News Stories

Transportation in Lettered Streets

                As residents and visitors of the Lettered Streets Neighborhood know well, locating a bus can be a difficult task.

            The bus service in the Lettered Streets Neighborhood is scarce and with little more than 12 bus stops in the entire neighborhood. This makes finding the correct bus a much more challenging feat, especially for visitors who come to the neighborhood’s various historic sites.

            Members of the Lettered Streets Neighborhood Association mentioned that a rider may wait up to five hours before another bus will arrive to pick them up and the several block walk to find another stop may yield the same results.

             “I can’t believe how hard it is to get service here,” said Arlene Feld of the LSNA. “People who don’t own cars have no way of getting around.”

            Of the approximately 12 bus stops in the neighborhood, each only has two buses that come every hour, which could be hard for riders to manage their schedule depending on where and when they want to go.  

            Bus routes to the outer edges of Lettered Streets require a great amount of walking which isn’t ideal for parents with young children, the elderly or injured members of the community.

            Ryan Torgeson, a resident of the Lettered Streets Neighborhood said “It is really hard to get into town when a bus might come once an hour, but there is nothing else I can do.”

            The Whatcom Transportation Authority strategic plan is under negotiation for 2016, and will allow residents to comment on ways to improve the bus system in the Lettered Streets Neighborhood, although finding a plan that works for everyone will take a lot of negotiation.

            The most efficient, yet costly strategy of the 2016 plan is extended service on weekdays in places where service is currently limited. This would improve ridership and passenger experience greatly while also keeping the environment and speed and reliability in mind.

            According to the WTA Strategic Plan, by extending service on weekdays, buses would come twice as frequently, so a route that would normally run every hour would then run every half hour.

            “If the buses ran more often, I would use them to get into town,” Torgeson said. “It would be a lot more convenient for the whole neighborhood.”

            Another issue that the WTA brings up is the emission of carbon that comes from transportation and how to reduce the amount that is released. If a solution includes cutting bus routes to save the environment, more citizens will be without a ride and the issue will not have been solved.  

While finding a bus may be difficult on average weekdays, the Whatcom Transportation Authority has begun discussing changes to the schedule that trade Sunday services for transit later in the evenings on weekdays.

Cutting the Sunday bus routes, which are the least used, would leave an extra amount in the budget for more frequent and later services on other days when the bus services are more widely utilized.

            Julia Mattingly, a frequent bus rider said, “I do not agree with this decision, how would people get to and from church?”

            This and several other concerns come to mind when discussing a whole day without bus service, although it would come with an added benefit of longer services on weekdays when residents of the area are most busy.

            A large majority of the Lettered Streets Neighborhood is not equipped with WTA bus stops, though and would suffer even more if an entire day was cut out of the schedule. Residents who already struggle to find a ride into town would not be able to go out and run errands or go to their jobs if Sunday rides were terminated.

            The issue is still under debate, although such drastic plan changes will not pass through the voter’s hands easily.

            Members of the community are welcomed to participate in creating an efficient, yet low cost plan that will better serve the community by providing feedback on what they would like to see implemented in next year’s schedule.

            The first meeting is on October 27 at 5 p.m. at Whatcom Community College where they will discuss ideas and plans for how to change the bus routes to better suit more passengers.