Macfarlane's absurdity

TriMet's sparsely attended Twitter town hall; transit study; Oregon's windshield obsession; and bus crash video: Commuting roundup | OregonLive.com

 TriMet promoted Thursday night’s virtual Tw-on hall with General Manager Neil McFarlane as if it were the agency's moon-launch moment on Twitter. I’m not sure the event managed to leave the Portland skyline.

McFarlane started the 6 p.m. #askneil Q&A conversation in bursts of 140-character-or-less messages with one simple rule: “We have one hour, so I’ll try to answer as many questions (one question per tweeter) as I can before 7 p.m.”

Of course, that one-question-per-tweeter rule stalled out as soon as McFarlane realized TriMet riders weren’t exactly clamoring to drill him on budget issues in the middle of the evening rush hour.

The GM wound up answering (or, in some cases, not answering) multiple questions from the same handful of tweeters. There seemed to be just as many transit haters as riders hurling tweets.

For the most part, the queries stuck to trying to make sense of how TriMet is once again running on red ink even as ridership grows. Among other things, McFarlane hinted at the agency working on options to pay fares electronically and making money by selling ads on its website.

But many comments and questions strayed into the misinformed, conspiratorial, union-bashing and wildly hyperbolic (“ChargerJeff” claimed 80 percent of Clackamas residents oppose light rail, before changing that figure to 71 percent and eventually dropping the issue altogether).

In the end, McFarlane signed off with: “You can provide your feedback in person, if you prefer. We’re holding open houses in February. #askneil"
Fortunately, the MAX FAQ’s blog archived the entire conversion.