The plight of a Sammamish traveler

Here’s the problem: Transit in Sammamish is for one type of commuter.

It mainly caters to the more than 20,000 people who leave the plateau for work in the Bel-Red Corridor, downtown Seattle, Issaquah, Bellevue and Redmond.

And only those leaving in the morning and returning in the evening. And only on weekdays.

And not even all of those people can easily use the system — nor do they.

This also leaves the 3,900 plus commuters coming to Sammamish from outside areas, well, with limited options. Those are the teachers, the bank tellers, the hard-working sandwich specialist who happily puts extra, extra olives on your sub.

About 61,000 people call Sammamish home.

But if they have somewhere to go, unless it’s during rush hour and on a weekday, they’re not getting there by bus and they’re certainly not getting there in a straight shot.

This is the plight of a Sammamish traveler.

The same travelers who will be asked in November to approve a major transit package that most residents say will do nothing for them. The same travelers who will be asked to pay hundreds a year in transit tax for light rail infrastructure on the Eastside, on top of the hundreds they already pay a year in transit tax.

Here are their stories.

The traveling people

It’s 6:20 a.m. in northern Sammamish on a Monday.

Cindi Rose, 39, quietly closes her apartment door, trying not to wake her 18-month-old son.

She crosses Northeast Inglewood Hill Road and cuts through a parking lot before standing under the awning at the McDonalds bus stop along 228th Avenue Northeast.

There are two others waiting there, but they board a bus bound for Issaquah.

Often she’ll see people drive past her stop outside of McDonalds, only to board at the Issaquah Highlands. She thinks they may not have the luxury of a two-minute walk from their front door to the stop — plus, there’s really no parking along 228th Avenue, unless you’re a Microsoft employee and catch the Connector at the former Mars Hill Church parking lot.

By 6:37 a.m., she’s on the 219. It’ll stop in Issaquah, too, but after that it’s nearly a direct route to Seattle, where she works in retirement planning.

Her morning commute takes an hour to an hour and 15 minutes. This is fairly typical for most commuting to downtown.

This morning, traffic is heavy. There are a couple of accidents along the way.

But she usually makes it to work on time — usually.

Going down the main Sammamish corridor, a spattering of people hop on. Six get on at the south Sammamish Park-and-Ride.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen this lot full,” she said. “Ever.”

She grew up in Sammamish; her parents still live there, just north of her apartment now.

Back in the day, her mom would take the bus to Seattle — but that’s when it took half the time to get there, she said.

She’s been commuting to downtown Seattle for seven years, but since the addition of the 219 line a few years ago, she stopped driving. Why put that stress on her own vehicle when she could take this route and arrive at the same time? Plus, she doesn’t have hundreds of dollars to spend each month on parking at the Washington State Convention Center.

The bus pulls out of the Sammamish Park-and-Ride and heads toward the Issaquah Highlands. More than 30 people board there.

The bus is suddenly full.

“A lot of people ride this. It’s needed,” she said. “It’s not too bad today.”

She says this, comparing it to when the line of people waiting to board wraps around the park-and-ride. When there’s standing room only. When they have to leave people behind.

On the way home, that’s when people usually have to wait for another bus. She said she’ll walk a couple blocks away from her closest stop in Seattle to another just to catch a seat.

Sammamish residents, just have to “latch on” wherever they can.

She’s had some poor experiences on the bus, like anyone else, but tries to make the best of it.

“I have to take it lighthearted when things happen,” she said. “We’re all just trying to get to work.”

Additionally, the company she works for covers all but $20 a month for her ORCA Card.

“It behooves me to ride the bus,” she said.

There are downsides to being a Sammamish resident taking the bus, though.

Once, Rose’ fiance, Robert Willis, got sick.

Rose had already left for the day. This was when their toddler was a baby, and Willis, the stay-at-home dad, couldn’t take care of the little one being ill.

Rose needed to come home.

Have you ever tried catching a bus from downtown Seattle to Sammamish in the afternoon? It’s not possible.

“I, of course, was able to get to the Highlands,” she said.

But once there, she had to reach out to the community via a Facebook group for help. Thankfully, some empathetic soul picked her up and took her home.

It was a long two hours, she said.

——

It’s 4:45 p.m. in downtown Seattle on a Friday.

Tim Taricco, one backpack strap on his shoulder, walks up Pine Street to the bus stop at Fifth Avenue. He just got off work and is looking to catch the bus home to Sammamish — his two kids and wife waiting for him.

The 216 rolls up, but he’s not getting on that one, despite it ending up at the south Sammamish Park-and-Ride around 6 p.m.

He’ll wait a few seconds for it to pull forward and the 219 to stop and open its doors.

It’s a matter of strategy, he said. Likely, his bus will beat that one to the park-and-ride by a couple of minutes.

“You know, it’s stupid, but every minute counts,” he said.

After nearly two years of commuting almost daily to and from Sammamish for his job in web design, he has this down.

The 216 stops more — in Mercer Island and at the Eastgate Park-and-Ride in Bellevue. The 219, on the other hand, is a straight shot pretty much once it gets onto Interstate-90.

It’s a good deal for Taricco, 46, to ride with King County Metro: His company gets a great discount on ORCA Cards and pays his way to and from work.

“Honestly, the two hours on the bus each day can sometimes be a drag, but it is generally stress free,” he said.

That’s why he takes it: no stress, no cost to him and he saves thousands a year in parking fees. The benefits to the environment of taking one more car off the road is bonus.

It takes about an hour to get home.

When Sound Transit 2 construction pushed the Seattle buses to the city’s surface roads, it added about 10 minutes to the drive.

“We already have a long ride and now it’s even longer,” he said. But there’s nothing he can do about that.

In the morning, he wakes at 6 a.m., piles his sons into the truck, drops the one off at Eastlake High School and the other at Inglewood Middle school before heading to the park-and-ride.

“Literally, it’s perfect timing,” he said.

The buses are reliable and on time, he said: “It’s pretty darn consistent.”

But that’s about all it’s good for in Sammamish — getting him to work and back.

His sons can’t use transit. He drives to work on Wednesdays for the flexibility of getting home when his sons have their early release day.

“You can’t get to Sammamish by bus by noon,” he said.

His wife, a Microsoft employee, commutes to Redmond. She could take the Microsoft Connector, the bus specifically for Microsoft employees, but it would take her twice as long as driving.

It’s clear to him, Sammamish needs mid-day service. An “easy fix,” he said. Just keep the 269 route running up and down 228th Avenue.

As it is now, “you have to have a car living in Sammamish,” he said. And that fosters the “SUV mentality” — transit in Sammamish is so inconvenient for most they give up, give in and hop in their car.

“I don’t think Metro gets it at all,” he said.

——

BJ Chinn, 55, has breast cancer.

She lives about 1.1 miles away from the nearest bus stop along 228th Avenue Northeast in Sammamish. The sidewalks from her home to that stop are incomplete.

Even if she could manage the strength to get there, there’s no way the bus schedule would get her to her appointment on time.

Say her appointment with the Bellevue Group Health is at 3 p.m.

If she left at 2 p.m., a reasonable lead time to allow for traffic from Sammamish to Bellevue, she’d be “disappointed because the next 269 bus leaves from the Safeway at 3:58 p.m. and doesn’t arrive in Bellevue until a transfer to the 232 and then a short walk arriving at 5:02 p.m.,” she said. Her appointment ends at 4 p.m.

The only way to make it on time, she said, is to catch the last bus out of town at 9:45 a.m., after her walk. She’d arrive shortly after 11 a.m., with “hours to kill” before the appointment.