Trimess

Thursday, November 30, 2017

Greg Larson


Some of my favorite transit geeks


These are a few of the people that make transit blogging fun for me.
Trimet employees don't understand why I do any of this, you know why that is?
They are not transit geeks!

Wednesday, November 29, 2017

Why does Trimet say they are getting $35-40 million from the state while the state says its $71 million

The answer is simple and its standard operating tactic at Trimet. 
They are low-balling and holding money back from the public. 
They've done this before


Sunday, November 26, 2017

Deken N’ Blue-part 2


Rest in peace Michael Oliver

Jarrett Walker at the Trimet board meeting part 4

CLICK HERE!

Should "we the people" support tax increase referendums?


Citizens are always being asked to hand over their hard earned money to government for various purposes, always advertised to the public as having some public good. 
But we citizens see very little coming back to us if anything at all from all the these tax measures.

There is a very simple litmus test that should be used by every citizen who is voting on tax increase referendums

Saturday, November 25, 2017

Friday, November 24, 2017

From the drivers side

Transit consumes its workers. From the time we wake up until we can rest again, our bodies are tuned to the hum of 40,000 pounds on six wheels. It's not always a job you can leave behind, especially after a particularly rough day. It follows us home and haunts our dreams. There are times I awaken in a fit of terror, seeing what could have been had I not prevented it. Before you recover from one dream, the alarm sounds the start of yet another day's adventure. "Rinse and repeat," I call it, because as soon as you've washed the previous shift off your skin, another is about to begin.

Wednesday, November 22, 2017

Henry Beasley

Just to keep up on the issues of assault, there are 2 previous incidents that did not get added.

11/3 Assault (spitting)
11/4 Assault (spitting and physical contact)
This is #82 and #83.

Tuesday, November 14, 2017

ATU757 changes the voting rules

If you attended  the March 2016 union meeting you already knew this. 
Union meetings usually get between 50-100 people. 
There are  approximately 2500 union employees at Trimet so meetings have attendance by 4% of union members.
 That means 96% of Trimet union members were unaware of this change..

What has happened is that the bylaws were changed (by the 4%) to split the Trimet members into 3 distinct sectors. 
Transportation-Maintenance-Salaried.
 When a contract is presented to the members each sector must vote yes or the contract is not approved. 
The VAST majority of the members are drivers but there is no longer majority rule at our union. 

We have our very own version of the American Electoral  College. 
As we all know the electoral college was created to subvert the popular vote in our presidential elections.

Why has this happened? 
It appears the maintenance division was threatening to split from ATU757 so the leadership gave them veto power instead.

 As a retiree I don't get to vote on these contracts, even though the contracts affect me (and other retirees) directly. 
Now, my retirement as a Trimet bus driver can be controlled by a sub group of Trimet employees.

Its getting harder and harder to find reasons to continue paying dues to a union that doesn't allow me representation and subjects the majority to minority rule
  • Transportation, Maintenance, and Salaried divisions vote separately using ballots of different colors; Transportation’s ballots will be PINK, Maintenance’s ballots will be GREEN, and Salaried’s ballots will be BLUE.
  • To approve the contract proposal, a majority of members casting ballots in each of those groups must vote to ratify.

Friday, November 10, 2017

Trimet final offer

i know it's not perfect and outsourcing is bad, but i vote yes to this offer.
 It's more or less reasonable in my opinion
https://t.co/7TJpyp68xS

Shirley accepted the final offer, it goes to the voting members now

https://articles.oregonlive.com/commuting/index.ssf/2017/11/trimet_union_reach_tentative_c.amp

LA transit suffering the same sickness as Portland Trimet

That's the neoliberal takeover of public transportation exemplified by an almost religious attachment to high priced light rail projects while the people that actually need transit get left behind.

Jeff Roberts data pack-unedited


We have already examined this incident in great detail HERE, HERE and HERE.

Tuesday, November 7, 2017

More on Jeff Roberts


This is the paper trail of Trimet people that were involved in the "investigation" of this complaint its incredible.
A Huge list of people were involved with this whole thing!

 Even Neil Mcfarlane was on the list. 
Now why would Neil Mcfarlane be reviewing any operator related complaints?
 The only thing I can think of is formulating the Trimet public relations angle.
 And that supports my contention that Trimet used this incident to its advantage, and threw Jeff under the bus with malice.

We've all seen the DATA PACK and we've seen the KGW STORY  and it becomes obvious that this story had no business on the "news".
 It was Trimet public relations.
Thanks Dora Morgan for obtaining this information