I've been reading and digesting all the mail that comes from this latest activist group.
It reminds me of the OPAL initiative to get a 2 1/2 hour transfer.
For those of you who don't track the world of transit as closely as I do let me refresh your memory.
When Trimet did away with the paper transfers they reduced the amount of time transfers would be valid.
Trimet operates with neoliberal philosophy.
Neoliberalism seeks to extract wealth from the citizens.
Trimet has been slowly and methodically extracting as much wealth from its riders and its employees as they can get away with.
Cascade Policy Group has documented that Trimet service levels to the public are not aligned to extraction of wealth from the public.
Where does all that extra wealth go?
It's not really clear.
This started primarily with the Mcfarlane administration.
So far its amounted to hundreds of millions of givebacks from employees and hundreds of millions from the riders in the form of increased fares and lessened transfer times.
Opal then started a campaign to get Trimet to 'give back' some of the transfer time they arbitrarily stole from its riders.
(they also eliminated fareless square)
This campaign went of for 2+ years and after much stonewalling Trimet relented and gave back part of the transfer time.
They also gave OPAL members a stern lecture about "respect", which was patently hilarious because the only people that were disrespectful were the Trimet board (aka sock puppets) who continually stonewalled OPAL to which OPAL responded with very mild forms of civil disobedience such as chanting or holding banners at the meetings.
The point I am trying to make here is that the riding public had a much better deal when Trimet was using paper transfers.
Trimet executives, having no concern for the financial well being of the riding public, decided they could extract more wealth from its riding public.
(Don't forget that while this group of people called trimet "executives" are extracting wealth from the riders and employees they themselves are adding to their own personal wealth)
In other words the people running Trimet are not advocates of the public good.
Its established over and over by the actions of the agency.
(Currently it has become clear that "the people" have abandoned the system. These same executives came up with elaborate lies about housing prices affecting ridership which the mainstream media reprints verbatim from the Trimet press releases.)
What does all this have to do with the Bus Lane project.
Examine the letter from the "authorities" to the Bus Lane Project
This 'letter' is totally ambiguous
The city and Trimet created the current mess how can they be trusted at all pic.twitter.com/eqIEdxzWei— AL M (@AlYourPalster) October 9, 2017
It's quite apparent that the 'leaders' are not connected to the reality of what "the people" actually need.
Its totally shocking actually that all these high priced geniuses that have been planning our roads and buses never thought of bus lanes.
It takes a group of concerned citizens to even get any discussion about bus lanes started.
We have just had a $5.3 billion dollar "transportation package" shoved down our throats which "they" call "groundbreaking" but it doesn't include any money for any bus lanes.
Not even any mention of bus lanes.
Interestingly it does include several hundred millions of dollars to be allocated to "planners" "developers" and "construction companies" to remodel division street.
Analysis has proven that bus arrival times will not be affected.
In other words, this entire project has nothing to do with people that actually ride the bus.
When you read the letter from the "authorities", Its strong on verbage but has nothing specific whatsoever.
There is nothing there at all in reality.
Its the kind of letter we see over and over from career technocrats.
"thank you" for this, "thank you" for that, we here at 'government' acknowledge blah blah blah, blah blah blah.
It's business as usual from 'our' government and we have established over and over that the people making these decisions have no connection to the riding public.
Here's how you do a bus lane
1-Post notice of bus lane on affected road one month in advance
2-Implement bus lane, for a set period of time, say 30 days.
3-Evaluate the effects of said bus lane
We are never going to get anywhere working within this system.
It's a set up to make sure citizens are locked out of the process.
Yes you can gain small victories. OPAL proves that.
If we want to make real change we need to fight to change the entire system and wrestle the control of the cash flows from the elites.
Until "we the people" can figure out how to get "our" government back all we can do is beg for scraps, which is basically what the bus lane people are doing, begging for scraps out of multi billion dollar projects
The first and easiest thing we can do is stop giving them our money when they come asking for it.
These people will always find ways to extract wealth from its citizens.
Its time for the citizens to wake up to this scam
You cant expect the same institutions that created all the problems that "we the people" are forced to endure to fix those problems.
It never occurred to city officials that buses need their own lanes?
These are not the people that should be making decisions for the rest of us.
I'll continue to monitor the progress of the bus lane project.
They are playing by all the rules as set up by the masters.
Will they succeed?
Only time will tell.
Me, I'm not begging these sons of bitches for anything, I know who they are.
They don't give a rats ass about me.
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