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Portland
by Adron

Updates: PMLR Bus Changes in 2015, Clinton Street Chaos, and Division/Powell BRT

PMLR Bus Changes

The final proposal for bus changes when the PMLR (Portland Milwaukie Light Rail) line starts running and the respective changes are in place have been posted. I’m stoked about a few of the changes that I’d already assumed would take place.

My favorites of the list include:

  • The #9 and #17 are both going to start running over the Tilikum Crossing Bridge. This is going to make the rush hour service for these buses dramatically better. I used to live at 20th and Powell, and during normal times of the day it was about a 10 minute bus ride on the #9 or #17 to downtown, but during rush hour it could be anywhere from 20 minutes to 60 minutes, depending on the Ross Island Bridge. With this change, that cluster of car catastrophe will finally be over for those bus routes!
  • Even though it is rare that I’m in the area on these routes, the #31 and #33 will actually become more relevant and usable for me to do business south of Milwaukie. Today I sometimes will go down to Milwaukie to meet with or work with clients, but I’d never go west of or south of Milwaukie from Milwaukie itself. Usually I would just refuse customers or other work from those areas (not that there is much to start with), and those prospective customers would unfortunately lose out. Now myself and others have an increased service area based on these new routes.

Clinton Street Chaos

Some odd things have happened as of late in the drama of Clinton Street. One of the most awesome things of the last few days was the release of a diverter, done in a beautiful Portland style using tactical urbanist maneuvers to get drums put into the street to divert cars off of the bike boulevard! Personally I find it bullshit that the city went out to remove them so quickly, since they can’t replace potholes or do other things that they are actually supposed to do within a reasonable time frame. They should have left them there for at least the early morning, and let the early morning children bike trains enjoy the added comfort of getting to school that way, or simply the safer conditions that other cyclists (thousands mind you) would have on the route.

The other thing that has changed in the area, is a few strong riders that I talk to regularly have all started – or plan to start – just riding in traffic on Division. The reason being is Division traffic moves at a more reasonable average speed (lower top speed, faster from point to point) than over on Clinton now. The idiots using Clinton as a short cut spurt down the road at 30 mph sometimes, endangering anybody on or around the road and oncoming traffic as they recklessly pass. So since this isn’t even possible on Division anymore, it makes it a somewhat faster and safer street for anybody traveling on it. Albeit the “street skippers” barreling down Clinton are to damned stupid to realize this, because they’re in “must hurry and win the rat race” mode that they don’t stop to realize that a higher top speed doesn’t get them there faster.

Either way… the whole of Clinton, Division and especially the growing auto-train-pacolypse that is going on at the nexus of 11th/12th and Clinton and Division is a growing catastrophe. I’m hoping to write more about this in the future, with some thoughts are real solutions now versus the solutions that we’ll need but will take 10+ years to get them into place!

Division / Powell BRT

So there’s this myth (and yes I know they’re actually workign toward getting it actually built, whatever it is, has been discussed here, here, and here among other places, but I won’t believe it until they break ground with a real plan) that Portland will be getting BRT along Powell and Division. The idea is that BRT would probably run over the Tilikum Bridge (since it already is technically real BRT) and then go onto Powell until 82nd or other section, cutting over to Division on to Gresham. I’ve got a lot of thoughts and ideas about how to really connect the Division corridor to BRT, and cutting across on 82nd I’m not sure is the best spot. BUT, this is huge for many obvious reasons. The most obvious one is that both Division and Powell are in desperate need of better transit service. I however have a massive fear about this project…

The Fear

Will it be real BRT, and if so, where in the hell will it go on Powell? Further out past 39th (and even a little before) heading east there is plenty of room to move sidewalks and roadways around to make space for BRT. The only way, and this is only if Portland is serious about helping people become the focus of this city instead of automobiles, is if the city is willing to get brave and take away some actual auto-capacity. This would be a real removal of auto-capacity on a major street, not some pretend removal like the theoretical removal of auto-capacity on streets like Burnside or Foster, because the capacity at current is barely affected by road diets because the capacity throughput requirements are manageable in every other hours of the day except rush hour. On Powell, getting BRT wedged in there will for sure cut back on actual SOV auto capacity. Either way, one day, Portland WILL BE FORCED to make changes to this area that will result in auto-capacity decreases, so the sooner the better.

Does anybody have any other details on this yet? Will it be real BRT? Are there already plans to cave before the selfish-misguided pressure of auto-lobbyists to maintain current auto-capacity over the needs of all citizens? How is that going? What’s up in the region? I mean, I kind of live here, but it’s still hard to keep up with all the exciting, wild, sometimes crazy things going on!  😮

by Adron

Where do Jane Jacobs and Wendell Cox Intersect?

I have been pondering lately, there is an intersection at life itself, but where do these two thinkers actually have intersections of thought?

Any ideas? Thoughts? Throw in some comments on anything that pops into your mind and we’ll get a conversation going.

Context: Follow the links for context on who Wendell Cox is and who Jane Jacobs are.

by Adron

I’m Just Now Catching up to Al’s April 2014 Video of Me…

I’m sitting here digging through videos on YouTube and here’s this video Al took a while back. I’m not entirely sure who did the edits, but I have a few minor contention points. Here’s the video first:

Is the MAX dangerous based on un-correlated and non-causal crime?

Minute:Second 2:28 – 2:50 – I’m seriously not even going to respond to this insertion of media alarmism and FUD in the middle of this clip. That is a seriously disingenuous association, it is dishonest to even associate that with failure or success in any way. Pulling in outlier data, and pushing and implication that the MAX is a crime train or something of that nature is just extremely cheap and petty. So it’s not even getting an answer from me… just bring data next time and stop being disingenuous. I can argue this but it’s just ridiculous that this is even inserted in there, it’s at best a distraction to simpletons that will then immediately say something ignorant like, “see, it’s a failure there’s some stabbing…”

Is MAX Ridership Not 100k (or more) ?

Minute:Second 2:57 – There’s a flash of some stats from an unspecified time that are supposedly Trimet’s ridership numbers. I’d stated that Trimet ridership on the MAX was 100k or more per day, which was a conservative estimate on my behalf. The data that was shown however was not accurate. Check out the actual PDF of performance information from Trimet itself. Now scroll down to the ridership data for April of 2014 which is the post time of this video (and relatively close +1 a month or so when Al and I actually met and had this conversation). The data for April 2014 is shown below:

Note the MAX Ridership for April 14 is at 121,400. A mere 1.1% decrease over the same month in 2013.

Note the MAX Ridership for April 14 is at 121,400. A mere 1.1% decrease over the same month in 2013.

As you can see, I was being extremely generous in saying the MAX carries merely 100k passenger trips a day, when in reality it registered over 121k that month.

Answer: Yes, I was correct in stating that the ridership is at least that much. It’s the opposite of hyperbole, it’s a conservative estimate, which makes the implication I was making absolutely true.

Is bus ridership barely 3 times what MAX ridership is even with 50 or so bus lines as I said in the video?

The ridership for Trimet bus lines, all of them (not including the paratransit, which is only 21k trips) comes in for the month of April at 335,030 passenger trips. That’s some pretty good ridership.

Bus Ridership at Trimet

Bus Ridership at Trimet

but if we do some math, if Trimet MAX’s ridership is 121k, and we multiply that by x3, we get 363k, clearly more than the 335k trips that were registered.

Answer: Yes, again, my statement was a simple conservative statement that again proves the point that the MAX, by line count, carries dramatically more people than the entire bus system put together. I made no other correlations than that, so no I’m not saying one could exist without the other, or any such thing. I merely stated one point.

So are there only 50 bus lines in Trimet’s System?

Well I did a little manual count (maybe I’m off by +-1?) but I got 80 bus lines on Trimet’s page here. Feel free to count. But agian, a conservative guess at the number of bus lines (and yeah, I should know the number of bus lines by now, but I only knew a very rough low balled amount). This makes the point even more direct to the point I’m making, in that the bus system has 80 bus lines and ONLY carries 3x as much as the MAX.

Answer: Yes, there are at LEAST 50 bus lines, after counting them there are 80.

So is MAX a failure by this measure? Is it truly ridiculous?

The MAX, based on this number of lines, carrying 25% of the passenger trips but only making up 1/20th of the actual lines is by no measure a failure. Looking at that same data for April we can even find more evidence that the MAX lines are doing fine, with a cost per passenger trip at $2.02 while the bus is at $3.27.

Answer: MAX is in no discernable way a failure based on metrics of subsidies and rates of usage for buses. One could make strong arguments that it even does even better against other Trimet modes too (re: Streetcar, WES).

Is MAX Blue Line the only successful line?

Minute:Second 3:26 – Is the Blue Line the only successful line? Study the data more. None of the MAX lines are operationally expensive compared to any bus lines. Even the most efficient bus lines (like the 72, 9, 4, 14, etc) do only slightly better than the Yellow Line and sometimes better than the Green or Red Lines. Most of the time they’re all extremely efficient in cost per passenger trip.

Answer: No, they’re all successful by the metrics available, even the dramatically lower ridership Yellow Line.

Is the Skytrain the only unquestionably successful transit in North America?

Answer: Yes, go look it up, I’m not digging that up for you. But it turns an actually net operational profit, which means that it makes more money from fares during operations than it takes to actually run the trains. That money, is then in turn used to subsidize the less efficient bus service throughout the city that costs more to run per passenger trip.

…then during 4:20- some time Al wants to now say that none of this matter that transit is a human right or something, but when we compare things we have to have a metric. Nobody said anything about what transit modern purpose is, we’re comparing what is success or failure, and actual metrics.

Green Line stole ridership, is it between 22-28k per day?

Minute:Second 4:44 – Current Green Line ridership passenger trips is 24,300 at last count.

Answer 1: Yup, the ridership is at the levels I stated.

Answer 2: It did not steal ridership from the bus routes. Every route that the Green Line crosses that travels east and west (this include sthe #4, 9, 14, 15, and a number of other buses) all have seen ridership increases during the time since the Green Line opened. The #72, which runs parallel and crosses under the Green Line has also seen its ridership maintained or increased over that same period, month-to-month and by any other metric. The data is available, to get some of the specifics you will have to get a FOIA for Trimet to dig it up, but the data is there, just from the totals that are provided on the site (just look at the link above and check out the ridership for bus/MAX) and you’ll see that overall the ridership has generally seen an upward trend since the Green Line opened in 2009 versus a downward trend.

 

…this blog entry is dedicated to Al. Cheers man! It’s always fun.

Portland
by Adron

Tech Helps Build Better Cycling

There’s been a lot of lament about the tech industry and what it does or doesn’t do for a city. I can tell people rest assured, the modern tech company is a huge benefit to cities. Here’s one of the biggest reasons why. They hire people that get active in their tech community, they get active in their local community, and the become active users of transit and cycling at a higher rate than almost any other occupation today. In addition to this the tech industry generally hires people at much higher than median wages, providing a much larger tax base that benefits the rest of society in both higher and lower income brackets.

Portland

Portland

All in all, have a strong tech industry employment base helps a city and its residents in a lot of ways. But what about gentrification you ask? Well remember just because there is correlation that doesn’t mean there is causation, and gentrification is not a cause of the tech industry growing. I’ll have more on this in the future. But real quick I wanted to outline a few companies here in Portland that are leaders in the area when it comes to being great community members. When I say this, I mean in transit use, cycling use, community involvement and city involvement. All of these companies have many people working for them that get active and help out in all sorts of ways.

Elemental Technologies

Trimet did a blog entry a while back titled “Meeting with transit riders at Portland-based startup Elemental Technologies” which has even more information. But here’s a few highlights for the cycling and transit advocates out there.

  • Out of the 91 person team, over 50% use transit and many others cycle into work.
  • The team asked about bus stop spacing, like many of us transit nerds and transit users, we’d like to see them spaced out a bit to cut down on travel time.
  • The Elemental team also asked if the stops will ever be removed downtown to get trip time between Lloyd Center and Goose Hollow down to a more reasonable 10-15 minutes instead of the current 20 minutes. Neil batted this one around and pointed to the fact it would cost a lot to do so. I’m guessing it would actually cost somewhere to the tune of a million or a couple of million to rewire the lights and fix this excessive trip time that currently exists.

New Relic

New Relic got a lot of coverage on their excellent in office, front door bike parking and their dedication to biking as a company. Coverage included “New Relic’s palatial in-office bike parking is Portland’s answer to the Google bus“, “Bikes Are Good for Business: Advocacy on Two Wheels“, and others. Here’s some choice quotes.

  • “Asked how many of New Relic’s 180 local employees drive to work, executive assistant and office manager Mary Cameron began ticking off names on her fingers with the help of two colleagues. “Jim drives,” she said. “I think Patrick drives.” They made it to six before getting stuck. “Less than 10,” Cameron concluded.“
  • It’s safe to say between transit and cycling, the drivers are in rarity.

Jama Software

Jama Software is another local company here in Portland that has a large percentage of cyclists commuting to and from the offices. This is a home grown (I almost went to work for them when they were just 4 employees!) Portland startup. They now employee well over a hundred people. You can read more about their bicycle amenities and advocacy on the BTA article “Optimizing Efficiency Through Bikes and Software” and the Cool Spaces real estate article “Cool Spaces: Jama Software bangs gong to celebrate new business“.

Note: This is one of many posts I’m going to make on this topic. In the future I’ll connect more of the advocacy and amenities that everybody (not just employees of said tech industry companies) gets to enjoy that comes from these and other Portland tech industry companies.

Stockholm
by Adron

Portland, Gateway to Copenhagen, Amsterdam…

…Gronningen, Greifswald, Lund, Assen, Münster, Utrecht, Västerås, Ferrara, Malmö, Linköping, Odense, Basel, Osaka, Bremen, Bologna, Oulu, Munich, Florence, Rotterdam, Berne, Tübingen, Aarhus, Tokyo, Salzburg, Venice, Pardubice, York, Dresden, Basel, Ghent, Parma, Bern, Cambridge, Graz, Berlin, Strasbourg, Turku, Stockholm.

Stockholm

Stockholm

All cities that have 10%-55% biking mode share and it’s growing. They all have vibrant music scenes, from heavy metal to jazz to classical. They all have extensive art, museums and places of learning. They all have exceptional standards of living, and livability that’s off the charts. Continue reading →