It’s a foggy New Years Eve here in the South Sound. Hello and thanks for checking out Transiterranean, a Tacoma-centric transit newsletter-blog exploring commuting, food, drink, and destinations across the City of Destiny, Puget Sound, and beyond! I’m Michael Grass, a former journalist and communications professional who has lived car-free for about 25 years, including in Washington, D.C., New York City, Seattle, Bellingham, and now Tacoma. 

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Although I don’t frequently use Pierce Transit’s Route 1 bus stop at 6th Avenue & Alder Street, when I do venture out to Tacoma’s 6th Avenue Business District to run transit-oriented errands, grab a bite to eat, and shop at local businesses, I often end up waiting for a bus back toward downtown at this location adjacent to Grit City Books and the Sixth & Alder apartment building.

Given Pierce Transit’s less frequent weekend service on its highest ridership route, with buses every 30 minutes, running errands or grabbing a bite to eat can sometimes lead to a transit time-suck. If you’re hankering for a pupusa — or two — at Balcon Express on a Saturday (they’re closed on Sundays), the timing of your order may not necessarily align with the arrival of the bus at 6th Avenue & Alder Street as it might on a weekday, when buses are more frequent.

So you might end up waiting at the bus stop for 25 minutes because you couldn’t finish the last bite of pupusa goodness in time.

Of the handful of times I’ve used this Route 1 stop since moving to Tacoma, there’s always been a delivery driver (or sometimes, two or three) dropping off packages and/or food orders at the Sixth & Alder apartments. These deliveries end up blocking all or part of the bus stop zone and/or the fire hydrant. Sometimes, it’s just a quick drop off and the delivery driver is quickly on their way, so they don’t end up causing issues for buses and Route 1 riders here. Other times, they linger and do cause issues.

On December 21, when awaiting a Route 1 bus at this stop, this common delivery scenario happened again, with 1 minute before a bus arrival. I walked up to the curb to await the bus and gave a cold stare to the delivery driver when he left his vehicle and approached the entrance of the Sixth & Alder apartments. But my glaring stare of disapproval worked this time! (Or, at least, partially worked.)

The delivery driver, food in hand, returned to his car, seemingly recognizing that, yes indeed, he was blocking a bus stop. The driver then backed away from the bus stop. While I acknowledge the effort to try to alleviate the situation, the delivery driver’s course-correction didn’t make an iota of difference. While some Route 1 bus drivers will attempt to pull up to the curb when the 6th Avenue & Alder Street stop is partially blocked, in other cases they’ll simply stop in the eastbound travel lane, backing up traffic in the process. And that’s what happened two Sundays ago. I stepped out into 6th Avenue, boarded the bus, and went on my way.

On a Saturday in October, a similar scenario played out at the bus stop in front of the Sixth & Alder apartments when a Route 1 bus driver couldn’t pull up to the curb. While that wasn’t an issue for me, in this case an elderly woman who had been waiting at the stop, couldn’t easily navigate the curb and stepping up into the bus.

“Honey, you’re gonna have to help me up into the bus,” she said while assertively but politely taking my arm.

I gladly helped her. So arm in arm, we carefully stepped off the 6th Avenue curb and into the obstructed bus stop zone. The bus driver lowered the level of the bus-boarding doorway and I helped her step up into the Route 1 coach.

On December 22 during a lunch break, my curiosity brought me back out to 6th Avenue to see if delivery drivers were again blocking the bus stop at Alder Street. Sure enough, there was an Amazon delivery driver parked adjacent to the bus stop and fire hydrant. The Route 1 bus couldn’t pull up to the curb, so I had to again step out into the street to board. It makes you want to harness the energy of the 2019 Olive Way bus lane protest in Seattle, where bus riders stood in the bus-only lane waving red flags to block scofflaw motorists from using it.

The situation with delivery drivers at the Sixth & Alder apartment building is a clear example of where the convenience economy can inconvenience others, including those with mobility challenges trying to board buses here.

Here’s another example of a motorist’s unfortunate decision-making involving a local transit stop in Tacoma. In this case from Friday, a scofflaw driver in the Hilltop District parked in a downtown-bound Pierce Transit Route 28 bus stop on Earnest S. Brazill Street near Martin Luther King Jr. Way.

T Line station platforms took a beating in December thanks to wayward motorists damaging two station platforms in Downtown Tacoma.

On the morning of December 2, T Line service was disrupted due to a southbound motorist on Commerce Street hitting the corner of the Old City Station platform, taking out a light post and a security camera, which subsequently crashed down to the station platform. Sound Transit and Tacoma Police quickly responded, cleared the obstruction and restored train service through Downtown Tacoma, but the damaged light post at the station hasn’t yet been replaced. The point of the collision has been marked off with safety cones in the interim.

Meanwhile at the Theater District Station, a motorist clipped the southbound platform edge sometime during the weekend of December 13-14, damaging the yellow tactile platform-edge tiles. The ragged and wrecked platform edge has been patched up and no longer marked off with caution tape.

While that recent station damage is unfortunate, there is some related good news: The long-damaged platform railing at the T Line’s S. 4th Station, partially crumpled months ago presumably by another wayward motorist, was repaired in recent weeks.

Tacoma’s newest specialty bakery not only offers delicious cheesecake but also the city’s most transit-accessible cheesecake. BAS-QUE Bakery, which recently opened in the Dome District on S. 24th Street, just east of Pacific Avenue, features a walk-up window where delicious Basque- and Spanish-inspired pastries and baked goods are available for take away. There’s been no shortage of social media buzz around their recent soft launch but eager local influencers should hold their horses for the time being. In a recent Instagram post, the duo behind the new bakery — DJ Park and Seong Hyun Lee — said they’ll be taking some time off to assess their opening and reopen the second week of January.

Most people seeking out Basque-style cheesecake and other delicious things here are likely to drive to the Dome District, find on-street parking nearby, get their cheesecake, pastries, and photos, and drive away.

But BAS-QUE’s location is also very transit accessible, with important local and regional routes immediately adjacent.

It should be noted that although Tacoma’s Side Piece Kitchen prominently features cheesecake and is decently transit accessible being not too far from the Tacoma Mall Transit Center, those are only local bus connections, not regional.

A few weekends back, I ventured down to BAS-QUE on the T Line, walking one block over from the S. 25th Station. I picked up a slice of Basque cheesecake and went on my way.

Since BAS-QUE only offers a walk-up window, your only option is to take your cheesecake and pastries somewhere else to enjoy. S. 24th Street is a wide and somewhat busy thoroughfare and certainly not necessarily a place where you’d want to pause and enjoy a bite al fresco and linger. The closest park, Don Pugnetti Park, is immediately adjacent to massive Interstate 705 interchange with State Route 509, so given its auto-adjacent desolation, it’s not necessarily an ideal setting to enjoy a slice of delicious Basque-style cheesecake.

But nearby T Line and bus access allows you to bring BAS-QUE’s cheesecake and/or pastries into Downtown Tacoma or up to Wright Park. While relocating a bakery wouldn’t be an easy feat — nor is getting a new bakery off the ground in the first place — it’s not hard to envision that a walk-up bakery doing well in a more walkable part of Tacoma, like the 6th Avenue Business District, the Stadium District, or along Broadway in Downtown Tacoma, places with better opportunities for sidewalk seating.

The Chihuly Bridge of Glass, one of the few pedestrian connections spanning Interstate 705 and the BNSF railroad tracks between Downtown Tacoma and the Thea Foss Waterway, is currently closed due to damage to one of the bridge’s glass ceiling display panels, which in turn holds up beautiful glass art overhead. That’s certainly not a straight-forward repair!

Transit-wise, the Bridge of Glass provides a direct connection between the Museum of Glass and Sound Transit’s T Line trains, ST Express and local Pierce Transit buses at Union Station on Pacific Avenue. Otherwise, you need to cross the tracks and highway at E. 15th Street, the Murray Morgan Bridge’s stairway or elevators, or the E. D Street bridge near the Tacoma Dome Station, all which are indirect and inconvenient.

Hopefully there’s an easy fix to restore pedestrian access!

On December 17, Anna Zivarts, author of When Driving Is Not an Option: Steering Away from Car Dependency and founder of a Week Without Driving, shared a Bluesky thread of dispatches from using transit to go from South Seattle to Tacoma. Instead of backtracking north to Downtown Seattle in order to catch a ST Express bus south to Tacoma, Zivarts realized she could take the newly extended Link 1 Line to Federal Way Downtown Station and connect with a ST Express Route 574 bus to Tacoma.

However, with the 574, which currently gives Lakewood and Tacoma a direct express bus connection to Seattle-Tacoma International Airport via Tacoma Dome Station and Federal Way, buses run every 30 minutes. And as Zivarts experienced, the southbound bus departing the airport was running behind schedule.

Sound Transit is planning changes to the 574 in Fall 2026 to take advantage of the new Link light rail connection to the airport by truncating the route at Federal Way and boosting service frequency to every 15 minutes for most of the day. But in the meantime, Tacoma-bound transit riders using frequent 1 Line light-rail service to Federal Way may not have a well-timed transfer to the Lakewood-bound 574 bus given its current service levels.

While Sound Transit recently selected a development team for two Federal Way station-adjacent parcels, there’s not much currently immediately adjacent to the 1 Line’s southern terminus, besides numerous buses taking you to destinations across South King County and Pierce County. While that will change over time, hopefully there will be some more near-term station area activation efforts. Over at the northern end of the 1 Line, the coffee kiosk that opened in August near the Lynnwood City Center Station’s bus bays may serve as a good reference point.

One drawback with the planned ST Express changes involving the 1 Line extension to Federal Way: There’s no direct express bus service connecting the Federal Way Downtown Station to the Commerce Street Station in Downtown Tacoma, an important Pierce Transit bus hub. A transfer to the T Line or a bus at Tacoma Dome Station would be necessary. That isn’t necessarily the end of the world, but on Sundays when the T Line has reduced service levels with 20-minute headways, many Tacomans hoping to go to and from the airport via transit may end up with longer waits.

It’s been a dynamic December in Western Washington due to the series of atmospheric river storms that led to significant flooding across the region, including along rivers between Seattle and Tacoma that led to some localized evacuations and damaged homes and businesses.

State Route 167 was closed through Auburn and Kent due to the Green River’s floodwaters temporarily covering the busy expressway, leading to spillover traffic snarling Interstate 5 and other local roadways. But Sounder commuter rail service on the S Line thankfully was not meaningfully impacted by weather-related delays.

On December 12, I saw the flooding myself from a Sounder train into Seattle passing through impacted areas in South King County. The BNSF-owned rail tracks were safely above the reach of adjacent floodwaters allowing Amtrak and S Line trains to proceed through the inundated areas.

On December 11, however, afternoon S Line service was significantly disrupted when a BNSF freight train collided with an Amazon delivery truck at a level crossing in Kent. That led to S Line train cancellations during the evening rush hour and Sound Transit recommending commuters use ST Express buses and the 1 Line’s new Federal Way extension as alternate ways to get around the mess in Kent.

As a Reddit user commented on a r/KentWA post (that was also shared on r/Seattle):

It should be noted that the original r/KentWA post suggested a Sounder train had hit the Amazon delivery truck on the tracks when it was actually a BNSF freight train involved in the crash, something clarified by Reddit commenters.

One of the highlights of this holiday season has been working through a box of assorted chocolates and other delights from Tacoma’s Johnson Candy Co., which traces its history three generations back in the Hilltop District. If you haven’t stopped by this transit-accessible candy store on Martin Luther King Jr. Way, one block north of the T Line’s Hilltop District Station, you really should.

Transit agencies across the region, including King County Metro, Pierce Transit, and Sound Transit, will be offering free service on New Year’s Eve.

Have a safe and Happy New Year!