Blue: The Transit Store -- now open!

Dropped by Blue: the Transit Store, Big Blue Bus' new eco-friendly transit store and customer service center, at Broadway and Third Street Promenade in Santa Monica today.

The spiffy new 900-square-foot space -- which opened Monday -- has all sorts of "Blue"-themed goodies, from beach towels to T-shirts (some are organic cotton) to rubber duckies to antique jewelry made of old bus tokens!

Plus, customer service people are on hand to help you with trip planning, maps, schedules and bus passes, or point you to the lost and found.

The store is super-cute and, being new, spiffy. And eco-friendly too! Counters are made of recycled paper, walls of renewable strawboard and painted with low VOC paint. The windows are designed to maximize natural daylight, and solar panels provide some of the power for the store.

Just to try out the service, I asked to add some money to my Little Blue Card. Unfortunately, the machine was on the fritz. They guy behind the counter said they would be happy to take my card, add cash, and mail it back to me when the machine was fixed, but I thought it'd be easier just to add cash the next time I got on the bus.

Not quite as helpful as I'd hoped, but then it is their first week open.... On the way out, I got some ideas for how to reuse all those bus maps I've collected over the months.

Blue: the Transit Store. 223 Broadway. Santa Monica. Monday through Friday, 7 a.m. to 6 p.m.; Saturday, noon to 6 p.m.

Photos by Siel