Efficiency in mass transit

This is a seven car Sounder train.  Each of its seven coaches can carry 162 riders.  That's a grand total of 1,134 riders.  Using a crew of just two, using railroad tracks used for dozens of BNSF and UP freight trains and Amtrak passenger trains.

That's efficiency.

Unlike TriMet's WES trains, that used seldom-used tracks that had to be extensively rebuilt (and now maintained at TriMet expense), whose (sometimes) two-car trains carry the same amount of riders as one of Sound Transit's coaches, using cars that have three diesel engines each in them and whose fuel economy (per car) is less than half that of a bus, but carries only twice the capacity of a bus.  A one car train (most frequent mode of operation) still requires the same crew (two) as this seven car Sound Transit train.

And unlike WES, Sound Transit's trains serve a very highly utilized transit corridor - Seattle to Tacoma (and Seattle to Everett), not connecting the fourth largest suburb to the tenth.

However, like WES, these trains sit parked on the weekends...how many highways are simply closed down between 9:00 AM and 3:00 PM?

Sound Transit oopsie...

Todays SEEN and HEARD on TRIMESS

Freakin chill out!

OPERATORS SQUEEZING EVERY NICKLE OUT OF HIGH SCHOOLERS

Yup, believe it or not many operators are actually enforcing the PDX high school pass that says can't use till September.

And then they wonder why Trimet and Trimet operators are so hated by the public.

They make $25/hour but have the nerve to squeeze high schoolers.

Just ask

GUESS WHAT THIS IS?

Lets play Light rail trivia. Guess what this is? A. a mess B. Trimet Maintenance of way management failure C. a light rail curve greaser suffering from lack of maintenance D. all of the above. Shhhh rail employees don't give it away. If you said D. you got it right. The splitting of the track maintenance crew in half to staff a graveyard shift has resulted in huge inefficiencies that managements ego refuses to address. Hence more and more maintenance is getting deferred. Don't blame the maintainers. This one strictly lands on managements door step. Don't step in the big pile of grease it will ruin your shoes

Signal problems

MUST SEE BUS CRASH VIDEO

Bus driver drives right into a house!

THE HIGH STAKES PROFESSION OF BUS DRIVING

LYNN — It is an experience familiar to most bus riders: a chase to catch a departing bus, desperate bangs on the door, the despair of watching the vehicle disappear into the distance.
But when an Everett man was left by a Route 455 bus outside Wonderland station, he sought revenge, police say.

2 1/2 years ago Steve Fung made this presentation to the board of directors

INSTANT REPLAY-Not only did the board ignore him, things have gotten progressively worse

Things are not good at MOW

If Trimet management wasn't treating the MOW crews like garbage and would change things back to where things were a couple of years ago you would see it return to where these problems at times were fixed in literally minutes.
As it is now screw Trimet I will never take a call.
As early as last year some of us in signals worked nearly a thousand hours of Overtime in a year.
Due to the changes management made I do not have one minute of OT in my year to date part of my pay stub.

Its managements prerogative to operate the business the way they see fit. But Overtime is not mandatory in maintenance and until they get rid of the changes they made most of us have agreed with each other to take no Ot. Don't blame the maintainers who for many years left their homes and families on a minutes notice to keep the trains moving with a minimal amount of delay, put the blame squarely on management where it belongs.

Letter to the editor

Budgeting. To run a household or a business it requires money, money of which we have to budget out. If something needs to be covered and can not be, one must "cut" into another budget area to accomendate the added expenses.

It takes ten years for a TriMet Bus Operator to be vested. Being vested is ideal, as it is full time work, pension fully funded excluding health care for a twenty year period. Every year TriMet management holds a public hearing, of which public can attend to their financial diffulty, needing to do some cuts. Does management listen? No, I personally say they do not. How I know? Let us see, I have went to one of those meetings and have personally spoke of a new plan providing TRIPLE of the billions of dollars they needed to save. Did they take that in consideration? No, it was talking to deaf ears.