SCOOTER
ORIN, Vespa GTS 250ie
Time 1 hour, 4 minutes, 20 seconds
Distance 23.1 miles
Fuel Cost $0.86
Other Vehicle Costs, including amortized purchase $1,650 for 9,000 miles of use per year
Stress and Discomfort Low
Fun Factor High
I took I-90 to the rendezvous and had one scary moment when a Sound Transit bus passed on my left. The turbulence felt like a giant hand grabbing my left sleeve and tugging as hard as it could. I zipped north on 228th until I reached East Lake Sammamish Parkway, where a construction flagger held back traffic. And held. And held. Finally the flagger released us. The parkway was pleasantly twisty and pleasantly cool, though the temperature gauge read 80 degrees. Lake Sammamish is a nice air conditioner.
I turned into Marymoor Park, a promising shortcut, and soon realized I should have stayed on the arterial. The speed limit was 25 miles per hour, and wherever there wasn’t a speed bump there was a stop sign. I inched along behind a cautious green Corolla and eventually reached West Lake Sammamish Parkway, Overlake, and State Route 520.
I motored merrily along in 520’s HOV lane, passing traffic in the general lanes like it was standing still, because it mostly was.
The diamond lane gave out on the bridge deck, but so did the jam. I turned off at Roanoke, swung around the south end of Lake Union, slowed for more roadwork downtown, and parked beside two Harleys in the carpool parking area around the corner from the Seattle Met offices.
I could knock at least five minutes off my time by tweaking the route, in particular by avoiding Marymoor. Maybe more if I had GPS with traffic alerts and could avoid all that roadwork.
Published: November 2009
Great article, but the scooter guy turned in a really pathetic performance. Everyone else took I-90, so why did this guy make the boneheaded choice to go up Lake Sammamish to Hwy 520? If his scooter was fast enough to get him to the starting point via I-90, why not take that route back to Seattle? If he had, he could’ve used the same HOV lane as your carpoolers, and probably won the Derby. As it was, he barely beat the cyclist (who stopped a few times for sightseeing!). That is so many flavors of sad, it’s not funny.
Motorcycles and scooters are efficient and fun alternatives to the ‘cager’ grind, and they can seriously reduce parking congestion downtown as well. Too bad you couldn’t have found someone with a little more ‘street savvy’ and common sense than this loser.