'You Can’t Effectively Improve Local Transit From the Sidelines. You Have to Get Onboard First'
A Cascadia Daily News transportation feature put the experiences of bus riders front and center, something news outlets rarely do.
The Cascadia Daily News selected a letter to the editor that BhamByBus recently wrote as the newspaper's first-ever Letter of the Week, an "extremely high honor that comes with … the satisfaction of having written a Letter of the Week!"
While I'm certainly pleased to see my letter featured, I'm far more jazzed to see a local news outlet devote a not-insignificant amount of print edition space, including part of the front page, to a transportation story that puts bus riders front and center, which the CDN recently did in its story, "Should public transit prioritize more riders or broader access. WTA to decide." The article, which features a handful of interviews with riders of the Whatcom Transit Authority's Routes 232 and 331 — the highest-ridership routes in the agency's network — is outside the CDN's paywall.
Here's what I wrote in response:
Editor,
Thank you for the recent well-reported Cascadia Daily News article which centers the experiences of Whatcom Transit Authority bus riders (CDN, Jan. 16, 2025). It’s rare but refreshing when local news outlets pay careful attention to the specific needs of transit users.
By simply riding the bus around town with some amount of regularity, local stakeholders, including elected officials and journalists, can unlock a level of greater understanding of their community and their neighbors, something they wouldn’t get from a windshield-only perspective driving around town.
In Bellingham, where a significant amount of civic oxygen is spent on debates over bike lanes and parking, thoughtful and informed discussions about our local transit network generally fall by the wayside. While we don’t have a perfect network, WTA’s upcoming June service changes are, by and large, a promising step toward a better system (CDN, Dec. 5, 2024).
You can’t effectively improve local transit from the sidelines. You have to get onboard first. And even if you drive everywhere, it’s important to recognize that a strong transit network is critically important for local economic vitality.
WTA buses connect people to various opportunities, whether it’s someone commuting to their job or a retiree using the bus en route to play pickleball. Remember, Bellinghamsters: As the costs of driving continue to increase — including car payments, insurance, parking, repairs and fuel — a $30 WTA monthly bus pass is roughly the cost of two sandwiches at Avenue Bread.
I do find it strange (but wonderful) that two Californian sandwiches at Avenue Bread are more expensive than my monthly transportation costs living car-free in Bellingham.
This isn't the first transit-related letter to the editor I've written that the CDN has published. In July 2024, I responded to a rather peculiar CDN letter about empty WTA buses on Saturday mornings that was missing some necessary context.
Editor, Craig MacConnell’s letter to the editor (CDN, July 23, 2024) about seeing three empty WTA buses on Billy Frank Jr. Street heading toward Western Washington University at 7:45 a.m. on Saturday left me puzzled. On Saturdays, most WTA bus service in Bellingham doesn’t start until after 8 a.m. Looking at WTA’s Saturday route schedules for the WWU-bound stop at Billy Frank Jr. and E. Chestnut streets, the first bus of the morning is Route 14 at 8:12, followed by Routes 105 and 190 at 8:27, Route 107 at 8:42, and Route 196 at 8:57. (Across the street at that location, the first downtown-bound bus on Saturday morning is Route 197 at 7:46.)
Perhaps the reason MacConnell observed those three empty buses at 7:45 a.m. on a Saturday was that they weren’t yet in service? MacConnell’s confusing snapshot in time that the CDN chose to share with readers seems to be missing some necessary context.
In my experiences regularly riding WTA buses, the first buses on Saturday mornings, which start later compared to weekdays, can sometimes be fairly busy. You might find workers heading to start morning shifts, local retirees heading to a weekend coffee klatch or the Bellingham Farmers Market, and breakfast-goers trying to beat the brunch crowd while avoiding parking hassles downtown. You also might find some early risers wondering why bus service doesn’t start earlier on Saturdays.
Sadly, my letter responding to that odd letter in July did not make the print edition, only the expanded online version of the CDN's letters section, so it's unlikely local coffee klatches at Caffe Adagio, FireHouse Cafe, or any Bellingham-area Woods Coffee location discussing civic affairs sparked by the CDN print edition saw my factchecking response.
As someone who used to manage newsrooms and news operations back east, including sifting through letters to the editors and guest commentary submissions at some publications, I would have scrutinized the July letter in question a bit more before publishing. In an era where many of us have to deal with the exhausting realities of Brandolini's Law, it's still important to muster the energy to call BS when unreliable information enters civic discourse.