Bus bullying

Since a $15 per hour minimum wage would likely put these small fry out of business anyway, Metro transit is thinking about taking away their customers' access;

Tim Ley owns Seattle Natural Mattress on Aurora [Avenue N.],  and is fighting SDOT over a plan to take away the only parking he has in front of the shop. The city has told him it may need those spaces to extend bus-only lanes several additional blocks.

"They are going to measure how much time the buses save going this two and a half blocks," Ley said. "If they save enough time they are going to take the lanes, and they don't care if we all go out of business."

SDOT analysts say the effectiveness of the bus-only lanes is still being studied and some traffic lights need to be re-synchronized before they can measure if the commute has actually improved.

.... Aurora merchant Peter Toms says he can't risk his business over a bus lane experiment.

"There's a whole row of businesses over here, that are just small microscopic businesses that are keeping families alive, and they are being very adversely affected by these policies," Toms said.

Their ex-employees will be better off not being exploited.