Tuesday, August 23, 2011

videoBeaverton bike&ride report

KEEP ON PUMPING OUT THE PROPAGANDA

There were 8.5 million trips taken on TriMet buses, MAX and WES Commuter Rail in July, with overall weekly ridership up 2 percent compared to July 2010. Weekday trips on the MAX Green Line increased 15.5 percent and increased 16.5 percent on WES. Rush hour trips were up 2.5 percent on all modes; bus ridership was flat. All figures below are compared with July 2010.

~~~>Listen to a day of bus dispatch calls and it is amazing anybody is riding our crappy bus service.

Service is infrequent, buses are late or not showing up at all, loads of non-air conditioned equipment. I wouldn't rely on this bus service if I had a choice.
Congratulations Trimet, you've done a very good job extolling your virtuous and wonderful light rail service, at least with your deceitful statistics.

The real deal:

The buses haul most of Trimet riders at 1,103,500 or 55%.
The green line hauled 51,500 trips or a measly 3% of all Trimet riders.
The WES hauled 8,100 trips or less than 1% of Trimet riders.

The WES and the GREEN LINE are headliners in the Trimet ministry of Propaganda news release. Will any media challenge it? NOPE!

COMMENT:

I'll take it a step further for you.

WES ridership (weekly avg):

May 2010 - 6300

June 2010 - 6600 (+300 over May)

July 2010 - 6950 (+350 over June)

Rate of change from May to July 2010 = +650. Not too shabby.

May 2011 - 8200

June 2011 - 8100 (-300 from May)

July 2011 - 8100 (no change from June)

Rate of change from May to July 2011 = -100.

Doesn't look as great when you lay out the numbers that way, does it? I think WES ridership has flatlined at its peak...

Bus stop sign/Burnside & St Claire

FACEBOOKS

50 m Joseph Voorhees: i swear everytime i hop on a trimet bus theres a family with like 8 kids. Damn!
1 h Julia Davidson: I wish TriMet would make these!
OI - Wearable Oyster Card by Benjamin Parton » Yanko Design

STREETCAR CITY

Types of Transportation | Streetcar City | Oregon Experience | OPB

TRIMET MANAGEMENT-SEND SOMEBODY TO METRO TO SEE HOW ITS DONE

At the age of seven and with 250,000 miles on their engines, Metro’s buses roll off the road and into rehab, a process that guts, fixes and replaces parts on the 40-foot-long vehicles and sends them out with a fresh coat of paint.
It’s a bus’s version of a midlife facelift.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/on-the-road-to-rehab-its-a-hard-life-for-a-metro-bus/2011/08/18/gIQAqNMWXJ_story.html

Bruning eyes Milwaukie for Rivers-style project

http://www.clackamasreview.com/news/story.php?story_id=131362032350445700

DC METRO DRIVERS WIN BIG AGAINST THEIR MANAGEMENT!

Metro union workers to get pay raise soon

By Dana Hedgpeth

Metro’s union president said workers will likely receive pay raises by the end of September after a long fought battle.

Muni dispatch violated rules before fatality

The Muni driver who struck and killed a 23-year-old woman in a Castro district crosswalk Friday was driving his bus to a new assignment along a route he picked on his own after dispatchers at central control allegedly failed to give him specific directions - an apparent violation of Muni policy, the transit agency's spokesman told City Insider on Monday.

VIDEO LOG-AUGUST 22 (part 2)

I SUBMIT MY 5TH REQUEST FOR SAFETY ASSESSMENT-SICK TIME POLICY

So far I have one win and three losses:

protest against BART becomes violent

http://rt.com/usa/news/protest-bart-violent-police-715-993/

Parsons Brinckerhoff gets some TRIMET boodoggle money!

http://www.progressiverailroading.com/passenger_rail/news/TriMet-contracts-Parsons-Brinckerhoff-to-design-lightrail-maintenance-facility--27716

ONE OF MY REGULARS GETS HASSLED BY A FARE INSPECTOR

I'm filing this complaint against employee Nancy XXXXX ID XXX, for the way I was treated. Mrs XXXXXX asked me if I could read, and when she looked at Honored Citizen she said she understood. I was giving a Notice of Exclusion for smoking,which I was and take full responsiblity for actions. The way Mrs. XXXXX treated me was very rude and inappropriate. I don't know what Trimet's laws are, but I feel a warning would have been more then sufficient.

I agree that handing out fines for first time offenders is just government out of control. Everybody deserves one warning no matter what the violation given the fact that TRIMET had a 'anything goes' policy for over 40 years.

Ten years of Portland streetcars (actually, more like 63)

Some were skeptical of the streetcar from the start. Factoring in platform stops and minor delays associated with mixed traffic operations, the average speed from one end of to the other is between seven and 12 miles per hour. The average speed of a person walking is three miles per hour. So if you pick up the walking pace just a bit, chances are you can be faster than the streetcar. What's more, streetcars usually go where buses already went, and bus lines are much cheaper than streetcars. What's more, although Portland has branded itself America's streetcar capitol, it's not as if people have given up their automobiles in droves. The streetcar seems to symbolize for some how Portland's central city is a kind of urban boutique while its outer neighborhoods and suburbs are more or less as automobile dominated as Anywheresville, USA.

http://chatterbox.typepad.com/portlandarchitecture/2011/08/ten-years-of-portland-streetcars-actually-more-like-63.html

RANTINGS OF A FORMER TRIMET BUS DRIVER