes its last stop on Barton Street, where there are always several buses stacked one-after-another on layover for ten or twenty minutes. We stopped behind four idling buses, at least a block from the bus stop.
Only the #21 and the #C stop there, and buses are always lined up, so even if you’re transferring from the #21 to the #C or vice versa, you have to walk that block of buses.
And keep walking, if you’re transferring to a #22 or a northbound #H. Your stop is a block further east.
If you want a southbound #22 or #H, it’s half a block further still, and across a busy street.
And if, like me today, you need a #60 to get home, that stop is a block past the southbound #22 or #H stop, plus a ways around a corner. Add it up: My ‘transfer’ from the #21 to the #60 was 3½ blocks of walking.
Transferring between buses is supposed to mean that another bus comes to the same stop where you just stepped off, or maybe you’ll need to cross the street. Walking 3½ blocks would be difficult for someone who’s less able-bodied than me, and I’m not particularly rugged. I can walk the walk but I don’t enjoy it — there’s nothing to see but a mall, lots of traffic, and the ever-present fentanyl-heads and litter.
More frustrating than the distance is the logistics, because while you’re walking toward your next stop, your bus will almost certainly come and go. You’re close enough to see it, but not close enough to catch it. Every time.
Today, a #60 rolled away without me, while I was still blocks from the ‘transfer’ point. That bus comes every twelve minutes, and it took about twelve minutes for me to miss the next one, too — yes, I actually saw two #60s roll away without me, as I walked toward the bus stop. 24 minutes of my life.
Six of the seven routes that serve Westwood Village travel the same two-block stretch of 26th Avenue, coming and going. Very easy transfers would be available at a stop along 26th, but there’s only one stop, it’s northbound only, and you can only catch the #22 and #H at that stop. All the other buses whiz right past, and there’s no southbound stop at all on 26th.
It’s as if Metro’s planners intentionally made something they could describe as a transfer point, but it’s a transfer chokehold instead.
While I was waiting for the third #60 bus, there was a funny encounter with two drunk or stoned women, but this entry is long enough already, so I’ll save that story for another day.
My verdict on the #21: It’s a fairly comfortable ride, not over-crowded, with service about every 15 minutes weekdays, and half-hourly on the weekends. My driver didn’t brake harshly, and even sang “American Idiot” for a while, so he probably went to the Green Day concert a few nights ago.
But what this route does at the ball park and then at the mall is counterproductive, and a pain in the arse for riders.
9/25/2024
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