This was my day a few weeks back, just a quick reflection of a day's transit use.  Just thought I’d timeline it to see how it panned out via transit.

1. Got up for work at 5:25am.
2. Arrived at South East Grind on Powell at 5:55am via #9 Bus.
3. Hour of work committed to the code base.
4. 6:55am, Transit Tracker timed arrival, boarded #9 Bus after walking a block down and off to downtown.
5. Arrived downtown at 7:04am.
6. Departed for lunch on #9 at 11:42am.
7. Arrived via #9 for lunch at 11:55am.
8. Departed for work at 12:40pm, arrived at 1:08pm.  It seemed, someone had ran into something and all of Powell was delayed.
9. Arrived at office and committed some code to the mother ship.
10. Departed office and jumped aboard #4 north bound.  5:42pm.
11. Arrived just north of Burnside, 5:45pm.  Enjoyed a cup of joe at Backspace.
12. Departed and hopped to a few places with friends, departed at 9:05pm to the office for backpack pickup.
13. Headed into office, finalized a few last minute things, headed back out to catch the #9 south bound.  Boarded at 10:07pm.  Arrived home at 10:19pm.

It was a good day.  That is all.  Nice 17+ hour day.

via Al M at Rantings of a Trimet Bus Driver! Colorado Railcar Lives!

http://www.usrailcar.com/

To put it simply, US Railcar LLC of Columbus Ohio have acquired the Colorado Railcar DMU & will resume manufacturing.  It looks like US DMU Manufacturing will stay local to the country, more American jobs.  Now maybe Obama can work with the states, cities, etcetera and get some of these running on lines they should be running on!

…per the article,

“US Railcar to Resume Production of Former  Colorado Railcar DMU

Private investors affiliated with Value Recovery Group, Inc. (VRG) of Columbus, OH, have acquired the Colorado Railcar DMU and will resume manufacturing this modern domestically produced  passenger train in a new manufacturing facility to be established later this year pending state/local incentives and final round investments.  Assets acquired by US Railcar include the former Colorado Railcar DMU proprietary rights and information, manufacturing documentation, inventory, and other equipment necessary for production.

According to VRG Chairman & CEO Barry H. Fromm, “US Railcar intends to reestablish passenger train production in the United States.”  Currently, passenger trains purchased in the U.S. today are produced by European and Asian suppliers typically importing 40 of content from overseas. “We want to keep American jobs and U.S. public investment at home,” said Fromm.  “There is a major commitment by the Obama Administration and the Congress to make investments in intercity and high-speed rail to promote economic growth and mobility, create jobs, conserve energy and address climate change.  This opens a new era for passenger trains and railcar manufacturing in the United States.”

US Railcar, LLC will be led by Michael P. Pracht, its President & CEO, a rail industry veteran with extensive past experience at two of the world’s leading rail transportation companies, Siemens and Ansaldo.  US Railcar will manufacture both single- and bi-level Diesel Multiple Units (DMUs) which are self-propelled railcars eliminating the need for more costly locomotive-hauled push/pull trains in lower density corridors.  Both platforms are fully compliant with existing Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) safety standards for crashworthiness as established by Department of Transportation and approved for immediate use on the national rail system.

Unlike European & Asian DMUs, the US Railcar DMU can operate in all mixed-mode freight corridors throughout the country without waivers and/or temporal separation agreements currently required for non-compliant foreign platforms.  “There are extraordinary growth opportunities for passenger rail development,” said US Railcar CEO Mike Pracht.  “The US Railcar DMU will enable new cost-effective passenger rail service across a range of corridors and routes, all with a proven, existing equipment platform already in service.” 

The US Railcar DMU was prototyped through a demonstration project in 2002 and is currently the only FRA-compliant DMU operating in revenue service in North America.  Available in both regional and intercity configurations, the US Railcar DMU is uniquely suited for incremental corridor development at speeds from 79-to-90 mph. Platform enhancements currently anticipated include a diesel-electric upgrade, increasing speeds to 125 mph, making this American-made DMU the ideal solution for both mature and emerging passenger rail agencies around the country.

VRG is an asset recovery and management firm that specializes in asset management, advisory and asset recovery services for state and local governments, commercial banks, private investors and several federal agencies, including the FDIC.  VRG also manages a brownfield remediation and redevelopment partnership and serves as consultant to advanced energy programs for state and federal agencies.  More information about Value Recovery Group can be found atwww.valuerecovery.com.”

I was bursting at the seems wanting to talk about this ahead of time, but one has to respect timing!  The company I work for Webtrends, has produced an advertisement campaign to kick start a conversation that has often come up on Portland Transport, here, and other transit related blogs in the City of Portland.  Webtrends will be providing analysis to this campaign across the web to show the power and strength of effective analytics.  As Jascha Kaykas-Wolff our VP of Marketing has written,

“What we are really advertising is our strength; the power of our products. The ability to measure conversations whether they happen on your site (visit pdx.webtrends.com for more details) or off your site (social media) regardless of the topic.”

Web analytics has a way of expanding our knowledge about marketing, sales, and business related information, but it also has the ability to expand our knowledge about ourselves.  It represents accuracy in our social existence beyond the simple interaction of business.  So the question now is, how will citizens of Portland represent upon the blogs, Twitter, and the sundry of great website available throughout the city?  I’ll bet pretty well considering Portland’s connectedness.

Personally I’m stoked to have a connection between one of my amateur fascinations and actual professional work.  I look forward to the City’s results, as measured by Webtrends.  :)  Now some of my regular readers might think – oh great, they’ll do this study and the data will just disappear!  Oh contraire, in will be collated and crunched and put together to properly correlate appropriate causations and be open and via the site available here:  pdx.webtrends.com.

Hope you transit riders (and, walkers, drivers, boaters, flyers, ferry boat riders & cyclists) will join in and add your opinion to, "Should cyclists pay a road tax?".

• Webtrends
• Twitter
• WordPress
• Blogger

Food, Grub, Tasties, Eatin’s, Discussion, Conversation.  Flanged wheels, rubber on road, combustion based, electric induction, forced induction, passenger count, throughput, ROW/right of way, and more, we’ll discuss it all and get to the bottom of mysteries and ask all the right questions.  First point of business, I’m gonna change the name of the Transit Beer meets to merely Transit Meetup.  So newcomers will have the appropriate connotation that we discuss transit, eat some food, and then maybe drink a few beers.  It’s all up to the attendees!

For anyone that wants to swing in, we have this meetup and there is no official meeting minutes, no beauracratic organization, this is just a get together and ramble on about transportation topics.  So don’t be intimidated just come and meet some of your fellow transit riders & add your 2 cents to the conversation.

So make a note and put it on your schedule;  July 18th is Transit Beer #5 (is that right, are we on #5?)

We’ll plan on a meetup at about the same time we usually do, kicking off around 7:00pm, and I’ll probably arrive at the destination an hour early.

Now for the BIG BIG question.  Where should we hold this Transit Meetup?  We’ve been to downtown south west, downtown north west, and just on the east side in the north east.  We’ve also hit the south east along Powell.  So the options are wide open.  Throw some suggestions in!