Dead by Trimet MAX

We never did get any details on this incident which is interesting.
I love the fact that mainstream media only gives us information THEY want us to have, the rest of it is blacked out.
Just more evidence to never pay any attention at all to mainstream media 
I guess the victim was not where they were supposed to be and had not much to do with Trimet engineering.
It appears that this was a suicide by Trimet .
I also hear that the driver is still in shock over this incident, it was gruesome
Listen to the traumatized operator HERE!
Listen to MAX coms HERE

Update: victim did not survive, now a death investigation and active crime scene, investigators enroute,

— Portland OR Alerts (@pdxalerts) November 29, 2015

Blumenaur stuffing his face at the Trimet board meeting

Sometimes I think Trimet managers INTENTIONALLY make the drivers job miserable

#trimet waits till winter to refurbish the Forest Grove Breakroom and provides drivers with this instead #fail pic.twitter.com/j6mKOzaWq8

— AL M (@AlYourPalster) November 28, 2015

The "Deacon in Blue" makes no apologies

Wow, what a week. First, this blog was reviewed by Jonathan at bikeportland.org. While on one hand I appreciated the publicity and many great comments which gave me insights from the cyclists' point of view. On the other I was amazed at how many of those readers are simple boneheads. They can't distinguish satire from reality, for one. Others are liberally-infused with an unhealthy dose of hypocrisy.

Read the full post here: From the Driver Side: Rants and Reviews

I've seen this happen way to often for it to be coincidence

I think they actually monitor our Trimet Scanner twitter feed .

Prolific bus driver Leonard James has left Trimet under suspicious circumstances

Leonard was one of the most popular bus drivers since I've been involved with Trimet. Loved by his riders Leonard was one of the best "old school" bus drivers. The "old school" means that drivers 'back in the day' (they are all disappearing now) drove their buses as they saw fit. Transit agencies allowed individual drivers to pretty much to do whatever they wanted in performing their tasks. It's only in the last decade that transit drivers have been subject to endless  interference from overly bureaucratized  transit management.  Rumor has it that Leonard was pretty much 'forced out' by Trimet management. They pretty much make life miserable if they want to. Yes this does happen at Trimet, as I myself can testify too. (This has been disputed by a union rep Gary Hernandez  but I have it from one of Leonards 'groupies' that Leonard did not want to leave.)   Leonard was involved in the  high profile "stabbing" incident which occurred on the bus 33. That incident is below the break along with a couple other videos I have of Leonard.
I always wondered why Leonard just didn't take work comp (90% of full wage) and just be done with Trimet. Well I knew the answer to that, Leonard loved the job. He loved the work and he loved his riders. It's fascinating indeed that there is not one mention of his leaving Trimet on his facebook page. If it was cordial I am sure he would have mentioned it there.
Good luck Leonard.

I don't trust this shady technology either

Steve Banta gets caught acting like a transit executive

 Remember Steve Banta? I sure do.
I liked the guy a lot. 
We had some good times together.

 It appears he has been spending tax payers money in vain. 
And he's not in Portland where the money flows like water, he's in Arizona which doesn't take kindly to democratic spending principles. The local paper did an actual investigation (something they don't do around here) into his spending habits and voilà, it turns out he's acting like a transit executive.I'd sure like to know what those extra checks to Mcfarlane totalling $10k+ were for.

This whole deal is basically nothing but sensationalism. Banta is guilty for not being clever enough to have these expenses within some 'shadow' budget. Like some sort of 'personal expense account' that he controlled fully without having to keep travel records. This is not unusual stuff for the transit executive class. Sounds like he had some enemies To me. As far as I am concerned Mcfarlane stealing that million dollars in secret raises (which compounds every year forward) was a far worse fraud than Banta's stealing some dinners and drinks. 

How is this possible?

This man occupies various offices whereby he reports to himself? Can that happen?

#ctran rep Roy Jennings writes a letter from himself to himself excusing himself from work Bizarre #ATU757 pic.twitter.com/Lwy9YGI19F

— AL M (@AlYourPalster) November 25, 2015

Jonathan Maus stirs the shit

Jonathan knows how to create controversy

Jonathan has been around a long long time, longer then even me! And he knows how to stir up the shit when he wants to. His blog BIKEPORTLAND is one of the top Portland blogs, if not the most popular blog in Portland. Anybody that has lived in Portland knows that the bicyclist community is more like a CULT and has tremendous political influence in this one party rule city. Maus has direct lines into all the influential political leaders.

Nothing in the media-as usual

Another assault

TRIMET refuses to provide even basic safety precautions at MAX pedestrian crossings

I contend that Trimet executives have intentionally ignored very basic safety equipment that could prevent most of these light rail tradgedies. Trimet executives would rather main and kill the public and traumatize it's operators than spend the money to stop these things from happening

Follow the DEACON IN BLUE!

This is one of the best Trimet operators blog to appear in a long long time. 

http://fromthedriverside.blogspot.com/

Bob Foster has left the building

Bob was one of the truly great bus drivers

Neil Mcfarlane: "We've improved system reliability"

Trimet max driver aint putting up with this!

#trimet #max operator says "i'm not gonna deal with this all day" https://t.co/TfATYA11JO and he aint kidding-earlier

— TriMet Scanner (@trimetscanner) November 20, 2015

And another Trimet accident

Portland - police responding to 5000 Blk N. Greeley - report of a pedestrian struck by a TriMet bus #pdxtraffic

— Portland OR Alerts (@pdxalerts) November 19, 2015

"Santa Bob" retiring

Bob Foster, a guy I liked very much while working at Trimet. One of my favorite people actually. Bob is also one of the few Merlo  people that still talk to me after the last ATU757 election.

Bob Nelson going back to New Mexico Mcfarlane hires fired Translink executive

Bye Bye Bob, you didn't do much did ya?

Good old Bob came back from New Mexico (I knew it was somewhere around there) because his buddy Neil Mcfarlane didn't want  to take responsibility for all the service failures anymore. Mcfarlane decided to create a brand new job called Deputy General Manager. As we know good old Neil did a hell of a lot of restructuring at Trimet. From my point of view (and others) Mcfarlane has been a disaster for Trimet. Service quality has gone down the tubes since Mcfarlane took over. Mcfarlane never had a clue how to run a transit system and all the old guard jumped ship over the last years leaving only Lomax behind. She's doing just as badly a job as the rest of them. Lucky for Mcfarlane and all his pals he (and them)  are  not held accountable for anything and the puppet Trimet board is finding as many ways as possible  to stuff Mcfarlanes's pockets on his way out. His contract is up next July, most likely will go away then and collect his huge pension and payoff. Maybe he can get a nice fat check from one of his crony contractors who he made BILLIONS for over his career at Trimet

Interestingly enough Mcfarlane has hired the ousted COO of Vancouver Metro's organization, Doug Kelsey. (and raised the salary of course)  Why is that interesting? Because Kelsey was thrown out of his job  because the public had lost faith in the transit system up in Vancouver . To make a long story short, the public didn't trust Kelsey so he had to go. You can read a couple of articles about Kelsey HERE and HERE and there is a video of the man below the break. He sure has the Canadian accent but does he have a green card?

Trimet pretends that parking problems at max stations is something new

Deception after deception. Amazing how easily the people of the Portland area are fooled by these expert propagandists

Another one gets hit by MAX

And TrimetScanner once again gets the information out to riders in a timely manner while Trimet is doing who knows what!

person may have walked out in front of #trimet MAX train and got hit by Goose Hollow

— TriMet Scanner (@trimetscanner) November 18, 2015

MAX Blue and Red lines disrupted due to a collision between a train and pedestrian in downtown Portland. Expect delays of 30 minutes.

— TriMet (@trimet) November 18, 2015

Confirmed-A Trimet bus did hit a pedestrian at aproximately 6:40 am Saturday

atu757 news

The savviest politician in Oregon

Yes its Earl Blumenaur, the Don of the light rail mafia. A key figure in getting pork from the federal government, now trying to  keep things rolling along here in Portland. This guy will have his congressional seat for life because there is never a challenge  against him. His carefully scripted "show" is a beautiful thing to watch. With his "nice guy act" and his "bicycle pin" he exemplifies the Portland myth. His schtick goes unchallenged in the mainstream media. Trimet just got a tax increase in case you forgot. But that's not enough for the light rail mafia, they need YOUR MONEY! AS MUCH OF YOURS AS THEY CAN GET!

 

When you drive a bus for Trimet you got stuff like this happening

'driver of another vehicle got out of their vehicle and through a glass bottle shattering drivers side window-WHOA! https://t.co/1JqZqOREQN

— TriMet Scanner (@trimetscanner) November 16, 2015

Trimet Max gets another victim

The good thing about the design of the MAX is that when stuff like this happens they ALWAYS can blame the victim and not the design. Pretty ingenious if you ask me

SW 170th remains closed b/w Baseline & Menlo Dr. Please use alternate routes. pic.twitter.com/jBvl8MtSHm

— TVF&R (@TVFR) November 16, 2015

Not a good day for Trimet

Alan Eisenberg on Trimet's deadly buses

Trimet bus 71 rider explains why Trimet fails

Always something

Things have only gotten worse since good old boy Bob Nelson came back

Neil's got his buddies and  he likes giving them nice  jobs. Bob here was supposed to improve service and we all know now that nothing has improved, if anything service has gotten worse. The scuttlebutt around Trimet is that Bob will be taking over for Mcfarlane when his contract runs out, which is next July. Bob was supposed to be "temporary". We know how that goes around Trimet. No need to be honest about things, nobody can touch any of them no matter how much they lie to the public

Another MAX crash

Truck collided with MAX on SW 5th + Flanders. People all OK, small dent in MAX. #pdxcommute #trimet pic.twitter.com/ZnGPBcqLPP

— Shelby Schroeder (@shelschro) November 13, 2015

KOIN/KGW report on the Trimet apology

Starring Trimet's $200,000 man, aka white haired Bob Nelson. Yes its a screw up, yes its true that its actually no one persons fault, but then again nobody at Trimet lost anything as a result of this. I don't even think Trimet offered to pay for any personal items that were ruined from the riders on those trains that got flooded. So no, the apology is hollow and just the same type of thing we hear from them every time they screw up. And don't forget Trimet execs attempted to put this on the operators before we produced the audio clips.

The Trimet #catchtheorange collection

TelemachusRome

This new orange line hasn't quite worked out the way the planners planned it, at least so far. Maybe Trimet officials will get their shit together but so far the system has been running worse than ever since the orange line opened. Below the break is the collection of tongue and cheek orange line "advertisements" since this whole adventure began. Thanks to @TelemachusRome  for his mastery in being able to put absurdity into the pictorial form for all of us to appreciate

Trimet driver getting no action continues lobbying Trimet/Union executives-UPDATED

Drivers side mirrors-(Dora got a response on this at bottom of this post updated)

Portland Light rail mafia desperate to find more money

We need term limits in this state

With the drying up of Federal funds the local light rail mafia is gasping to stay alive. Trimet just raised the payroll taxes to the maximum limit allowed by law but here we have the DON of the light rail mafia wanting to raise taxes on average citizens now. Aren't people getting sick of Blumenaur's schtick? How can they stand this guy year after year after year? Don't they realize they are being conned?

Trimet Facebook always a fun read

Especially the post about the flood. always enjoyable tug of war between Trimet apologists and crticis

Trimet historical costs

#trimet monthly pass used to cost 30 single fares, it now costs 40, data from https://t.co/Ff4yhWMutl #pdx pic.twitter.com/5JPulUvrfM

— Jason McHuff (@rosecitytransit) November 11, 2015

Letter to Harry Sapporta from a current Trimet driver

to SaportaH, McFarlaN, NelsonR, WarrenE, WhiteP, JensonK, BishopM

Harry we spoke a couple of months ago about the drivers side mirror on the 3000 series buses. You told me if I had not heard back from you by the end of October to remind you. You said that you would put together a committee that included me to find a resolve for this safely hazard. Looking forward to hearing from you. DM

 

http://www.atu.org/media/releases/70-year-old-brooklyn-pedestrian-is-latest-victim-of-fatal-bus-design

 

3000 series busses

     Left side drivers mirror critically restricts, blocks vision area, at intersections and for left hand turns.

     Response: Been told that person needs to be retrained or totally ignore the issue when brought up.

     Window extension blocks vision. Especially at narrow intersections

     Shadows, lights and reflections bounce off windows.

     Light panel is above your head (difficult to read if you wear glasses).

     Seats cannot be lowered if you’re a short statue person.

     Turn signal controls to close/narrow. (Got my foot caught while driving in a 3200).

     Seat belt catches and is hard to get out.

     Rear door that stays open.

     Inside windshield not clean, creating glare during the day and night when lights hit it.

     Inside audible bells and announcements are shrill.

Trimet activist Ben Fein shut down by Bethel at the Trimet board meeting

Time for Bethel to move on

Bethel is also against gay rights. Why is this man allowed to continue on the Trimet board of directors?

Trimet not following contractual time lines on grievances

  This letter is in reference to grievance #___________ dated ____/____/_______. This grievance was presented in written form to the Director of Labor Relations. This grievance was acknowledged as being received by the appropriate Department Manager dated ____/____/______. Since the acknowledgement of the above mentioned grievance there has not been any other communications from the appropriate Department Manager and/or the Director of Labor Relations to find a satisfactory settlement. It is the goal of ATU757 and its representatives to maintain the integrity of the Working and Wage Agreement dated December 1, 2012 to November 30, 2016.

 

                Article 1, General Provisions, Paragraph 5, Affirmative Action, Section 3, Adjustment of Grievances & Arbitration, Step, 1 is the opportunity for ATU757 and TriMet to find a satisfactory settlement in a timely fashion. Failure to adhere as prescribed by this agreement is not acceptable and must be corrected. It is important that you contact me immediately so that we can resolve this violation of step 1.

 

                ATU757 and its representatives want to assure our members that the Working and Wage agreement between ATU757 and TriMet is being respected and followed. This notice is to demonstrate that ATU757 is doing everything within its power to give TriMet the opportunity to correct the above mentioned actions and serves as documentation of TriMet’s failure to adhere to our Working and Wage Agreement.

 

 

 

Trimet ATU757 officers off to Hawaii

Shirley,John, Mary and some other union officers took off to Hawaii to allegedly attend this conference: https://www.ifebp.org/education/usannual/Pages/annual-employee-benefits-conference-1501.aspx

Why did all these people need to go to the exact same conference when only one person could have brought back the info?

They left last Friday so they could have the weekend to themselves apparently. All on the members dime I assume

Trimet bus 4 riders are worried that the Trimet BRT project will degrade their services

Bus 4+9 riders have every reason to be concerned over Trimet's next boondoggle.

ATU757 member survey and block signup letter

Interesting thing about that letter is how all of the union signatories were voted out of office but one and all the Trimet managers continue drawing their nice fat salaries. Fascinating to see Mike Arronson's name on the manager side of that list. I had always heard that it was him that created this block sign up shit. (block sign ups help the company not the workers) Too bad Mike moved to the dark side. He was a decent man when I knew him. Hate to see him on that list with the ethically challenged Trimet managers

Dan the Bus Driver Man

Blame the workers

Every single time something happens on the system the only thing you can count on is for management to try to find a way to point the finger at the people doing the work. This quote by the hapless Mary Fetsch is just one more example of how little respect the 'management team' has for the people doing the work. The whole process of Trimet trying to find ways to pin this latest failure on union employees has been totally laughable. Unfortunately the truth is never told by the mainstream media so most of the public believes the tripe that comes out of the Trimet propaganda department

Comments such as this from professional #Trimet hacks seek to transfer blame from incompetent managers to workers pic.twitter.com/6QIMn6DYXf

— AL M (@AlYourPalster) November 7, 2015

ATU 757 PRESIDENT SHIRLEY BLOCK UNDER PRESSURE

Why is Trimet paying Bob Nelson $200,000 a year?

Bob Nelson (left) was brought out of retirement by his friend Neil Mcfarlane and given $200k a year in a job created specially for him by Mcfarlane

 

ATU 757 FAIL!

Poor TMDriver, someone who had made quite an impression on social media these last 6 months truly met a Trimetized fate. 

He met a union rep at Powell (Gordon) who looked over his progress reports and made a comment to the effect of "this is not what they told me at all". Then an assistant manager came in  and got both of them and brought them into the office. 

The union rep told TMD that he 'can't speak during the meeting because he is a 'probationary employee'. In other words the union rep is completely useless. 

So the meeting commences and goes about the way you would expect it but with a viciousness that is unexpected . TMD accepted his fate like a gentleman and went to shake hands with everyone. The assistant manager shook his hand, Lyle Perrira (sp-station manager) actually refused to shake TMD's hand! That's insulting and once again illustrates the  viciousness of Trimet managers towards the union personnel. 

TMD also didn't shake the union rep's had because "he just sat there".

The meeting is over and the union rep didn't even accompany TMD out the door. 

Gordon just sat behind with the Lyle.

This is a UNION FAIL AND I OBJECT TO IT! 

This union of ours seems to be pretty useless so much of the time it makes it hard for me to continue being a member.

What really happened to cause 13 trains to get damaged

The mainstream media couldn't tell the real story of what happened, as usual. It's actually very simple and I described this to Elliot Njus via twitter.

Trimet managers prove once again they are nothing but liars

The company leaves this guy on the road for his entire probationary term but a few days before the end of that probation they decide he is as dangerous as Sandi Day. (Sandi Day BTW had excellent trainer reviews). Beware anybody that applies to be a Trimet bus driver, you will be working for absolute fascists who use Stalinist methods to keep control of their union drivers.

 

So 5 days before his probation ends #trimet tells him this. But for 5+ months they left him on the road What liars pic.twitter.com/pjB24AUFRA

— AL M (@AlYourPalster) November 7, 2015

The last days ofTMDriver

This has been one of the most fascinating twitter feeds ever.
We watched this guy move from part time to full time to the extra board then to getting fired.
Some people still think his whole existence was some sort of Trimet set up intended to show drivers how they can easily lose their jobs and to stay away from social media.
I don't see it but you never know with these devious Trimet people.

Alan Eisenberg says time for a Trimet review committee

TMdriver fired by Trimet

I'm convinced it was his social media presence that got him fired. 

He met all the qualifications to be a permanent employee and actually liked the job. 

He met all the goals of a probationary employee yet last week he was put out on administrative leave and today he was told he 'he was a danger to the company'. 

He was not given any specifics as to why they came to that conclusion. 

All of his check ride reports were positive.  

When he pressed the  station manager for some answers the manager hung up on him.

While Trimet officials scramble to find a scapegoat

I did my own 'investigation' going back over the calls. 

The first clear indication that something was wrong was in this COMMUNICATION

Any rational person would have thought that with a report like that service would have been immediately suspended through that area.

However we have these subsequent communications which were made after the initial report

Trimet secret projects revealed!

UPDATED: My thoughts on the MAX flooding incident

I hope that those on Reddit/Twitter/in the media will consider this.  It is my analysis of what I've read and what I remember hearing on Saturday.  It is not the complete story and there are specifics I am unsure of or do not know.  My apologies I am only getting this done now and didn't do it last night (or sooner).

---

UPDATE: TriMet has complained that audio clips of communications don't tell the whole story and get taken out of context, but has responded by only releasing clips themselves--nothing better.  I was expecting complete communications leading up to the service suspension that would give a good picture of what was going on and what operators felt they were supposed to do.
TriMet releases audio of driver, controller communications during rain storm (Portland Tribune)
TriMet releases audio from day of MAX flooding (KGW TV)

FURTHER UPDATE: MAX dispatch radio indicates problems before flooded train from The Oregonian has at least some real audio, and in it there doesn't seem to be any questioning about whether to continue or not. The article text ends with an operator being the one raising the issue and not wanting to go.

ALSO: KGW says it was either the operator's or manger's decision that the trains to go through the high water.  This presumes that one of them made the decision on their own, which may not be the case.

In addition, there does not seem to be a clear, written protocol about when to shut down service due to high water; it seems reasonable to have one given that an inundation from heavy rains, broken water/sewer pipes, etc could easily occur.

My view is that I'm not sure it was clearly understood how high the water had become, and that controllers (and, by extension, managers) could/should have proactively discussed water heights.  The train order could have easily included details, and Portland Streetcar started suspending service at last 15 minutes before the last MAX train went through the underpass.  Instead, there seemed to be an underlying push to continue on, and operators believed they were to do so.  Also, it's not healthy trying to assign blame.

Mcfarlane trying to pass the buck on light rail flood damage

Mcfarlane is quoted at KGW making a stupid statement 
 The operator of the train was clearly in error driving through the water, agency head Neil McFarlane said in this prepared statement.
Well that excuse might have worked if only one train was damaged but the fact is 13 trains were damaged and that is not the fault of an single  "operator". That is a management failure pure and simple.

AND GUESS WHAT? HERE IS THE TRIMET CONTROLLER ISSUING THE TRAIN ORDER TO GO THROUGH THE FLOOD PROVING IT WAS MANAGEMENT FAILURE

 LISTEN HERE!

TRIMET invents the worlds first LIGHT RAIL AMPHIBIOUS vehicle

BAD WEATHER? GO BY BOAT! #TRIMET pic.twitter.com/SSBtYCuWqV

— pdx boats (@pdxboats) November 1, 2015

Trimet bike survey results

Letter sent to the governor and to Bruce Warner regarding violence against transit operators

Written by a Trimet employee and ATU757 member