THE TOP BLOG POST FOR 2015

I'm very proud of this as this was my own creation and it got thousands of views!

Trimet operators of the year

9 RUNNER UP POSTS-2015

These are the 2'nd to 9th most viewed posts for 2015.

TRIMET YEAR IN REVIEW-Top blog posts for November+December 2015

This version of the blog (this is the third version) has been going now five years starting December 2010. I actually started blogging in 2007 but due to various "inquisitions" that occurred while I was employed by Trimet I had to "hide" the past versions from Trimet managers. This blog has had 1,610,022 views in five years. That averages 322,004 views per year.

Not bad for a counter culture blog covering a topic that most people could care less about. No Bike Portland for sure, but I have a ball collecting this material

Trimet bridge makes 'worlds most impressive' list

This is really REALLY hard to believe but there it is, in the same publication as these bridges:

And a whole bunch more bridges you can see HERE!

What this is doing on the list is beyond me. After reading the article it appears the editors were impressed that it has no cars. In the same league as the London Bridge? The Golden Gate?

GETOUTTA HERE

Trimet year in review-Top Blog posts for October 2015

Dan Christensen is writing again

Pretty exciting if your a Trimet enthusiast like me. I've read every single thing he has written actually. His material is great! Just stay away from bicyclists Dan!

The story you are about to hear is true. 
The names have been changed to protect the innocent. 
For instance Dennis Uniforms will be called Cheap Ass Uniforms or CAU. 
Warning: The following is more an admission of gross stupidity on my part. Let it be known that this in no way reflects on my fellow Drivers nor on Tri-met my employer. The stupid is all mine. 
The life of a bus driver sometimes feels like one of those sitcoms about the minutia of daily life, Faux Pas and most of all a trail of compounding errors of judgement. like in Seinfeld or Curb your Enthusiasm. 
That’s my life or it was my life just a few days ago. 
Lets for the sake of argument assume that my life is a sitcom. Here are the episodes so far.

Read the whole story at

Portland's Roll Easy Blog

Classic Tweets

Neil Berlin announces that he is departing on time for the first time IN 9 MONTHS! https://t.co/zfuWbOi26s #trimet #max #lightrail

— TriMet Scanner (@trimetscanner) December 30, 2015

Need some brand new chains for winter?

Trimet is having its yearly OVERSTOCK SALE! 

Trimet year in review-Top Blog Posts-September 2015

Trimet year in review-Top Blog posts for August 2015

https://twitter.com/TelemachusRome

As summer came to a close the public was under a  constant barrage of Orange line propaganda. None of my posts on that topic made the cut for "top blog posts" but that is what I remember the most.

Classic Tweets

Trimet changing name to, Band of Thieves!!!!! pic.twitter.com/IgMHNUbRH8

— coolbus18 (@coolbus18) December 27, 2015

Trimet top management and Bd. of Dir. give Retirees a xmas gift pic.twitter.com/VRAmXCf4c6

— coolbus18 (@coolbus18) December 27, 2015

The Joy of Riding Trimet

Trimet year in review-Top Blog posts for July 2015

July continued to be a big readership month. Controversy after the union election continued driving up readership

Trimet year in review-June 2015

Readership on this blogs waxes and wanes depending on what's going on. On average this blog gets between 400-600 views a day, which is not bad for a counter culture blog dealing with a topic that most people could care less about. But when something is happening which mainstream media is ignoring and  this is the only place to get information blog readership zooms to 1000-3000 day. This last June was one of the biggest readership months ever here. And that was due to the ATU757 election.

Have a Merry Trimet Christmas

Tom Horton's excellent essay on today's transit bus driver

Tom Horton shared his post to the group: TriMet Operator's Forum.

1 hr ·

ATTENTION RIDESHARE GUYS: Just found this blog today, very interesting. I'm a 25-year city bus driver, age 50, looking for a safer driving gig to do for the next decade or so. The increasing incidents of assaults on transit operators, as conveyed in the media and industry periodicals, is driving me to seek a more secure alternative for the duration of my working life.

Trimet year in review-top blog posts-May 2015

Trimet lunacy

#Trimet #lunacy pic.twitter.com/R0wznnKkXF

— AL M (@AlYourPalster) December 24, 2015

Readers continue sending me info on Trimet managers

This information is all taken from public records available to anybody, I have not personally verified the information but know that the person sending to me is reliable.

It was a commuters nightmare today

One tweet sums it up pretty well but if you want to see how truly bad it was go through my Twitter feed

It takes the morons running Trimet an hour and a half to tweet a max disruption

Of course the only reason we know that is because the transit blogger community here in Portland have extremely advanced tools to monitor these idiots

 

Trimet has no faith in Portland Bicyclists

Despite objections, TriMet installs swing-gates at 11th Avenue rail crossing https://t.co/RRONXcgiKZ #cycling pic.twitter.com/hkmNTNIsP9

— Tap Bike Light (@blinqbike) December 24, 2015

Trimet year in review-top blog posts for April 2015

Dora Morgan being interviewed by KGW

A provocative lecture on the future of transportation

And if this guy is right, and is sure sounds right to me, public transportation as we see it today will be obsolete along with the personal automobile.
This is not some "right wing Koch Brothers think tank" either

Steve Banta wasn't the first former Trimet executive to get caught wasting tax payers money

They all learned how to spend money from Portland's world famous transit system Trimet! 

The national leader in wasting tax payers money! 

The difference  is that this sort of thing is accepted in the weird world of "cool" Portlandia

Michael Ford lives well off the tax payers

Former Ann Arbor transit authority CEO spent $40K on taxpayer-funded meals | MLive.com

The public is oblivious to the luxury that is afforded the sociopaths that are in charge of America's transit systems.
The 'executives', which are basically a private club ,think they are entailed to  six figure salaries, six figure pensions and unlimited expense accounts to attend all sort of seminars all over the USA and even foreign travel in some cases.
Right here in Portland we all know the luxury afforded to former Trimet general manager Fred Hansen with his $204k/year  pension. And current general manager Neil Mcfarlane has his nice $230k salary with a guaranteed $156k/yr pension when he decides he wants to quit. What people don't realize is that his board of sock puppets also hand him a $66,000 expense account!

While these transit executives live like kings they have skillfully portrayed their union employees who are the ones who are greedy, getting things like health care for example.
The American public,as stupid as they are, can't see the forest from the trees.

The truth about Trimet light rail reliability

Lane Jensen went  through all the published delay alerts for the last 220 days and pulled together this incredible information.

Blue line reliable 45% of the time, Red line reliable 52% of the time, Yellow line reliable 60% of the time,Green line reliable 59% of the time, Orange line reliable 57% of the time, WES reliable 93% of the time. The average for all Trimet rail programs is 61%

Trimet year in review-most viewed posts March 2015

TRIMET LIGHT RAIL continues being a joke

The fragility of light rail is incredible 

 

Public transit still leads the list as worst Job in America

http://www.cheatsheet.com/money-career/the-7-most-miserable-jobs-in-america.html/?a=viewall

In case you didn't know, the scanner channels have been changed

Listen Live folks thanks to @lanejensenpdx and @AlYourPalster buses here: https://t.co/GwPxR92uRI Trains here: https://t.co/kZNMTRMcP0

— TriMet Scanner (@trimetscanner) December 22, 2015

Trimet year in review-top blog posts for February 2015

Remember when?

Larry Hanley gets it

Year in review-January 2015

This is the time of year I re-post all the blog posts that got lots of views. These were the top 'stories' for January 2015

Readers are always digging up information on the Trimet executive class

Somebody dug up this info on Hairy Supporter
(I didn't verify this info)

Trimet: Always attempting to spin the facts

Trimet is always trying to say "due to non related accident" Trimet service is delayed. 

The fact of the matter is that if ANYTHING has delayed the Trimet service than it is A TRIMET RELATED INCIDENT. 

This never ending attempt by the Trimet propaganda department to try to avoid any blame for ANYTHING gets very annoying. 

If it interferes with Trimet then it is a Trimet related incident. 

How the incident happened is irrelevant to people riding Trimet. 

Sheesh.

Public transportation Fail

Have you ever ridden on the type 4 MAX trains where the seats are facing each other?  As incredible as it may sound two adults cannot actually fit in the seats they are so poorly designed. How in the world does a train get put into production that is this uncomfortable? It's an easy answer. The people building these trains and the people ordering these trains have no idea what its like to actually ride in these trains.

 

Letter from #atu757 to #trimet re: 3000 series bus defects (2013)

This has been republished because nothing has been done about any of this

Public transportation doesn't have to suck

Portland light rail creeps along at average speed of 23mph

Only 1 city in the states makes this list because this is still a car country and public transportation is for "those people". Portland has tried hard to make the public transportation "cool" but its really just as bad as all the other American public transportation systems with one major exception. Portland area transportation (Trimet) has ZERO rapid transit options. The system moves like a snail, all of it. And Portland and Trimet don't even make the top 10 lists  in the USA anymore. You hear a lot of "Trimet is the best in the world"  but that's only because people are psychologically invested in the "Portland is coolest place on earth" meme and Trimet has woven itself into that meme. Anyone that actually knows anything about mass transit knows that Portland and Trimet are 'nice little systems' but don't even come close to world class service. 

You want to see world class service read below the break

Neil Mcfarlane parody speech

The truth about Leonard James

This is interesting on many levels. First and foremost of course is the fact that Leonard suffered the same fate as many of us former Trimet employees have. When the Tri-met management cult decides they want to get rid of an employee they will stoop as low as they have to go to achieve that goal. They don't bother trying to fire people, they just endlessly harass their employees until they just decide to get the hell out of that purgatory.  These people running your 'beloved' transit district are bottom feeders making huge money and have shown over and over a total disregard for ethics.

Also  I have stated over and over, mostly to deaf ears, that the Tri-met management cult abuses its front-line employees because they are unhappy with the union leadership. And here we see documentary evidence to support this claim. Bruce Hansen was the leader that the  Tri-Met management cult wanted in office. And since he lost the election the Tri-met management cult has once again taken to abusing front line employees in retaliation. 

The Trimet management cult is a Ruthless, authoritarian and Stalinist cult. Maybe someday the public will wake up to this fact. The arrogance and egos of the Trimet management cult are off the chart. They are aware that they are completely unaccountable for any of their actions and operate thusly.  These are dangerous people hiding behind a veil of craftily constructed public relations propaganda

A great example of the failure of Public transit

Transit managers can plan complex light rail systems and complex fare  systems, but here we are almost in 2016 and none of these so called "managers" and "engineers" has been able to design a bus defroster system that actually works. And why is that you may ask? That's because the people being transported and the people doing the driving are not important to the transit executive class.

Solution for repeated Line 70 blockage

E-mail sent to the Portland Bureau of Transportation:

BACKGROUND:
Some TriMet Line 70 trips travel down SE 13th Ave in Sellwood, and a median island was installed on SE 13th at Spokane Street that requires vehicles to shift over towards the curbs and use what's normally parking area.  There is a section of "No Parking" opposite the island to allow traffic to get through, however people repeatedly violate it and park there.

Heaven forbid a capital projects person should ever get laid off

"Redeployed" to "50 smaller projects" ? Hmmmm. "To help streamline work"? Uh-huh, right. If you study Trimet history you Will remember that when the CRC was abandon all those capital project personnel were brought into tr Will remember that when the CRC was abandon all those capital project personnel were brought into Trimet 

#Trimet capital projects, still in control of Trimet-from a Trimet publication pic.twitter.com/OJKNN3UbHf

— AL M (@AlYourPalster) December 16, 2015

Readership last 30 days

As unbelievable as it may sound, despite my reputation, some people do actually look at this blog occasionally!

Classic Tweets

Found in a goodwill bin. This says it all! pic.twitter.com/ygQ8uRnjXE

— Captain SassyPants™ (@giedosst) December 15, 2015

Working at Trimet gets worse and worse

Updated Trimet bloat chart

Click on pic for better viewing of the people that provide ZERO service to the public 

Bob Nelson gives away his property to a twitter pal!

Bob going back to New Mexico!

Got a glass computer desk courtesy of the former Deputy GM of #trimet who just retired & is moving out of the building.

— David Bouchard (@dsbouchard) December 15, 2015

Erik Halstead on Tigard Transportation panel says "Trimet has an ultimatum"

Classic tweets

#TriMet scores in worst bus stops in America rankings https://t.co/W0osYCEQjb pic.twitter.com/zi7fr6blCM

— Ron (@TelemachusRome) December 14, 2015

Catching "The Orange"

I finally went to check out Trimet's latest light rail line, The Orange Line. 

  It didn't disappoint. It was exactly what I expected. 

It was a light rail line to nowhere. 7 miles of basically nothing. 

The orange ends in the middle of nowhere, just like the Trimet WES does.

 I know the thinking here is that this new light rail line supposedly will spur development but who knows how long that will take to happen and who exactly benefits from these 'developments'.

 Light rail supposedly takes traffic off the roads but the evidence that it actually does that is lacking.

 Just looking at how Portland traffic keeps getting worse and worse every year even as Trimet has built out its system pretty much debunks that theory just on its face. Furthermore since this Orange Line actually doesn't go anywhere why in the world did Trimet build such puny park and rides? 

This light rail line is only useful for people that can actually get to it by car.

 It's a major fail on the part of Trimet that they didn't plan sufficiently for people to park to get to it.

Now I see why Trimet tried so hard to make this whole thing a "special event".

 Because there is nothing special about it other than the pretty little bridge.

And I always keep coming back to thinking about that $1.5 BILLION dollars and how that could have really turned the CURRENT Trimet system into a truly world class system. Instead we have a light rail line to nowhere. "Our" government in action, as usual. Spending money on things that don't actually help the citizenry. What a shame that we are locked into a system that seems hell bent on only providing the cash for special interests and never for  citizens interests. 

I took some videos of my trip along the Trimet Orange Line below the break if your interested.

Trimet "HOP" card

Encounter with Trimet employee

I was out on the Orange line today and  a Trimet driver happened to walk by into my video and we ended up having a little 'deal' that ended with surprising results

The miserable failure that is American Public Transportation

The article below is about Washington DC's public transportation system WMATA specifically but the findings are pretty much universal at all publicly funded transit agencies in this country to various degrees. American public transportation is a model on how not to run a public service. Systems in Asia and Europe are so much more reliable than American systems its hard to believe that all these systems are run by human beings. How can some systems (out of this country) be so reliable but here in the United States only the brave use public transportation. And why is this allowed to continue here in the states. Why is it impossible to change anything here? Public transportation in this country (including the much ballyhooed Portland) will never replace the private automobile as long as this  failed model is allowed to continue.

Steve Banta, Portland, and Light rail. What they all have in common

Steve Banta screwed up. He screwed up because he didn't take the necessary precautions to cloak the excesses of his office. Arizona is not Oregon and Phoenix is not Portland. The article below makes the connections between Banta, Light Rail and his time in Portland. I pointed out at the very beginning of the Banta Story that what Banta did was small potatoes compared to What Mcfarland did in 2012.  That was his carefully hidden conspiracy to provide himself and his henchmen SECRET RAISES while slashing employees promised health care, slashing direct service to the public, and raising transit fares to be among the most expensive in North America. That million dollars that Mcfarlane stole then continues to compound each and every year. There was a tiny bit of outcry and a phony state audit that happened a year later. None of that mattered because this is Portland where citizens seem to tolerate this sort of corruption from their government officials. Because "things are different here". They sure are. Mcfarlane sits firmly on his throne just waiting to collect his $160k payout and the $13k/mo for life. In the meantime Mcfarlane will jet around the USA making various speeches, having a great time, collecting his fat salary. All paid for by the tax payers.

Trimet sock puppet president Warner letter to Trimet retiree Bill Willmer

The usual nonsense we see out of Trimet management, always excuses and false platitudes.

The bullshit is highlighted in yellow.

Interesting to note that Trimet/ATU safety meetings have been suspended for almost a year now.

Who needs safety right?