SEQUIM — Young people who hang out around the Sequim Transit Center and bus station have for the most part remained there after classical music was piped in more than three weeks ago.
The music is an experiment by the city of Sequim and Clallam Transit to discourage teenagers and young adults from loitering at the corner of West Cedar Street and North Third Avenue, adjacent to the City Hall parking lot.
If successful, it could become a permanent fixture at both the Sequim and Port Angeles transit stations.
But the youths who have long socialized at the so-called “Half Block” said they are unfazed by the music and are likely to stay.
“It’s pointless because nobody hangs out there” under the loudspeaker, said one youth, a 16-year-old who identified herself only as Rebecca.
She said she has hung out at the Transit Center for five years after school.
Larry Lee, 16 and a Sequim High sophomore, called it “a waste of money for a sound system you can’t even hear across the parking lot.”
He thought he and his friends had the right to be there.
“This is a government-funded place, right?” Lee said.
“My parents pay taxes, so we should be allowed to be here like anyone else.”
Both students said they would not be deterred by the music, both operatic and classical.
A small group of teens huddled under the loudspeaker Friday afternoon to get out of unrelenting rainfall.
Asked if the music was succeeding in driving her and others away, a 15-year-old girl who declined to give her name said, “Does it look like it’s succeeding?”
The city official overseeing the experiment said it will be awhile before he can make any recommendations.
“It seems to be going well,” said Paul Haines, city Public Works director.
“We haven’t spent a lot of time studying it yet. We’re letting it reside for a while and see if habits change.”
Haines said no complaints have been heard about the music.
City employees installed an $800 Mosquito music system with a single speaker over the two locked restrooms and near a covered bench for Transit riders.
The speaker is computer-programmed to increase in volume when noisy buses roll in and out of the station.
Haines said his department is not drawing any conclusions or making any recommendations until they see and fully analyze how the strains of Bach, Mozart and Brahms affect the behavior of those who loiter at Half Block.
The city of Sequim, which shares the Sequim Transit Center with Clallam Transit, is joining Transit in the pilot project that, if successful, will be tried at The Gateway transit center at Lincoln and Front streets in Port Angeles, said Terry Weed, Clallam Transit general manager.
“If they’re not there for Transit purposes, we just want them to move on,” Weed said in February of young people who sit and sometimes smoke on the benches, prompting some complaints from public bus riders.
Whether the music will have any effect on the teens and young adults who for decades have hung out and socialized at the section of West Cedar Street has yet to be seen.
Youngsters at Half Block said they consider it a social scene, one that spans Sequim’s history over the past 40 years.
Weed said Clallam Transit is particularly concerned about loitering around the bus stop, staff lunch room and restroom area at the Sequim Transit Center.
Haines said if the experiment works, the city and Transit likely would install more speakers around the Transit Center, where the City Council meets semimonthly.
For now, Haines said, the music appears to be making the facility “a pleasant place to be.”
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Sequim-Dungeness Valley Editor Jeff Chew can be reached at 360-681-2391 or at jeff.chew@peninsuladailynews.com.
