Downtown Portland, on SW Columbia and Jefferson there is
some road construction going on.

This started on Monday / Tuesday (July 6 / 7), however
coordination within TriMet has been AWFUL!

If you look at the "Service Alerts" there has been
no mention of any interruption, detour, stop closures, temporary stop setup of
any kind for any busses (let alone the construction zone downtown.)

When I first encountered this on Tuesday, my normal stop was
closed, nice yellow sign on the pole saying it was closed and even with a
start/stop date on it.  So, I walked up the street a couple of blocks to
the other bus stop, got on the bus and the driver was looking down the road and
she was like "What the hell is this?" (Commenting on the ripped up
street.)

Turns out TriMet didn't even tell their DRIVERS this was happening. 
She had no extra instructions on what stops would be closed, what temporary
stops were setup (And there was at least 1) or any information on the
construction.

Additionally, TriMet didn't coordinate with the City on the
setup of the temporary stops…The one we encountered on 3rd (or was it 4th?)
didn't have the parking blocked off.  There was a dozen or so people
standing waiting for their bus (4 or so buses serve that one stop) and cars are
parked on the side of the road, so the Bus is now blocking the lane letting
people load.  Road is already under construction with intermittent areas
where the right lane is blocked, which means traffic is already congested and
now it gets worse because the bus can't pull off to the side to load passengers.

Now, to add insult to injury…I was ready to put a large
part of the blame on Portland not coordinating with TriMet on construction
projects and how they would affect TriMet until I didn't a little digging on
WHAT the construction was…

According to this site:
http://www.portlandonline.com/keepportlandmoving/index.cfm?c=41576

The construction in question is (and I quote…)

Bus pad work should bring minor
impacts to SW Columbia, Jefferson 

An additional piece of TriMet’s
downtown stimulus work involves placing concrete bus pads at the bus stops on
SW Columbia and SW Jefferson to reduce on-going preventive maintenance at these
locations and improve rider experience.  Work will begin this week with
grinding of the asphalt at the affected stops.  During construction of the
pads, alternate stops will be closed to riders and motorists can expect traffic
to be reduced to a single lane at spot locations during off-peak hours. 
Work will move counter to traffic flow beginning on Columbia and proceeding to
SW Jefferson Street.

Which lead me to this page on TriMet's site:

http://www.trimet.org/stimulus/index.htm

Which, under Active and completed project, lists
"Improvements and repairs of downtown streets and bus stops." Which
is a link…that leads you to a 404 Error page.

Way to go TriMet!!!