586 Bus - Commuter Transit as an Information Ground
I have been a long distance commuter for thirteen years, twice in my life having chosen to live forty miles from my workplace. I started riding the SoundTransit 586 Tacoma-Seattle express bus about two years ago. Although I have also participated in two longstanding van pools and four organized car pools, none of those experiences compares to the sense of community (and information-sharing) I have witnessed on the 586 bus.
We are primarily a group of University of Washington staff, students, and faculty, although there are plenty of non-UW riders, and we all choose to live in the less expensive, less glamorous city of Tacoma. We spend sizable portions of our days (60 minutes in the morning, 80 minutes or more in the evenings) on a bus on Interstate 5. For over two hours per day, we are trapped with each other, without access to food, water (except what we bring with us) or restrooms, and with very little control over our physical environment.
Certain customs have developed on the bus: the front of the bus, where a cluster of seats face each other, is known as the Living Room and is definitely the place for talking and sharing. The back of the bus, the Bedroom, is generally respected as a quiet zone. We discuss an amazing range of topics in the Living Room; since many of our riders are in the health sciences, I have witnessed debates and even mentoring between students and faculty in the fields of pathology, nursing, and anthropology. I personally gained information about the home-buying process (I purchased my first home six months ago) and had a fellow rider (a Certified Public Accountant) compare three loans I was considering. Probably the most humorous information-sharing story I remember was the rider who called the UW Suzzallo Library Reference Desk on her cell phone to back up her argument in a dispute over a factual matter.
Bus riders can join an official campus listserv for Tacoma commuters. We use the listserv for a variety of purposes: to form ad hoc car pools (especially if one has an unusual work/school schedule), to communicate about bus service issues (we have successfully lobbied for more buses to be added to the schedule, and a SoundTransit employee monitors our discussion so he can parlay issues back to management), and occasionally to follow up on bus discussions. Journal articles on topics as diverse as evolutionary theory and the construction of the ancient pyramids have been exchanged via the listserv. I am always pleasantly surprised by how much I learn on the bus!
Cass Hartnett, Librarian, University of Washington Libraries