Long-time Laurelhurst resident, Goldie Gendler Silverman, who has lived in the neighborhood for over 40 years, and maintains her own Blog posting about her various adventures, let the Laurelhurst Blog Staff know that she recently posted about her Public Transportation experience from the neighborhood to various parts in the City.
Here are her posts:
TAKING LIGHT RAIL FROM LAURELHURST, almost
GREAT NEWS! On Saturday, March 19, the light rail stations at the UW Stadium and at Capitol Hill finally opened. Don and I were among the thousands who gathered to celebrate and ride free.
We did it all: left our house at the top of the hill and walked down to the Center for Urban Horticulture, walked across the landfill that is now a nature reserve, and made it to the celebration, 2.2 miles.
We walked around, talked to different groups about other ways to get to the station, ate fried chicken sandwiches and rode, free and standing up, from UW Stadium to Westlake and then back. (Several people offered us seats in the section for elderly and disabled, but we declined.)
Back at UW, we re-traced our steps, across the nature reserve, up the hill that is called “suicide hill” by the athletes who train by running up and down, and home, another 2.2 miles. Altogether 4.4 miles.
Next day, Sunday March 20, we had tickets to a play at the Seattle Center at 2, and there was a Bernie Sanders rally scheduled for that same afternoon, doors opening at 2. We knew parking would be difficult. Time for public transportation!
Don researched the available buses available on Sundays, and found three, the #65, #45, and #32, all stopping at 40th NE and Sand Point Way. We parked our car at noon near Children’s Hospital, and just as we were leaving it we saw a #65 pulling away. OK, two hours until curtain, that should be enough.
We waited and waited. Finally a #32 arrived and took us on to the UW campus, $1 each on our senior ORCA cards. It left us at a stop near the HUB, and we walked about two blocks to the next stop at Rainier Vista, which wasn’t marked for a 32 stop. Too bad, because there is a lovely walk from that stop directly to an overpass and into the light rail station.
We swiped our ORCA cards, again it was free, and took the elevator down many feet to P, which we decided stands for “Platform.” (There were no explanations for the other abbreviations.)
Once on board the train, we zoomed to Westlake Station once again, walked up three or four flights of stairs to the Monorail ($1 apiece for seniors) and rode sitting down to Seattle Center. We walked through the Armory, cut through several lines of well-behaved citizens waiting to enter the Key Arena, and arrived at our theatre at 1:25. One and a half hours from leaving home to entering the theatre.
When the play was over, we could have re-traced our steps. Instead we decided to take a bus all the way back. We walked to First Ave W, and waited across the street from the post office. There was an unmarked bus parked in front of the arena, no driver in sight. We decided the driver was on a break.
While other buses passed, none worked for us. Finally the parked bus started up–it was the #32! Hooray! We hopped on board, swiped our senior ORCA cards ($1) and rode by a very circuitous route north on 15th W to Nickerson, over the Fremont Bridge, up Fremont about one block, and then circling through the residential neighborhoods, the UW campus and finally Sand Point Way, we found our car at Children’s Hospital.
Total time for the trip: one hour. Total cost: $1 twice for two bus rides, $1 each for monorail, $3 apiece for transportation, $6 for two. If we had paid for the light rail, it would have cost $2 more for the two of us. Could we have found parking at Seattle Center for $8? Possibly for even less.
PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION FROM LAURELHURST, Part Two
One week after the trips described in the post just before this one, on a Sunday when we had an event at Seattle Center again, we tried again. Left our car near Children’s Hospital again, and waited on the corner of NE 40th and Sand Point Way NE for the #32 bus. It arrived exactly on time.
We swiped our ORCA cards, rode past University Village, through the U of W campus, out on 15th NE, down toward Boat Street, wandered through streets paralleling the ship canal, and finally to Fremont.
Across the Fremont Bridge, turned west on Nickerson, south on 15th W, up a hill to Mercer, and hopped off at Queen Anne Ave and Mercer Street. Because it had taken us only one hour, we had time to pick up a sandwich at a shop along the way to our event.
Coming home, we took the #32 bus again, all the way to Children’s Hospital, one hour, $1 apiece. So the whole trip for the two of us was $4. Could we park at Seattle Center for $4? I doubt it.
Maybe public transportation from Laurelhurst works. If you have the time. If it isn’t raining. If you have a car to leave at the bus stop.
Third Try, Public Transportation from Laurelhurst
Our children moved from Queen Anne to Redmond. Nice for them, but they took our grandchildren with them. On this lovely Friday, April 15, our granddaughter Nina was scheduled to play Baloo in a student production of the Jungle Book at 4 p.m. in a theatre in Kirkland. Our daughter-in-law suggested that we should come early, to the Redmond Transit Center (RTC) in the heart of Redmond and she would pick us up there.
So once again we set out to park near Children’s Hospital, but this time, on a weekday, the lots were full. We found a place to leave the car on a residential street north of the hospital, and walked three blocks to the intersection of Sand Point Way and 40th Ave NE.
It seemed to take a long time for a bus to arrive, but soon we were on our way to the U of W campus. The bus left us at Rainier Vista, and we started down the path toward the stadium, Montlake Blvd, and Bay # 1.
This was a conundrum. Don had learned that we must take Sound Transit bus #542 to get to the RTC. Sound Transit is not the same as our Seattle Metro. Transfers won’t work, and the information people don’t know much about it. We were told the bus would stop at Bay #1, at the intersection of Montlake and NE Pacific Street, but there are several bus stops at that intersection and no one could tell us where to find Bay #1.
Now we know to start from Rainier Vista toward the stadium, but just before reaching the bridge over Montlake Blvd, veer to the right and follow a path down to street level, aiming for a huge black W. Cross NE Pacific Street there, and the three or four bus shelters in a row are all Bay #1.
Where we went wrong: we had seen Bay #4 at the long bus stop on Montlake Blvd across the street from the stadium, and we assumed that the stops marked for buses there would be #s 1, 2, 3, and 4. That was wrong. A passerby told us to walk toward the hospital, and just as we reached Pacific Street, we saw bus #542 pulling away. The light was red for us and the street full of cars. Jumping up and down and waving didn’t impress the driver.
By the time we could cross the street, the bus was gone. Buses to Redmond come half an hour apart. We settled in to the first shelter to wait. All together it took one and three quarters hours to get from our house to the RTC, and a few minutes longer to access our daughter-in-law.
For your information, Bay #1 is on the south side of NE Pacific Street; directly across the street is Bay #2, where the 542 Redmond bus returns. Bay #4 is on the west side of Montlake across from the stadium, and Bay #3 is on the east side.
Coming home, we could have been taken back to the RTC, taken the 542 bus to Bay #2, walked up past the black W and caught a Metro bus to our car near Children’s–we could have done that, but we didn’t. Our son drove us back to our car, crossing on the new 520 bridge. Next time we visit Redmond, I think we’ll take our own car.
Special to Laurelhurst: these buses (31, 32, 65, 67, and 75) go from Sand Point Way and 40th NE to Rainier Vista on the U of W campus, the drop-off spot for reaching Light Rail and Metro and Sound Transit buses that leave from Bays #1,2,3,and 4.
The Laurelhurst bus 78 does not stop at Sand Point Way and 40th NE, but it does stop at Rainier Vista. Metro refers to the area around the Light Rail Station and the University Hospital as “University Station.”
Of all the printed bus schedules for buses that go to Rainier Vista, none shows a map of University Station. Only the printed schedule for bus 78 has a map of University Station, with all its bays.
Goldie has also published several books, one about a year ago, called "Show Me Your Face," about a woman who moves to Seattle to take a job in a shelter for abused women.
Goldie has written other books - ones called Backpacking With Babies and Small Children, and Camping With Kids.
Those books, Goldie said, came about when she had joined a group of women in a support group for displaced homemakers who wanted to get back into the world of work.
Goldie has also written four low-fat, low-salt cookbooks. She said the most successful one, called No Salt, No Sugar, No Fat, published by Nitty Gritty, "is still around, mostly seen in gift and kitchen shops."She got the idea for that book from a friend, Jacqueline Williams, who wanted to write a cookbook to share what she had learned in cooking for her husband, Walt, after his first heart surgery.
"She had no experience writing books so she asked me to help," Goldie said. And they wrote four cookbooks together.
Goldie has also written several books in a series called the Phoenix Reading Series (remedial readers) based on research done from reading newspapers on microfilm or microfiche and published by Prentice-Hall.
Goldie said all the writing " took place over many years, beginning 1975. Now I write the occasional blog and I'm working on my memoirs.
For more information about Goldie's books and her blog go here.
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