Friday Roundtable: First Transit Trip

When did you start riding public transit independently? Were there certain pivotal trips that made you more of a transit enthusiast and shaped your viewpoint? What's the youngest people you see now taking transit independently? The full 2 Line opens tomorrow, which many be a similar pivot point for many people. That makes it a good time to reflect on how we all got into transit.

I started riding Metro in 7th grade in 1979 when I chose to go to an alternative junior high school on the other side of Bellevue that didn't have school buses. At first my parents drove me and I was afraid to take the bus because I'd never been on public transit before. Would I be able to reach the stop cord and activate it, or would the bus sail past my stop? After several months, I took Metro home from school, and saw how easy it was and and other people from my school were taking it. I started taking it to school every day. My first trip to Seattle was to the Record Library (a record-rental shop) at Broadway & Denny. Then I started taking it to the downtown library, and the U-District for its used record shops and bookstores and friends who hung out there.

I lived in a single-family area, a mile from the nearest supermarket, with only houses in between. Luckily it was a 5 minute walk to an hourly Metro bus, and it was the route that went to downtown Bellevue and downtown Seattle. So that's what made it possible for me to use transit and become a transit fan.

In 1982 in the summer between 9th and 10th grade, I saw a friend on the bus who had moved to the top of Queen Anne, so I followed him home - and I found another world. Buses every 20-30 minutes. The ability to walk walk to a corner store and friends' houses like people in books. We could even walk to Seattle Center where Queen Anne teenagers went on weekend evenings. This was really possible now, not just sixty years ago or in the vague New York I'd never seen.

By 11th grade I lived in a downtown Bellevue apartment with my dad. Now I had half-hourly buses, and could walk to school and Safeway and Bellevue Square and everything else in downtown Bellevue. It was my first time living in urbanism, even though Bellevue was only 1-2 stories then, and I was so happy. When I graduated I went to UW and moved to the U-District.

In winter 1985 my dad and I drove down to Nevada to visit relatives, and we stopped in San Jose on the way back, where he'd gone to college and I'd lived until I was 6. One day he had business meetings all day, so his friend suggested they drop me off at Fremont and I could take BART to San Fransisco; his friend was sure I'd enjoy it. That was my first time on a metro/subway, something I'd always wanted to do. I spent the day in Frisco and came back in the evening, and took the express bus from Fremont to San Jose, which stopped a mile from where we were staying. So my first subway experience was BART, and that has made more more sympathetic to metro-wide frequent rail than some others who want only a city-only network, because I could see how it benefited people in the East Bay.

In 1995 I went to Moscow and St Petersburg; in 1998 Dusseldorf/Koln/Liege; in 2000 the UK and Ireland; and in 2000 New York, Chicago, and DC. It was from furthest to nearest: the opposite order from how most people would go. But it gave me a different perspective. In all those cities I rode the transit of course, and walked around as a resident would on everyday errands. All that gave me a clearer picture of what I liked and wanted.

I asked other STB authors how they got into transit, and this is what they said:

Sherwin Lee: I grew up in the transit desert of south Bellevue and lived too close to school to get a free Metro pass, but I would occasionally take the 921 back home to Somerset, and I also regularly rode the 240 with my friend back to his place in Newport Hills.My earliest memory is my grandmother taking me from her apartment in theCID up to Westlake via the DSTT.

Martin Pagel: I grew up in Langenhagen, a suburb of Hannover, Germany. I would ride the bus to the tram to downtown Hannover to get to my orthodontist appointment. I must have been 10 or so. Later I went to boarding school in Hildesheim. I would take the bus to catch the tram in Sarstedt, another suburb of Hannover, and ride through downtown back home to Langenhagen, an almost 3 hour trip. That tram turned later into a subwaythrough downtown."

Ross Bleakney: I remember taking the bus when I was in middle school in Seattle. I was a shy kid but I felt empowered the more I rode the bus. I learned bus etiquette and sat in back (where the cool kids sat). I learned how to yell back door please" and other important skills. Taking the bus to other neighborhoods also helped broaden my horizons."

Nathan Dickey: Where I grew up in California, transit access was poor. Other than riding the classic yellow school bus, my first transit experience was as a tourist in other cities. I started riding transit independently in college to go into town, and to a summer job. LA's version of ST3 (Measure M) passed in 2016; which was an exciting time for the region but they're having similar issues to ST with cost inflation. I moved to Seattle in 2019 in part because of its efforts to increase transit use region-wide."

Michael Smith: I'm from the Philadelphia suburbs but rarely, if ever, took transit there. When I was 8 years old, my family moved to Hong Kong. My earliest transit related memory is sitting in the front row of a double decker bus on the winding mountain roads from Wan Chai to Stanley. After 2 years in Hong Kong, we moved to Singapore. Once we settled into our apartment and were familiar with the nearby area, I was allowed to travel independently around the city. Initially, I mostly used the MRT to get to/from school when I missed the school bus. In high school, I used the MRT and buses to meet up with friends, and get to my activities and appointments."

What's the youngest you see riding transit independently now? For me it's the crowd of high schoolers at Roosevelt, Bellevue, and Interlake HS. Since high school goes down to 9th grade now (it was 10th grade when I went), that means they're only two years older than when I started. That surprised me because I thought the difference would be larger than that: you hear so much how kids nowadays aren't independent, and they stay at home on their phones. But it's not really that much different, at least the ones who do go out on buses and Link. And they could have started in middle school for all I know. Other STB authors see it pretty similarly.

How did you get into transit? Let us know in the comments. This is an open thread.