Bus to Bus

Today marks the beginning of a new service season for King County Metro, this time with major revisions to accommodate budget shortfalls.  Many long-standing routes have been dramatically revised or even eliminated.

Over 20 years ago, a similar revision halved and renamed the route that had been the portal to exploration and independence during my youth.  Starting in junior high and continuing through most of high school, I rode the #226 every day.  I walked two blocks to my stop at the northeast corner of the Interlake HS campus, although Caroll had to walk much further.  The bus route proceeded south along 164th Ave NE, where Tozer's car would collide with it head-on in 1985, turn east onto Northup Way where it picked up Robert Anderson and Bob Schweitzer, past the last church I ever attended, hung a 115-degree right onto NE 8th to start it's long westward run to downtown Bellevue.  It picked up Peggy Hammmond, Jim Fossum, and Vin Ostrander, then crossed 164th by what is now Crossroads Park to pick up Sheri, continued down across 148th and up past Odle Junior High where I went swimming once a week one semester to avoid taking a real PE class, crested the ridge at 140th to pick up Laura Polt and Lara Wilson, then made the long descent into the Kelsey Creek valley where Peter Cooper and Kevin Bruce would have boarded (but never did).  The bus then humped over the north end of Wilburton Hill and entered Midlakes, including the 7-11 where I watched Coop master Asteroids.  I often got off the bus at NE 116th to hike down Auto Row to the Bellevue Public Library, which at that time was located on the corner of Main Street.  Before they put in the fancy Bellevue Transit Center, the #226 continued across I-405 and shimmied onto NE 106th to loiter with connecting routes in front of the John Danz Theater, Belle Lanes, and the Puget Power corporate offices.  From here I could catch a #252 through Medina to visit Bob or Mark, or a #235 toward Kirkland to get to Stu's house.  The quotidian route, of course, kept me on the #226 as it headed south along Bellevue Way to the Bellevue High School campus, which also hosted Olympus NW Junior High at that time.

Continuing south, one could get off at SE 16th for Steve Clagg's house or SE 30th for a hike along the Mercer Slough to Brian's house.  The big adventure, of course, was to stay on all the way across Mercer Island and the lake, through the Mt. Baker tunnel to where I-90 abruptly terminated at Rainier Avenue.  There downtown buses crowded onto Rainier and waited forever to turn left onto Dearborn.  Once we passed underneath I-5, the old Immigration building loomed ominously to the left as we made our way through the International District and turned north onto 4th Avenue.  Here was the stop for the Elliot Bay Bookstore and the many curious corners of Pioneer Square.  Jesus Christ Made the stop right in front of a very boring building housing the Seattle Public Library, which smelled very different than the Bellevue library, but its endless musty stacks mocked the narrow cosmos of its bourgeois cousin.  Seattle Under Pressure released you a few fascinating blocks from Pike Place Market with its creaky wooden floors and Golden Age Collectibles.  Talk about odors!

Most of my friends in junior high and high school lived outside bicycle range, and I didn't have regular access to a car until my senior year, so the #226 was the first step on the path to all of these destinations.  Some time after I graduated high school, the #226 was truncated and the Bellevue-to-Seattle portion of the route given over to Sound Transit's #550, and the #226 itself was renamed to #230.  The #235 suffered a similar fate.

When I returned to Bellevue four years ago, I was surprised to find that the #225 was still operating near our new residence.  The #225 had been there at the beginning of my Metro career, sharing a half-dozen stops along NE 164th.  I remember looking up the #225 schedule to see if it would provide additional flexibility to my wanderings, but was disappointed to learn it was just a commuter shuttle, running only a dozen times a day through east Lake Hills down to W. Lake Sammamish Parkway and then onto I-90 to downtown Seattle.  30 years later, it was still running the same route (with the exception of a layover at the massive Eastgate Park & Ride).  Boarding it early along the route, I have a choice seat and an uninterrupted ride all the way to Westlake.  A bonus feature is the view from a high seat in the back as the bus heads down SE 26th to the Parkway, seeing the sun rise over Lake Sammamish.  It hasn't run as late as I'd like or on weekends, but the #225 has been a primary vehicle for my reassimilation to the Eastside.

Yesterday was the last day for the #225.  All Eastgate-to-Seattle service will now be handled by the frequently-running #212, and service along 164th to Eastgate and Crossroads will fall to the revised #221, which will run much later in the evening and on weekends, but which will also make a tedious detour through the Bellevue College campus.  Vexingly, none of the #225 buses this week were stocked with #221 schedules, and as the #221 is an Eastside-only route there were no schedules at Westlake, either.  Checking online, I confirmed that for the first time in over 30 years there will be no Metro service along W. Lake Sammamish Parkway from NE 24th down to I-90.  As we turned up SE 26th yesterday afternoon, it didn't quite feel like the helicopters lifting off the roof of the Saigon embassy, but we definitely lost something.