Day Tripper

[November 29th, 2006] Ecologically conscious Northwesterners needing to shuttle between Portland and Seattle now have a biodiesel-guzzling alternative.

Thanks to a pair of enterprising twentysomething hippies, the 16-passenger "Shared Route" commuter bus debuted on Nov. 17 and runs Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays (go to sharedroute.org for more about the schedule, which also includes a regular stop in Olympia).

Shared Route's $30 charge for the 174-mile trip to Seattle is competitive with other carriers': The same trip is $29.50 on the Greyhound bus line and $36-$44 by train on Amtrak. Both those lines charge $5 extra for bikes, however, while that bike fee is included in the new bus's fare.

Also free on Shared Route's maiden run was a hug from the patchouli-reeking, dreadlocked driver, 24-year-old Benjamin Koenigsberg, a co-founder of the new service. "We're running a local business that represents the countercultures," Koenigsberg says.

Other counterculture touches inside: a half-foot plastic triceratops wearing Jamaican beads on a Rasta-colored scarf, and a sign that says "No smoking on bus (including cigarettes)."

"This totally reminds me of the Green Tortoise," said a female passenger who only went by "Onys," referring to the San Francisco-based bus line known for its communal atmosphere.

Shared Route's first run included passengers from all across the left side of the spectrum. Among them: a "game pad emulator" for Microsoft; a couple of recent high-school graduates working on various organic farms to avoid college; and Eric Lind, who just returned to the States from South Africa, where he was an activist working for apartheid reparations.

"I'm more likely to find community here than some impersonal Greyhound bus," said Lind, who spent the trip reading Rules for Radicals: A Pragmatic Primer for Realistic Radicals.

Shared Route's path began when Koenigsberg's 23-year-old business partner, Jacob Rosenblum, dropped out of Evergreen State College and eventually persuaded his anesthesiologist father in Portland to use college money for "venture socialist" projects. In this case, that's a $6,000 customized Chevy bus.

Aside from Shared Route, Rosenblum runs a hostel in Olympia while Koeningsberg makes his living as a nanny and bike mechanic.

The partners plan to bring in a second $6,000 bus for Shared Route, which is pronounced like the Hebrew word for service, sheroot. Rosenblum found inspiration for Shared Route when he took cheap buses around the world, including sheroot buses serving routes between many cities in Palestine and the Fung Wah bus company between Chinatowns in New York and Boston.

"The point is to make it fun instead of the corporate thing," Rosenblum says.