The bag sign of nothingness.
The bag sign of nothingness. Charles Mudede

Anyone who has used Link over the past two years has surely seen a sharp increase in the number passengers holding, loading, rolling, watching luggage. Their number is going to rise even more because SeaTac is becoming one of the busiest airports in this country. (The Port of Seattle believes that 2016 is the year SeaTac Airport will enter the top 10 list of the nation's busiest airports.) And so we have Link trains that are more and more packed with bags, new people, and regular Seattle people. Sound Transit, however, has so far stuck to a minimalist program when comes to informing and assisting these new people. SeaTac/Airport Station is frequently a chaos of new people trying to make sense of the automated fare system. No Seattle people are there to help them. Security officers keep their distance and silence. The lines grow. Train after train is missed.

And once on the train, the new people plop their bags on chairs because they have no idea that they are supposed to occupy the space beneath their seats. And once at Westlake Station, where most of the new people exit, there is nothing, no one, no signs to help them find their way into the new city and its hotels and other transportation services.

It appears that SeaTac Airport and Sound Transit (both growing organizations) exist on separate planets, and between them is the nothingness of space. Into this space, the new people are thrown. Through this space, they drift with their luggage. On side, the airport, which is all about getting new people on the ground; the other, Sound Transit, which has put all of its faith in automated machines and signs. They want nothing to do with humans, who are always more useful to strangers than machines and signs.