WA: Seattle to Portland: What a 12-hour public transit trip looks like

There are many ways to go from Seattle to Portland.

You can catch an hour flight, go for a three-ish hour drive, jump on a 3 1/2-hour FlixBus or take a scenic 3 1/2-hour Amtrak train ride.

But how about a 12-hour journey across eight public buses and trains, with multiple stopovers in towns like Kelso?

That's what University of Washington epidemiology professor Simon Sandh pulled off in September.

I was like, what a great way to take a mundane driving or bus adventure into a full adventure where I got to explore all the different areas of Washington that I had not really ever seen or been to," Sandh said.

Along the way, he said, Sandh found how those small, rural transit systems serve as the "connectors" for so many communities.

I pulled off a similar trip last year, a 38-hour, 13-ride journey from Los Angeles to San Francisco. So, when I heard of Sandh's adventure, I knew I had to reach out.

Here's our conversation, which has been edited for length and clarity:

How did you go about planning the trip?

I just used Google Maps' public transit function, and it surprisingly popped up some information for how to get there, which seemed to coordinate fairly well with what was in a Reddit post.

According to the original Reddit thread, if you time it exactly right, I think you could get it down to almost half the time because you don't waste time on transfers.

But for me, I had time. I'm happy to take breaks in between. So I was kind of planning out where all of my long breaks would be and then figuring out if there are things to do around there.

How much of this journey was things that you had expected, and how much of it was not?

I want to say none of it. I've seen public buses before, but as soon as I got to Centralia, I was like, "What is going on?" All of a sudden, the buses become very different things. There was, how I call it, a baby bus, like half of a regular bus.

It gets even weirder afterward because from Centralia to Kelso, there actually was a real van.

I was also expecting there to not be that many people using the buses, but surprisingly, there were at least quite a few people. Some of them looked like they were regulars.

Were the people you were seeing the people you had expected to see?

Everyone had such a unique story for what they were doing on this bus.

There was one person who had brought their bike on, and they were in like full biking attire. There was another person who was homeless at the time, and they were bringing their cart full of material with them and pleading with the driver to let them on with the material because they had to get to a homeless shelter in Centralia.

There was someone who was a construction worker who was just coming from their construction job. And one of the stories I overheard was someone else talking about how they had just finished their shift, and they were going to one of their band practices.

That surprised me about my trip, too, that many people use those rural buses regularly.

The timing of these buses were impeccable. The passengers were there fully ready, knowing the bus is going to be here at this exact time. In some ways, taking public transit, even though there's less of it in those areas, if it's convenient for you, I think it's going to be one of the most timely ways for you to travel.

What did you see in your trip that you would otherwise not have seen if you were driving?

I would have never seen that dying mall in Kelso ( Three Rivers Crossing). The only stores that were left were quite a number of vintage thrift stores and comic book, sci-fi, geeky game stores.

But I was overwhelmed by the positivity from a woman at a store who was so optimistic about the future of the mall. She was like, "This is the best it's been in a very long time. She was urging me to stop by in December when there are so many stores scheduled to open.

Then we had a stop in Kalama (in Cowlitz County), and it had a tourist center. Why does this small little town have a tourist center? That led me down a rabbit hole and thinking about the histories of these little cities and towns.

Those experiences allow me a little bit more to connect with people in Washington, and especially my students, which has been really wonderful as well.

How did this experience affect how you think about public health?

Public health is not just about physically accessing clinics or care facilities. It's also, do you have health insurance? Do you have a job? How are you getting to that job?

Public health and public transit conversation is usually centered in big city areas, like how close are you from a health center or pharmacy? But for a less urban context, that conversation takes a very different shape.

Would you recommend others do this journey?

For sure. It's one of these journeys that is kind of mind-blowing in a lot of ways. It's an adventure of patience, mystery and adventure all wrapped into one.

How Sandh pulled off the trip

* 7:30 a.m.: Take Link Light Rail to King Street Station

* 7:55 a.m.: Take Sounder train

* 9:11 a.m.: Arrive at Lakewood Transit Center

* 9:20 a.m.: Take Intercity Transit 620 bus to Olympia Transit Center

* 10:04 a.m.: Arrive at Olympia Transit Center

* 11 a.m.: Take Lewis County Transit Green bus to Mellen Transit Station in Centralia

* 11:50 a.m.: Arrive at Mellen Transit Station

* 1 p.m.: Take Lewis County Transit Purple bus to Kelso

* 1:48 p.m.: Arrive at Three Rivers Mall in Kelso

* 3:40 p.m.: Take RiverCities Transit 45 bus from Three Rivers Mall to Longview Transit Center

* 3:52 p.m.: Arrive at Longview Transit Center

* 4:30 p.m.: Take RiverCities Transit 511 bus from Longview Transit Center to 99th Street Transit Center in Vancouver

* 5:25 p.m.: Arrive at 99th Street Transit Center

* 5:41 p.m.: Take C-TRAN 105 bus from 99th Street Transit Center to Southwest Fifth Avenue and Southwest Alder Street in Portland

* 6:13 p.m. Arrive in Portland

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