Another West Seattle bus stop gets a shelter

The photo is courtesy of the office of County Council chair Joe McDermott, sent with his announcement of two new bus shelters. We’ve already reported one – the RapidRide stop on southbound 35th SW, just moved back to its permanent spot south of Avalon, after more than a year at SW Snoqualmie during construction of mixed-use Aura. The newly installed shelter in the photo is on westbound SW Morgan, just west of 35th. McDermott’s announcement points out that this is kitty-corner from the West Seattle Food Bank and was the last shelter-less stop at 35th/Morgan: “The West Seattle Food Bank serves some of our most vulnerable residents. This new shelter will make it both easier and safer for those who use the bus as transportation to and from the Food Bank.” He tells WSB he first heard about the shelter-less stop at a fundraiser for the WSFB, whose executive director Fran Yeatts is quoted as adding, “Having a covered bus stop so these individuals can wait for the bus out of rain will be a very, very big help.” According to Metro’s website, fewer than a fourth of the system’s more than 8,000 stops are sheltered.

Jeannie September 19, 2016 (10:43 pm)

Off-topic a bit, but that’s a damn cute dog!

WSB September 19, 2016 (10:47 pm)

Because the photo wasn’t big enough to isolate at the top of the story, I didn’t have a format spot for the caption but, since you mention it … the dog’s name is Zuko, and its human is a Food Bank employee, according to CM McDermott’s announcement. – TR
Curate September 21, 2016 (7:11 pm)

I was thinking of posting the exact same thing! And calm and sweet looking, too. Gotta have some hound in him/her.

Michael Taylor September 20, 2016 (8:23 am)

Kudos to Joe! The specifics of the story were that the Food Bank had as their featured speaker a star volunteer and user of the food bank. In a beautiful speech on other topics she very casually mentioned the difficulties of other folks who take the bus from senior housing to the bank and then sometimes are standing in the rain with bags of groceries waiting to get home.

Before a couple of us from the West Seattle Transportation Coalition could even grab Joe to lobby for such an easy example of “low hanging fruit” that’s cheap to implement but can have a big impact on transit riders, Joe had already texted his legislative assistant that they could get to work on it first thing on the following Monday morning!

Now that’s the kind of elected official we want to keep in office!

And it turns out she almost left it out of her speech, but Fran told her to keep it in as an example of the personal challenges folks face every day.