Why can’t I ride the bus to Point Ruston?

Q: Why is there no bus stop at Point Ruston? Is there ever going to be one? — Emma M., Fircrest

A: The long and winding road that is Ruston Way is the main obstacle, according to Peter Stackpole, Pierce Transit’s assistant manager for service planning.

“One of our biggest problems to serving that area is getting access to it,” Stackpole says.

Because Ruston Way is squeezed between the waterfront and the railroad tracks, there’s not enough room to easily work in bus stops. Even if there were, buses couldn’t go any faster than the traffic on the road, Stackpole says, so there would be little incentive for people headed to Point Ruston to leave their cars at home.

“Certainly, we as an agency recognize the need to serve Point Ruston,” Stackpole says. “The question is how we do it.”

Accessing Point Ruston along Ruston Way is the most direct route, but the other option would be going along North Pearl Street to North 51st Street. Either way, providing a route to the shopping center and apartment buildings would mean cutting service somewhere else, because the agency has a capped budget.

When realigning routes or creating new ones, Pierce Transit has to balance access and ridership, Stackpole says. Some parts of the agency’s service area have routes with high demand for ridership, while others are ridden less but preserved because they go through areas with high concentrations of people who do not drive.

“It’s kind of like a puzzle,” Stackpole says. “We like to be efficient and we like to put services where we’re going to get ridership, but we also have an obligation to put service where it is needed.”

The Downtown-to-Defiance Trolley does serve the area during the summer months. When Pierce Transit was scoping out the route for the trolley during the winter, they found a spot in Ruston where two parking spots were often empty and asked the town to cede them for a bus stop. The town has a policy of not closing parking spots without opening new ones, so it denied Pierce Transit’s request.

The trolley isn’t Pierce Transit’s first foray into providing service to Ruston. During the early 1990s, the agency ran the Commencement BayLiner route from the Tacoma Mall, through downtown, up the Schuster Parkway and out to Ruston Way.

“It was a pretty long route,” Stackpole says. “All the timing would get shot because it would get stuck on Ruston Way.”

That same problem would be a constraint now, too. The narrow roadway would mean a bus couldn’t burn time if it were running ahead of schedule, but also would mean it would be difficult to get back on time if it were running behind.

Bus access to Point Ruston is in Pierce Transit’s long-term plans, Stackpole says, and the agency is working with Metro Parks Tacoma’s Envision Our Waterfront project to find a fit for mass transit in the long-term development of Ruston Way around Commencement Bay.

If you’d like to make your voice heard on Metro Parks Tacoma’s Envision Our Waterfront project — say, to advocate for a bus line to the area — the agency is holding an open house at Court House Square, 1102 A St. #438, Tacoma, 5:30-7:30 p.m. Oct. 30.

This story was originally published October 7, 2018 at 8:00 AM.