When I recently moved I got a letter in the mail from King County Metro asking if I might want 10 free tickets to use the Metro bus system. Being that my line of work doesn’t really fit the definition of a standard commuting type I thought at first I’d pass on the passes. But then I decided it might be worth it to have these around so I can experiment with our bus system and to learn how efficient or inefficient it might be. When I travel to countries outside of the USA I like to use public transportation. Why not consider it here?
So, in the coming weeks I’ll be writing a few posts of my bus adventures. One thing I did find out already is that the bus that comes closest to my home has a direct line to the Kent Station area (a place I want to check out more) where I can get on the Sounder train. This could be a good thing for trips to Portland to visit friends or just get away for a weekend. We wouldn’t even need to use the car to get the train station. It might even be good for taking the train up into Seattle. Who knows until I try it?
What does the bus have to do with real estate? Well, transportation, or the lack thereof, impacts values of homes and also impacts where new construction might go in. If residents can’t get to job centers easily it can lower the overall value of a neighborhood because it causes people to rely solely on cars which raises the overall cost of home ownership, and renting. So it can impact the purchase of a home as well as rental property. We typically recommend our clients find investment property near corridors of transportation and in relation to job centers where possible. For new construction, there are limits on builders to make sure there is concurrency of new roads accommodate traffic of increased housing units.
If you’ve got a bus story or commentary on our public transportation system in the Puget Sound region, I’d love to hear it.
