Trimess

Friday, May 11, 2012

YAWN.....

TriMet: Ridership continues to grow
 TriMet ridership continues to rise | TriMet Media

WES- 1700 weekday riders...divided by 32 trains (8 trains in each direction morning and afternoon, 16 morning and 16 evening trains)...

Average of 53 riders per train. That's impressive - FOR A BUS.

Lately TriMet/P&W has been running all trains as two-car trains. So...each "train" (car) has 80 seats, so 160 seats for a two car train. That's an average of...33% load factor per train!

What's worse...each Colorado Railcar DMU has three engines - two just to move the train, one for onboard electric (HVAC). Each bus has...well, one engine. The engines on the WES train I believe are 600 horsepower; on a bus it's closer to 300.

So TriMet is burning fuel for up to six engines to run at one time...for 53 riders? (And it takes two employees versus the one bus driver...)

I forgot, rail is ALWAYS more efficient...ALWAYS.(via Erik H)

8 comments:

Jason McHuff said...

Erik seems to be forgetting that some trains would have to have many more riders than 53 to get to that average.

Erik H. said...

And McHuff seems to also forget that some trains would have to have a LOT FEWER riders to get to that average.

And regardless - 53 is a miserable average when there's 160 seats on the train. And that's 53 riders PER TRAIN, not 53 riders on the train at one time - we all know many riders only ride Beaverton-Tigard, while others might ride Tualatin-Wilsonville. So the actual occupancy of the train is actually less.

But, hey, leave it to Jason to focus on the fact I wrote the piece rather than focusing on the facts. Jason has some sexual fixation on me and I don't get it. I like to focus on the facts. Jason likes to focus on me. Seriously, dude, I'm married. And even if I were gay, you're not my type. Get over me.

Jason McHuff said...

You need to calm down. I have zero interest in you. I wouldn't be criticizing you if I did, would I? And as I've said, I actually ignore a lot of what you say, and I'm not the only one who has an issue with you.

But it's very normal for some transit trips to be very full and some to be pretty empty. Unfortunately, you often have to run the empty trips to get the full ones. And considering that the trips are less than 30 minutes long, the rides-per-hour looks a lot better.

Max said...

" Jason has some sexual fixation on me"

Seems like a personal attack to me.

Max said...

I said "Erik whines" and that was a 'personal attack' that got edited out. However when Erik says "Jason has some sexual fixation on me" that's apparently not a personal attack.

Al, could you clarify the rules? I'm trying to follow this logic and it's not making a lot of sense to me.

Max said...

Al M said...
I don't recall Erik ever using personal attacks.

"Erik whines" is a personal attack.

Go after the information not the man.
Saturday, January 07, 2012 12:45:00 PM

Max said...

Maybe Erik has a sexual fixation on buses.

Al M said...

Haha...there are no rules for you guys....i'm retired remember