Transit Trip: Ride from Portland to Seattle on Local City Buses for Cheap

After yet another cycle of the traffic light far ahead, the River Cities Transit bus I’m on has barely crept forward on the off-ramp from I-5 in Woodland, Washington. I have a five-minute window to make my connection in Longview at 8:30am, but by the time we pick up passengers at the park and ride and get back on the interstate, Woodland’s early-morning rush-hour traffic has the 511 running six minutes late.

This is my first time on River Cities Transit, but my fellow riders on the little 10-seater bus seem like veterans. So as we veer off the highway again for a stop in Kalama and I watch the minutes tick away, I ask them if the bus I’m planning to connect to in Longview, the 45, usually leaves right on time.

“Oh, for sure,” they say. The driver has overheard, and asks if I’m hoping to catch it. Indeed I am. I don’t mention that I am in full Dusty Springfield mode (wishing, hoping, dreaming, and, despite my utter lack of religion, even praying). I left downtown Portland at 6:16am on an express bus to Vancouver’s 99th Street Transit Center, where (after a 45-minute layover largely spent at the nearby McDonald’s, enjoying a sausage biscuit, Wi-Fi, and a very clean restroom) I boarded the 511 at 7:30. And I have five buses to go on my quest to get all the way to Seattle on nothing but local transit.

A normal person would drive, take the train, or hop FlixBus or Greyhound, of course. Fancy folk might even fly. But expanded timetables among I-5 corridor transit agencies have made it…well, not convenient, exactly, but quite possible to go the whole way on local buses. Even better, many of them are free. So far I’ve spent $4 on bus fare: $3 on my Hop card for the express ride on Vancouver’s C-TRAN, and $1 in cash for River Cities, which includes a transfer.

I’m making my trip on a weekday because a lot of the buses, including the 511 I’m on, don’t run on weekends—something I learned when I first started poking around on Google Maps to see if this was even possible. I entered Pioneer Courthouse Square in downtown Portland as the origin and Pioneer Square in downtown Seattle as my destination, checked “Bus” as my preferred mode to avoid being routed onto Amtrak, and up popped this seven-bus option. Not fully trusting the Google overlords, I soon had tabs open with the schedule pages of a half-dozen transit agencies and was cross-checking arrivals and departures, marking down the times in a notebook as a plan took shape.

And I’m traveling on this particular Wednesday so I can go to a Mariners game (and, at my children’s request, hopefully arrive before the gates open at 4:40pm for a Funko Pop giveaway—the one tonight is in the form of pitcher Logan Gilbert). The Seattle team’s been on a hot streak since a fan paid an Etsy witch to help them “get their act together and start winning baseball games again.” The Etsy witch told the purchaser to “stay positive and accept the manifestation of the spell.”

So I’m staying positive about my tight connection. The 511 driver radios ahead that she has a transfer aboard, if the 45 might be able to wait a minute. A fellow passenger with a wheelchair is hoping to catch the same bus, and when we pull into the Longview Transit Center the 45 is still there, with its ramp out at the ready. (Apologies to the other 45 riders—several seemed to be taking kids to day care or kindergarten, and I worry we made them late.) I’m only on the bus for 10 minutes, to get to the Kelso Safeway, where the Purple line of Lewis County Transit will pick me up to go to Centralia. If I’d missed that, the next Purple wouldn’t come for nearly two hours. (In our modern era, of course, had I missed it I probably would have just ordered a Lyft for the short jaunt and crossed my fingers that there was a driver nearby—you know, staying positive, accepting the manifestation of on-demand rideshare services.)

The Purple line is not a bus at all, but a converted Dodge cargo van with seven seats in back. A man with a fishing pole is waiting with me at Safeway, and when the black van pulls up at 9am the driver beckons us to open the sliding door ourselves. The Lewis County service is free (one of many transit systems in Washington to switch to a no-fare system), and more daily trips were recently added, along with expanded service to the higher-elevation towns of Morton and Packwood, should I want to seek out adventures on Mount Rainier. 

At Centralia’s transit center, called the Mellen Street Energy Center (thanks to all the EV plug-ins), I have about 10 minutes to wait before the Olympia-bound Green line leaves at 10am. I wouldn’t want to spend too much time here: It’s just a big parking lot with a few little roofed bus shelters. There’s a bathroom building, but it’s for drivers only, with key access. I see a woman picking some late-season blackberries next to the bike path that runs between the lot and I-5, but there’s no other snack source in sight. It’s just off the interstate, which hides the view of a Subway, some gas station convenience stores, and a coffee shop on the other side. If I did get stuck here, they’re under a 10-minute walk away.

Nearly 50 minutes after the Green line sets off, I reach the Olympia Transit Center, a real oasis compared to Centralia’s, with restrooms and a fountain to refill my water bottle. A visit to each is needed after the Green line’s slow, twisting ride—this part of the trip feels the longest compared to driving, since the bus meanders through parking lots and work centers and government buildings in the state capital before it pulls into downtown. There’s no time for a self-guided punk rock walking tour of Olympia, because my express bus 600 to Lakewood leaves at 10:58—another freebie, as Intercity Transit has been fare-free since 2020. When I’d first plotted things out earlier in the summer, this bus had a different number and a slightly different departure time; some service changes took effect two days before my trip, and I’m lucky they were minor. Next time I embark on such an epic adventure I’ll keep a better eye on the news pages of transit agency websites and double-check schedules day-of instead of relying on what I’d jotted down weeks before.

I know I’ll have about a half hour to wait for my next bus, Sound Transit’s 594, which will take me to Seattle. But the 600 is running a little early when it reaches the SR 512 Park and Ride in Lakewood, and I see the previous 594 pull out right as we pull in, as Tiffany’s “Could’ve Been” plays in my head. Were I hungry, the park and ride is right next to a Wendy’s, an Argentine bakery, and a huge Mexican grocery called Tienda Y Carniceria Los Guerreros. I could easily be lured onto a local bus to explore more of South Tacoma Way, home to multiple other international markets and a soak-and-scrub Korean spa. But instead I get on the next 594.

By now I’ve put on my Ken Griffey Jr. jersey and have already chatted with a stranger about catcher Cal Raleigh’s historic season. When I board the extra-long, articulated 594 I’m greeted by a row of fellow fans in Mariners gear who are heading to the game, too. The fare is $3, deducted from the handy Orca card (Seattle’s version of the Hop card) I picked up on a previous trip and loaded with money online before I left.

As the 594 takes me on a little tour of downtown Tacoma, it again feels like the bus is taking a lot longer than a more direct driving route would. Once we’re sailing up the HOV lane on I-5, though, and entering Seattle via SoDo’s dedicated “busway,” I have the opposite impression. Had I been in my own car, I’d probably still be stuck on the interstate.  

The 594 deposits me at Fourth and Jackson right on time at 1:23pm, seven hours and seven minutes after I left downtown Portland. The seven-bus adventure took almost exactly twice as long as an Amtrak ride, assuming the train were on schedule. At $7, it was just a fraction of the price; one-way train tickets are in the $30–70 range. While my bus was waiting an eternity at that traffic light in Woodland, I noticed gas at the nearby Chevron was $4.59/gallon, so I work out that driving would have cost around $40, plus some astronomical amount to park in Seattle. (Parking prices vary, and there are a lot of apps to snag prepaid spaces; still, I’m pretty sure it adds up to a mortgage payment or a chunk of one’s soul or the naming rights of a first-born child.)

I have a few hours to grab a leisurely lunch and check into my hotel to drop off luggage. Sticking with the budget theme, I’ve booked a twin room with a shared bath at Hotel Hotel Hostel in Fremont for about $100/night, including taxes. I’m carrying just my baseball glove and other game essentials in a clear bag when I arrive at T-Mobile Park at 4:40pm, two hours before first pitch—I’m easily one of the first 10,000 fans and am soon triumphantly holding my new Funko Pop. Some people are in witch hats, and the jumbotron shows a man holding an “I believe in the Etsy witch” handmade sign. It takes 13 innings (a witchy number, yes?), but the Mariners win their fifth game in a row.

I hadn’t planned to go to a second game on my short trip. But the next day, after some work meetings with colleagues at sister magazine Seattle Met, some intense browsing at used bookstores, and a water taxi ride from West Seattle to the downtown waterfront ($5.25 on the Orca card, a pretty cheap tourist treat), I realize I’m tantalizingly close to the stadium and the game is just about to start. I pay $10 to leave my backpack in a locker at a snack stand on Occidental Avenue right next to the ballpark and score a cheap last-minute primo seat, right near first base. Twelve innings later, I’m feet away from the Gatorade and bubble gum and shaving cream pies hurled at rookie Harry Ford after he hits a walk-off sacrifice fly for the team’s sixth straight win.

It’s nearly 11pm when I walk out of the stadium. I can sleep in a little in the morning. Working backward from when the 511 leaves Longview at 4:30pm, I know I need to be on a 594 from downtown by 11am. The trip south is a few minutes longer than the trip north, and includes a wait of almost an hour in downtown Olympia—a little more interesting than where I had my longest wait on the way north, at Vancouver’s 99th Street Transit Center. The Kelso–Longview hop is bus 46 instead of bus 45, but other than that the routes match up.

Before I doze off, though, I check the Amtrak website and spot a $27 option that will get me home by lunchtime, so I can triumphantly present my Logan Gilbert Funko Pop to the kids when they get home from school. The family-friendly timing and saved hours, plus an on-board bathroom and café car, lure me in, and at 8:55am the next morning I’m on Amtrak Cascades.

Instead of riding all the way into Union Station, I plan to get off in Vancouver, a little closer to where I live in North Portland. About a half hour before I get there, I schedule a ride on the Current, C-TRAN’s on-demand service available only in certain areas, including the area around Vancouver’s Amtrak station, which is otherwise not serviced by local transit. (I still have the Current app on my phone from a trip to Ridgefield last year; I could have arranged this pickup by phone, too, if I didn’t have the app.) While other Amtrak passengers wait for pricy Ubers, my Current driver picks me up at the station and, for a whopping $1.25 on my Hop card, drops me off a few minutes later on Vancouver’s bus mall, where I catch C-TRAN to the Yellow Line MAX. By 12:30pm, my Logan Gilbert Funko Pop and I are home.

I might have taken the easy way back on my return trip, but I can imagine a time when I’d take another seven-bus adventure, and not just to save a little dough. If the Etsy witch has her way and the Mariners go far in Major League Baseball’s postseason, all those train tickets will be snatched up and traffic will be an even worse nightmare than it already is. And when the men’s World Cup hits Seattle (along with 15 other North American cities) next June, fuhgeddaboutit.