Here’s a logistics challenge Amazon can’t solve in a pinch: How to get hundreds of interns to its Seattle, Washington headquarters each day. So Amazon is getting some help from an unlikely place—a county government.
King County Metro is increasing the frequency of buses after hundreds of summer interns overwhelmed services on some routes, according to the Seattle Times, citing dozens of riders carrying identical backpacks with Amazon’s “smile” logo, which had been handed out to interns.
Amazon has at least 900 interns living in dorms at the University of Washington, but the total could number as many as 3,000, the paper said. The Metro has added at least two additional buses on a route near the university that runs toward Amazon’s headquarters.
Amazon runs four private shuttles between UW’s campus in Montlake and its own in South Lake Union, and expects that number to increase. There were long lines and full seating on those shuttles Wednesday morning.
“Amazon did inform us that their internship program was growing,” Scott Gutierrez, a Metro spokesman, told the Times.
Amazon may envision a future of driverless trucks and drones but troubleshooting a commute is a tougher task. Perhaps it’s a problem Jeff Bezos wants the interns to solve.