(in no particular order...)
#1: Highway 99W outbound, south of Tualatin River bridge - there are two very large apartment complexes just across the highway, but to get from this bus stop to the apartments requires sprinting across four lanes of a divided, high speed highway with no safe crossing anywhere nearby.
#2: Barbur Boulevard outbound, north of I-5 - a bus stop sits on the north side of Barbur with no crosswalk whatsoever. The nearest traffic signal doesn't have a crosswalk signal or a crosswalk, since the sidewalk on that side of the road doesn't extend onto the I-5 overpass - or, anywhere except for the bus stop.
#3: Barbur Boulevard inbound, at Parkhill Drive - a bus stop on the east side of Barbur where the only destination is on the west side of Barbur. No crosswalk whatsoever, no safe boarding place except the shoulder of a high speed boulevard, just minutes outside downtown Portland.
#4: Naito Parkway inbound at Harrison - this barely paved bus stop frequently is muddy and offers nothing for riders - yet, it's in the heart of downtown right next to the most unnecessary Portland Streetcar stop, yet the Streetcar stop has a full paved platform, lighting and shelters, as well as Transit Tracker signs.
#5: Harrison outbound at 2nd Avenue pedestrian path - absolutely nothing. Barely ADA accessible - and this is next to one of Portland's prized apartment-turned-condo developments. But the Streetcar stops are awfully nice.
#6: Barbur Boulevard/4th Avenue inbound at Carthurs - this bus stop is located IN a driveway. Does it make sense to have waiting passengers wait in a place where cars will drive into them?
#7: N.E. Broadway inbound at 17th - At least this stop has a shelter, but it's in a tiny location requiring the buses to block a driveway. It'd make more sense to have the bus stop across the street to the west, where bus riders could at least wait in front of businesses that should be bus rider/pedestrian friendly, instead of in a parking lot.
#8 and #9: Broadway and Grand. The worst place for a bus stop is at a gas station - why would a bus rider need anything at a gas station? And here's two bus stops - the #9 stop doesn't even have a shelter. On the plus side, transfers should be a breeze...for the huge number of riders transferring from the #9 to the #6.
#10: Front Avenue at 15th. You'd think they could extend the sidewalk another 40 feet...this is the edge of the Pearl District, after all...
#11: Front Avenue at 19th. This bus stop is marginally better, now that the railroad spur between Front and the Dockside Saloon is abandoned and paved over, but seriously - TriMet expected riders to stand on a railroad track to wait for a bus.
#12: Front Avenue at 21st. Here the railroad tracks are still there (although disconnected). But very ADA inaccessible.
#13: Front Avenue, 3800 block. Yes, you are expected to stand next to an active railroad track. Did TriMet not think that Operation Lifesaver actually means something besides around WES?
#14: T.V. Highway at Cornelius Pass, eastbound. This one is interesting, considering that Rick Van Beveren owns the Reedville Cafe just behind this view. Oh, and he's a TriMet Board Member. I guess he must not ride the bus often to see this bus stop across the street from his own business.
#15: S.W. Watson at Broadway and Farmington, southbound. This is in downtown Beaverton yet it's a very plain jane stop - hardly "welcoming" or inviting to people who might want to walk around the pedestrian oriented downtown core.
#16: Scholls Ferry Road inbound at 88th Avenue. Passengers are expected to wait right at the intersection; there's no sidewalk and thanks to the guardrail, must stand literally on the roadway. This isn't no residential side street.
#17: Hall Boulevard nortbound at 217 offramp. This is the bus stop for the Hall/Nimbus WES station. It's in the middle of a driveway for an ODOT storage yard. While TriMet finally built an improved bus stop on the other side of the WES tracks, the #43 still has to stop here because there isn't enough safe distance for the #43 bus to make a safe lane change and turn left at Nimbus.
#18 (and probably 20 others): Garden Home Road. Many stops on Garden Home served by the #45 bus are in locations with no sidewalks or shoulders. This one at least has some sort of a shoulder, but definitely not ADA accessible. Sucks when it rains.
#19: S.W. Troy Street at 35th outbound, Multnomah Village: There's no way a bus can get to the sidewalk, so bus riders are forced to board/deboard in the middle of the street, once again at a driveway.
#20: Taylors Ferry Road inbound at 74th Avenue. On a corner of an intersection in a drainage ditch; riders are forced to stand on the roadway with no shoulder.
#21: 12000 block S.W. Lesser Road. There's a bus stop for the #78 bus on both sides of the road here. Exactly where do you safely wait for the bus?
5 comments:
Erik:Good job on all those stops as I have driven them all.Check out the stops on the east bound #12 Sandy from 122nd Avenue to 158th as they are all big puddles and mudholes.Part of the problem out there is the city of Portland needs to pave the shoulders where we are forced to stop.
Hell of a comment Erik!
I knew Erik would come through. I say we award him the lunch with Mary Fetsch prize. We can even throw in an autographed picture of Operator of the Year Steve Fung for good measure.
Al had this wonderful stop that we saw last night - the stop was marked on a telephone pole that extended out from a ditch.
When you ride Amtrak Cascades north of Tacoma, the Amtrak/BNSF mainline parallels a road for quite a ways, which isn't exactly the most pleasant road.
But I noticed that EVERY Pierce Transit stop along the road had those bus stops that had the integrated seats (TriMet has just a couple of them; one of them is the outbound stop at Pacific Highway/99W and Dartmouth in Tigard), AND the push-button overhead and signal lights.
And the stops were generally in areas where there were no ditches, and there was a place for passengers to stand and safely board the bus.
For being on a crappy road, they went out of their way to at least try. They are still well below what I'd say is an "acceptable" bus stop, but it's far better than many of TriMet's bus stops where TriMet actually thinks it's OK to stand in the travel lane, or in a driveway, or in a drainage ditch.
Too bad that the voters up there turned down their tax levy, so Pierce Transit is going to cut a LOT of service. On the plus side for them, they have a lot of relatively new buses, so they'll be sending a lot of older buses to the scrap heap...who knows, maybe TriMet will buy some of them, because their oldest buses are from 1996 (Orion 5s) and 1998 (New Flyer C40LFs). Of course...there's the little issue that Pierce Transit is 100% CNG...and the first 66 C40LFs from 1998 and 2000 weren't equipped with air conditioning.
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