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    Home»seattle»Transit Hot Takes – The Stranger
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    Transit Hot Takes – The Stranger

    adminBy adminAugust 8, 2025No Comments6 Mins Read
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    Illustrations by Teresa Grasseschi

    Electric Scooters

    Pro: I’ll admit it. I love e-scooters. They’re a convenient last-mile solution for those of us who don’t live near a light rail stop or for when the bus strands us downtown between 30-minute headways. Zip on a scooter to that BBQ a few blocks away when you’re running late, or back to your apartment when you forgot to bring heels to a wedding dress alteration appointment. Sure, sure, the scooters can be dangerous. This is because idiots ride them without helmets. This is also because we still live in a car’s world. And you know what is more dangerous than scooters? Cars. The popularity of scooters challenges car-centricity. Limes and Birds open up a car-less world to people used to opting for a Lyft or Uber. Additionally—don’t hate me, cyclists—scooter riders mean more people using bike infrastructure. That creates a new group of people asking the city for more bike lanes and investments in ways to get around without cars. We just need some of the numbskulls riding them to ride them as if imminent death lurks around every corner. Drivers should drive that way, too. We’ll all be safer if we are constantly considering our own mortality. In the meantime, enjoy a scooter ride. Live a little. NATHALIE GRAHAM

    Con: There was a time in this country where the only people with scooters were 8-year-olds and your idiot cousin with a gas-powered weed wacker on wheels called a moped. But now these fucking things are a key part of urban transportation strategy. My main quibble with scooters is not that they’re annoying dumbass magnets that double as a sidewalk obstacle course for the young, old, and disabled; it’s that they’re inequitable idiot magnets. For some people, they work. They even go zoom zoom, making you laugh like a little baby (I see you and I judge you). Don’t have a smartphone? Can’t use ’em. Going to the grocery store? Hope you brought a wagon, and a rope. Disabled? Fuck you, again, actually. Old? Don’t break your hip. Have a brain? They don’t come with helmets, so don’t fall and forget what it was like to be 17! The most offensive part is the suggestion that these scooters are a magic last-mile transit solution to all those racially inequitable train lines in this country. Fuck. No. It’s illusory and gives cities an excuse to not invest in public infrastructure. VIVIAN McCALL


    The #8 Bus

    Pro: Stop blaming the 8. She’s doing the best she can with the abominable circumstances we’ve given her. Her route starts just blocks from Climate Pledge Arena, where nearly 20,000 fans flock to concerts and sporting events several times a week. No new infrastructure was built into the neighborhood to alleviate the traffic, the crowds—she was just forced to manage the mess like an undervalued employee at an understaffed company. Rude! From there, she heads up Denny Way, which is a tangle of commuters racing to get to I-5 via a four-lane, stoplight-riddled city street that condenses into one turn lane at the base of Denny’s I-5 overpass with no bus lanes to help her through the chaos. And yet we curse her name as if she has done anything but continue to haul our ungrateful asses up one of the biggest hills in the city without complaint. I will no longer stand by while the city slanders her good name. Don’t hate the 8, hate Denny Way! Hate impatient, selfish drivers! Hate that our city prioritizes cars over public transportation! I love you, Route 8. MEGAN SELING

    Con: The 8 route begins at the Mount Baker Transit Center, which was built with absolutely no love for public transportation. It’s an eyesore. While waiting for a Metro bus, one feels like they are waiting for a prisoner transport vehicle. Soon after the 8 arrives, it’s immediately followed by the 48. Both buses cover much of the same area in the Central District, why not separate the buses by 10 minutes? Why make it so that if you miss one, you certainly miss the other? Has this anything to do with the CD’s past? Maybe they will fix the scheduling when they learn that Black people don’t live there anymore. As for the world-historical horribleness of the stretch from the bottom of Capitol Hill to the bottom of Queen Anne, the bus is always stuck in a traffic jam caused by tech workers fleeing South Lake Union all at once. But Metro has done nothing to fix this and other issues on this considerable part of the 8’s route. All they seem to say is: It is what it is. The 8 sucks. CHARLES MUDEDE


    The Seattle Monorail

    Pro: Sure, tourists love the Monorail. It’s whimsical. It reminds them of a 1960s vision of the future with less climate change and more space travel. And it’s arguably the most picturesque one mile of transit in the city. But like many things in Seattle (read: Pike Place Market) just because tourists like it, doesn’t mean it sucks. Since the Monorail started accepting ORCA cards in 2019, it’s also a light rail extension for the otherwise-stranded Lower Queen Anne, a connection to the D Line (if you don’t mind walking through Seattle Center and visiting the fountain), and an invaluable way to avoid hellish car congestion for arena events like Kraken games. Don’t blame her for the failed dream of the Monorail Project. It’s one of Seattle’s original people movers, and it’s still useful today. HANNAH MURPHY WINTER

    Con: The Seattle Monorail is a thing for tourists, hockey fans (derogatory), and people going to the ELO concert. My gripes with it aren’t as convincing right now, since its summer operating hours make sense (as in, service runs past 9 p.m.). But, during the fall and winter, you better hope you wrap any business you have in Lower Queen Anne before 9 p.m. or you’ll miss the last train out of the Seattle Center. It’s dumb, impractical, and a reminder of a stupid dream. Seattle spent years and millions of dollars on the illusion of a full-fledged monorail spanning the city. It never came to be and cost us precious time to develop a functioning high-capacity transit system—something we’re only barely starting to taste 20 years after the Monorail Project folded. Created for the World’s Fair in 1962 as a symbol of Seattle’s advanced technology, the Monorail is now a reminder of how we are actually stuck in the past. NATHALIE GRAHAM 





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