NEILS BULLSHIT

Get out a barf bag before reading!

Over the last couple of weeks I’ve had the chance to visit the Beaverton Transit Center and Shelly Lomax joined me at the Clackamas Transit Center. This week I’ll be at the Gresham Transit Center. My goal is to reach out to riders and operators – and hear first hand our successes and shortcomings. No question, these last few years have been challenging for us all. These have been ‘nuts and bolts’ conversations about how well our system serves our customers. Here’s a sampling:

-    At BTC – a retiree from Lake Oswego was concerned about the bus shelter near his home (turns out it was privately owned, so we reached out to the owner). We also connected a rider from Gresham with our team that does customer information regarding new ideas and partnerships to create ‘apps.’
-    Also at BTC I met with a number of operators, concerns mostly focused around safety, but also frustration with the ‘tone’ between union and management.
-    At CTC – I met with a number of riders; most were quite pleased with the system – but there was concern about ‘missed’ transfers on occasion, and the long trip to Oregon City from the CTC.
-    While at CTC, I also had the opportunity to visit with our South Precinct lead, and a number of operators. I checked on the operation of our new hybrids (reliable, comfortable for customers, but lacking in some acceleration ‘oomph’).

At each of these – we diligently took notes and are working to follow-up on any specific concerns we hear.

You do great work every day shuttling over 300,000 trips from origin to destination – but no doubt we can always do better. That’s the real goal of these visits – hearing first-hand how our system works for every day riders. With this information – we’ll work to do better – every day.