I used Twin Transit while staying in a hotel for a little over a week. This service operates only…read moreduring daytime hours (up to somewhere between 6:00 and 7:00 PM) during the week with limited service on Saturday.
There are four bus lines with transfer points for transferring between lines. I only used the Red Line, Bus Route 30. It routes through major points in Chehalis to include the Safeway Grocery then to the very cute old part of Chehalis, past the Fairgrounds, Wal-Mart, and all the way up to Amtrak.
If you are staying in any of the hotels on Interstate Street in Chehalis, it's a brisk half mile walk to the closest bus stop, which is Route 30. The stop is at the Safeway, but it's in the back, behind, on 11th street, and it's near the garbage container so a little smelly. On the other hand, if you are staying at any of the RV parks, they are too far away from any bus stop.
I found their schedules hard to read and somewhat confusing. For example, Bus Route 30 makes a complete loop. The Lewis County shopping mall is on Hampe Street, which can be accessed on both sides of this loop. The schedule does not make it clear whether the bus accesses the mall going north or going south on the loop. It doesn't even address WHEN it stops at this mall. From riding the loop, I discovered it DOES access the mall from both sides of the loop. Well, it would have been nice to know that on the schedule....... Another issue was that since it was a "loop," well, when the bus finishes the "loop" at the last "time point," does it start over again, or do they put another bus at "time point #1" at the beginning of the loop and you have to transfer to another bus if you happen to be on it going that direction? Found out it does keep going on the next scheduled loop, but it would have been nice to have that clarified on the schedule.
I think there are so many situations like this that it would make their schedule too complicated and they are just trying to keep it easy and keep the schedule to one page. Another rider on the bus kind of joked, "This is usual for Centralia/Chehalis, they give you limited information and you have to fill in the blanks....."
The busses are about the size you would expect but I was surprised at the small number of seats in the bus. They space the seats farther apart than the seats on busses in larger cities. Even a tall person can ride comfortably. In large cities, even though I'm short, I feel crunched in the seats, but on the Twin Transit bus, I had a lot of leg room.
