Another assualt on a Trimet bus driver

stock photo of a Trimet attacker

Another operator was assaulted on the Bus today. A female driver was punched, had her hair pulled, and got her eye scratched by a female passenger. The driver told me she wasn't in any confrontation with the passenger. She (the passenger) was exiting the front door at 82nd and Powell on the #9 bus. She stopped, stepped back and went berserk! Luckily the police were at the 7-11 and arrested her. The Road Supervisor said she hit him last week, and the police officer said he's taken her to jail 5 times in the last month. Can we get a photo of these nut jobs so that we know to defend ourselves? The operator is sore and very tense, but she did go back and finish her run. (report from Trimet employee)

Center Garage buses, 1948

The "Duh" Chronicles | From the Driver Side

Best of the Trimet tweets

Transit riders of  Portlandia take to twitter to express their frustration at  Trimess  (Trimet)
And if you want to know what's REALLY going on at Trimet check out TRIMETSCANNER

More crap that Trimet drivers are expected to know but don't get paid for

All these goddamn ridiculous HR policies are the responsibility of all Trimet drivers to know. But Trimet expects said employees to know this stuff on their own time. Yes Trimet drivers make a liveable wage (after 3 years that is) but when you count the numerous things that drivers are supposed to do on their own time that decent wage turns out to be much less.

Trimet attempts to 'spin' the Trimet rodeo

In Trimet fashion which NEVER admits any sort of failure, they  claimed 'hundreds' of participants yet only 60 people actually bothered to participate in the driving. Since there are about 1300 bus drivers that is less than 5% participation. The boycott worked. Nice attempt at spin Trimet but its totally transparent. (for a change)

Trimet officials in true form don't know spelling very well, its RODEO, not roadeo

 

Did they really leave Sunset TC off this schedule on purpose

It's gotta be a mistake right?

Every bus driver running more than 10 minutes late is being stressed

Due to the complete indifference of the Trimet scheduling department what you see after the page break is list off all the buses that are running way behind schedule. This is not an anomaly, this is standard Trimet procedure. It's an institutional disgrace that this is allowed to continue like this day after day.

Dr Jeff Classics

Commuting apps I’d like to see | TriMet Diaries

As a 21st-Century commuter, you’ve already downloaded all the available transit apps to your handset or personal computing device. You’ve got apps that tell you what time your bus is going to be there, and, well, another app that tells you when your bus is going to be there. What you’re really anxiously awaiting is – you guessed it – the update to the app that tells you when your bus is going to be there, with fancy new graphics and a button that lets you tweet when your bus is going to be there.

Trimet's latest public relations stunt

And as always, residents of Portlandia just love it!

"From the drivers side"-The State of Our Union - Part I

This is really an excellent essay which you should read in its entirety HERE

Here are some of the highlights:

Trimet greed mongers

Cronies of Neil Mcfarlane like Dave Auxier and Bob Nelson get double pensions and a few hundred thousand dollars extra spending money while Trimet retirees get whacked and lose their pensions and Trimet current employees (especially part timers) end up losing large chunks of their paychecks in order to stay healthy.

2 retirements for #Trimet general mgr's cronies Nuthin but cuts for the people that work pic.twitter.com/HD4aBtELyN
— AL M (@AlYourPalster) September 18, 2014

"Big Pink" getting in the way

Audio Here

The 'new' Sunset TC

Millions of dollars well spent right?

Lock em Down!

#trimet Merlo Garage being locked down, 3 K-9s searching for wanted person with history of weapons #wc911 #pdx911

— TriMet Scanner (@trimetscanner) September 18, 2014

Good comment on the Tualatin light rail vote

 (don't agree 100% but he made one really excellent point)
Occupy your mind 2 days ago
Don't blame this NO-ON-TRIMET vote on anti-MAX Luddites or Lars Larson or anyone else...but TRIMET and METRO. Both those bureaucracies spend millions of your tax dollars on extensive public relations departments and they couldn't even mount a halfway decent public education campaign to make Tualatin-Tigard voters aware of the advantages of light rail access to the economic hub of Northwest Oregon.

These votes came out the way they did not because of Larson or the Cascade Institute or a few ignorant anti-MAX geezers but IN SPITE of them.

TRIMET and METRO would rather spend their PR budgets glorifying themselves and their bureaucrats than developing a first-class public education campaign to make citizens aware of the issue of metropolitan overpopulation and the role that railed transit can play in alleviating its problems. This is inevitable outcome. Lay the blame where it belongs. On the bureaucrats who lost these elections.

The Church of Light Rail suffers another defeat

...this time in Tualatin - 75% voting to require a public vote on light rail planning or funding...

http://www.oregonlive.com/tualatin/index.ssf/2014/09/light_rail_in_tualatin_residen.html

Tualatin voters in a Tuesday night special election were overwhelmingly passing Ballot Measure 34-220, which would prohibit the city from using its resources on the financing, design, construction or operation of light rail without first getting voters' approval.
Partial returns posted just after 8 p.m. showed that nearly 75 percent of more than 2,800 city residents voted "yes." Turnout was under 25 percent.

They ain't gone...yet

Here's a nice collection of some of those 16 22! year old buses still in TriMet's fleet.  Although missing the license plates and bike racks, it looks like these ones are actually out of service.  FINALLY.

Welcome to the 2014 TriMet Roadeo!

Now I get the sunset tc closure

TriMet’s Sunset Transit Center MAX Station will reopen Wednesday morning, Sept. 17, two days ahead of schedule. Construction on a platform improvement project had shut down both platforms since Wednesday, Sept. 3, but the contractor was able to finish up this stage of work quicker than planned. Riders will experience a smoother surface(LOL!) and

Sunset Transit Center construction wraps up two days early

a new type of tactile strip (LOL)to warn them when they are walking too close to the edge of the platform. They will also see the foundation for equipment for TriMet’s future electronic fare system.

Trimet rodeo pictures

This was a somewhat controversial event and the union members voted to boycott the whole thing due to managements bad faith bargaining and 'shoot to kill' disciplinary policies.

    I have no idea how effective the boycott was but it looks pretty sparse from these pictures

Trimet releases some video of the Max derailment

My sources and the dispatch calls all point to human error in the handling of the switch which lead to the derailment. Almost all of these type of events are human error. Why Trimet tries to hide this fact is beyond me. It's highly unusual for Trimet to release video of any sort of incidents these days they are so paranoid of their public relations

trimet.org didn't get updated correctly

TriMet's Service Alerts page has a link to the C-TRAN fare use policy, noting that there are changes. However, while information was added to it, it uses future tense even though the changes have gone into effect and misses a key point.

Improving mobility in the region

by Ron Swaren

Please note I am not referring to a copy of I-205 placed on Portland’s west side or any Westside Bypass Freeway. However, when the Columbia River Crossing task force eliminated competitive proposals the central reasoning seemed to be that these were “not in the (I-5) bridge influence area.”

But aside from tearing down the I-5 bridges, wouldn’t we want any supplemental structure to be outside the “influence area?” I’m not talking about Idaho, simply at other points within the Metropolitan area. And there is no good reason to tear those existing bridges down.

Trimet Driver of the hour

Outrageous

That this sort of thing happens so often is an outrage. Truly despicable. People have paid their fare yet they get hassled anyway. How does Trimet get away with this?

@bgrmosaic The Clackamas Town Center bus stop is a pathetic joke. Washington Square is unsafe - too narrow and too many pinch points.

— Erik H. (@sp_redelectric) September 14, 2014