Trimess

Monday, February 28, 2011

Why are low floor buses being run on low volume routes?


There are routes on the west side that desperately need low floor equipment and yet I see this kind of inequitable bus distribution everyday.

2 comments:

Al M said...

They make a big deal out of transit "equity" when the fact of the matter is there is absolutely no transit equity at Trimet!

Erik H. said...

I thought the 29s were assigned to Merlo, so what's a 29 being run on an eastside route?

The real issue is that TriMet has standardized on the 40' bus when it needs a variety of buses. Lines like the 22 should be using smaller buses like the Optima Opus bus that C-Tran uses or the Eldorado EZ-Rider that Cherriots uses. TriMet had purchased the World Trans 3000 buses which unfortunately was a failure but not because of the bus size, but because of the engines in those buses catching fire.

Likewise, TriMet refuses to buy articulated or double-deck buses on routes that desperately need higher capacity. The 12-Barbur, for example, has crush loads during off-peak hours. The 76 bus is almost consistently standing room only, even on Sundays.

King County Metro is a good example of a transit agency that has a wide variety of fleet models for various routes and purposes, even using cutaway buses on fixed route services (TriMet did this in the late 1990s.)

When it comes to bus service, TriMet hits a strike ball and then walks off the baseball field instead of trying again or reworking the situation; when it comes to rail projects, TriMet forces the game into extra innings until they win, even if they're already ahead by seven runs at the bottom of the tenth.