When the woman with the metal cane and thick eyeglasses stepped onto the free circulator vehicle at Ninth and Alder, a half block from the main entrance to Harborview Medical Center, she immediately started talking to the only other passenger, a gentleman in a tweed riding cap who occupied a rear seat.
“If a friend hadn’t told me about the vehicle, I never would’ve known,” she said as she sat three rows in front of him.
Peter, the man in the cap, nodded.
Affixed to a bus stop outside the vehicle was a three-inch-by-three-inch, orange and white sticker that read, “Circulator Stop 1.” The sticker, sandwiched between decals of a bus and a person in a wheelchair, was easy to miss.
The driver closed the circulator’s doors. “Next stop, Fourth and Yesler,” he said.
It was 9:12 a.m., Monday, Oct. 1, the first day of free circulator service in Seattle. Operated by the local nonprofit Solid Ground, the circulator was devised to mitigate the loss of the Ride Free Area (RFA) for the city’s poorest bus riders. A lack of publicity, small signage and no set schedule times are among the challenges to using the service, riders say.
Peter, 66, a former journalist from Great Britain who uses only his first name, said he received an email a few days earlier announcing the circulator service. He decided to check it out and boarded downtown.
“If I hadn’t gotten on, it would’ve been empty,” he said.
Mike Buchman, communications director at Solid Ground, said he and others at the nonprofit are aware few people have ridden the circulator. On the circulator’s first day, the service carried 52 passengers. The second day, 72 passengers rode the circulator. “Clearly there’s a lot more folks who need the service than that,” Buchman said.
Solid Ground officials signed a $400,000 contract with the city to operate the circulator for a year. In the past the city had paid Metro that same amount to help the transit agency offset the costs of operating the RFA.
Overall, the circulator provides less service than the RFA. Under the RFA, all buses in downtown could be ridden for free 13 hours a day, seven days a week.
The service runs two vehicles operating on a single, one-way fixed loop Monday through Friday. The loop encompasses only seven stops, with the day’s first vehicle leaving Ninth and Alder at 7 a.m.; the day’s last vehicle departs the same location at 4 p.m.
With the circulator, a limited number of people can ride for free. One of the two circulator vehicles, carries 19 passengers, and the second one carries 23. Officials with Solid Ground say one of the vehicles should arrive at a stop approximately every 30 minutes. But with no set schedule, people standing at a stop have no idea what their wait time will be.
Those who have tried the circulator say it’s taken some effort to locate. The woman with the thick eyeglasses admitted she had trouble identifying the stop.
The circulator halted at a bus stop on First between Marion and Madison. A Solid Ground staff member held a sign: “Downtown Circulator Stop.” There were no new passengers. The vehicle maneuvered into traffic.
When the vehicle halted near the southeast corner of First and Pine, the woman with the cane disembarked. Peter followed her, stopping near the driver.
“Do we pay when we get off?” he said, laughing.
“No, sir,” said the driver, who smiled.
“It’s a good service,” Peter said as he descended the steps.
But at the next stop, First and Bell, there were no passengers, only someone holding another circulator stop sign. At Ninth and Virginia, the scene was the same. No one stood at Boren and Seneca. As the circulator passed a number 4 bus on Jefferson Street, it provided a stark contrast: While the circulator carried no passengers, the bus was so full some passengers had to stand.
There was no one waiting as the circulator completed its route near Harborview at 9:51 a.m. It took off. Six minutes later, the second circulator in the fleet arrived. Just like its fleet-mate, the vehicle was empty.
Getting the word out. Or maybe not
Solid Ground’s Buchman said the nonprofit distributed 10,000 paper fliers about the circulator to numerous social service providers and social service agencies. Emails with attachments were also sent out. But the circulator route wasn’t finalized until Sept. 20, only 11 days before the first circulator was set to roll, which he said impacted advertising.
“I think in terms of ridership, we’re needing to do a better job getting the word out,” he said.
While the circulator is open to all riders, the target audience is low-income people who need to access services downtown.
“We don’t want a bus-full of suits,” Buchman said.
Solid Ground will print more fliers, which will have an image of the shuttle, and some will be in Spanish. Even so, Buchman said the service is best publicized by word of mouth.
Christine Alar, senior transportation planner for Seattle Department of Transportation, agreed. She said Solid Ground, Metro and city officials had discussions about using sandwich boards to identify circulator stops. But instead, an agreement was made to use the small stickers, which comply with Metro’s sign protocol.
Alar said all three organizations will meet in mid-October to discuss how it’s working. With the service in its infancy, Alar said it’s difficult to assess what really needs to be altered. But, she said, “we’re open to changes,” including reexamining stop locations and signage.
Since the circulator is a pilot program, it will be reevaluated at the end of 2013.
Buchman said any riders who fear the circulator may be ditched because of low ridership after 2013 shouldn’t worry, because the circulator contract stipulates the each vehicle serve only 150 riders a month.
“We’re practically going to exceed that [the first] week,” he said. In the first two days alone, the service carried more than 120 riders.
It’s great, once you find it
On Oct. 3, three days into the free circulator service, no one stood at the stop on First and Pine. The vehicle idled for a few minutes until an elderly gentleman stepped through the open doors: It was Peter in his tweed driving cap, back for his second ride. He was on his way to an optometrist visit, a couple stops away.
He had tried to ride a bus since the RFA ended but was confused by a number of recent service changes. He preferred the circulator, he said, and planned to keep riding.
As he disembarked at Ninth and Virginia, Eric Fife got on, wheeling a red hand truck in front of him.
Fife, 45, said he was returning the hand truck to a discount store that had loaned it to him, so he needed transportation. A resident of Harbor House, which provides housing for chronically homeless people confronting substance abuse, he said he found information about the circulator in the building’s lobby.
But when he arrived at Ninth and Virginia, he only noticed a bus stop closure sign. He said he wondered if he was at the right place. It took him a few minutes to find the circulator sticker.
“The doggone sticker’s this big,” he said, creating a square by touching forefinger to forefinger and thumb to thumb.
A native Seattleite, he had taken advantage of the RFA for most of his life, he said. Now that he has an understanding of how the circulator works, Fife said he’ll make use of it. He stood up at the Seneca and Boren stop and pushed his trolley down the aisle.
“I’m definitely going to tell people,” he said.
The vehicle circled past the Harborview stop, then proceeded down Yesler. At Fourth Avenue, two men boarded. One of them, who identified himself as Doug, looked around at the empty seats. It’ll be full, he said, “as soon as word gets out.”