Took the normal route to work this morning, jumping aboard the #9.  Midday Jo and I took a ride on the Green Line MAX from one stop down to another stop, since it was coming.  Saved us about 5 minutes of walking.  After that we rode from Couch & 5th to Pioneer Courthouse, which saved about 10 minutes of walking.

Later in the day, after drinks with friends, I headed over and took a ride out on the Blue Line MAX.  After that I boarded the #77 back down Broadway and into town.  Of course this diversion was just for kicks & because I was conversing with a fellow cohort.

The #77 had a broken heater or something, the bus must have been at least 85 degrees on board.  The regular noisy raspy racket of a diesel engine blanketed the bus with the regular cacophony of sound.  When people spoke, they had to raise their voices to an inappropriate, unfortunately necessary level.  The cell phone user got on the phone and commenced to make even more racket to add to the overall chaos.

I couldn’t help but miss the streetcars of New Orleans.  Even though morbidly hot during the summer, during Fall they where heavenly comfortable.  With the windows down and a smooth coasting motion, the cars stayed a moderate 70-75 degrees.  The humidity almost gave the area a surreal feeling that incurred a heavy relaxation.  Unlike the diesels of buses, the streetcars made almost no sound.  It left one to think freely and gaze upon people passing by.  To look upon the grandeur of the buildings and see the hundreds of years of history.

Portland, has a different kind of and different level of placidness, with no frequent streetcar to compare with.

The frequent streetcar we do have is of a very different nature.  The climate is controlled, in a way, being the doors open all the time.  There are no opening windows.  It also cost 4x as much as the New Orleans Streetcars.  Ours run much less frequently also, at peak reaching about every 12-13 minutes and about 20-30 minutes later in the day.

The streetcar however is very nice.  Often fairly clean, and very smooth.  The turns are a little jerky but that is often what a turn is, jerky.  The ride though, and that brighter appearance make the different though.  I don’t have to hold on to my laptop for dear life.  It simply sits upon my lap.  The ridership on our line seems to be, in general, more genteel than that of many bus routes.  Sometimes there are the entertaining ones, but often it is calm and collected on the streetcar.

With the thoughts of the flanged wheels, I decide to jump off the #77 and board the Streetcar.  In a mere few minutes, I board the next streetcar coming after getting off of the #77.  I’m relieved the wait was only 3 minutes at this hour of the night.

Tonight peaks at about 15 riders, including the volunteer fare inspector.  He’s of course not enabled in the same way the other fare inspectors are, but basically prides (or shames, if you want to be negative) people into buying or not buying tickets.  The irony of course, is that 7 geezerly yuppies (I know, y in yuppies stand for young, but these people weren’t) get on the streetcar and break the calmness of the ride.  They’re boisterous in their middle class uppity zeal.  With a tinge of redneck doltishness they’re asked to pay the fare by the fare inspector.  They all just laugh in their jolly alcoholic doldrums.  None of them pay, instead just laughing it off as the fare inspector gives up and gets off before the fare less zone.  I spurt out, “The fare inspector is here just to encourage honesty…” to which they all continue to laugh about.  Irony being they’re all Republicans, as I notice from various emblems and ramblings.  Strange, the Democrats are fine with abrogating funds via taxes, and Republicans just abrogate funds by not paying.  I guess, again, they’re functionally both the same.

I ride on, with the calmness resumed as they all huddle off of the streetcar toward the MAX.  A few more people get on and we move along smoothly toward south waterfront.  I check my iPhone to see what the ETA is for the #9 I intend to transfer to.  A few moments later a time pulls up, the good trusty #9 is coming soon.  My transfer will only be about 4-5 minutes.  I’m good with that, can’t complain a bit.

All this wondering about, while blogging & writing code makes me wonder what the coming trip will be like.  With that the focus on work I need to do right now comes flooding back into my mind and encourages me to leave this writing.  I decide that it best to do so, and with that I leave the writing to finish the days work.

Peace.

This is a rarity on this blog, but I’m going to throw down.  Why?  Because I still know an obscenely significant number of things about cars, the dynamics of driving, engine characteristics, piston vs electric vs rotary, and the list goes on.  This entry is about cars that are actually moving the industry forward in technology and cleaning up the transportation industry.

There are a few conjectures that I’ll add right now about the auto industry.

• Technological progress of automobiles exceeds transit, and other modes of transport by a significant measure for two primary reasons:  The companies are run for profit & privately held,  and they’re accountable to maintaining that.

America, I’d like to invite you to come an visit a city that kicks your city’s ass.  As I’ve written here, and here, and here, Portland is pretty tough competitor for anyone who wants to live a truly fulfilling life. 

Portland needs to bulk up appropriately on some of the bus lines really bad.  Portland is set for light rail, the streetcar is fine as long as it doesn’t eat up too much additional money, but the bus system really needs some TLC (tender loving car).  TriMet, the transit authority here in Portland, has long maintained a bare mediocrity of bus service.  I am not going to say cancel any light rail plans, but what I am writing now to advocate is to absolutely bolster bus service on primary corridors.  Some of these corridors would COVER THE COST OF THE ENHANCEMENTS as one of the lines actually turns a profit.

• #72 – Bolster this with a few dozen 60’ buses, BRT style preferably.  15-20 Million.  This line, being that it actually is profitable on operations, leaves TriMet with absolutely ZERO reason to not upgrade the buses to something reasonable.  If they got some nice new, or even used BRT style buses of the 60’ range, ridership has a very high chance of increasing.
• #9 – Don’t run frequencies of 4-5 minutes in the morning, instead, run more consistently scheduled and non-bunched 60’ BRT buses.  Simple provide service during rush hour every 10 minutes, during the day between 9am-4pm run 15 minute BRT service, and then after 6 pm until about 8pm, then switch to regular 40’ buses running every 15 until later at night, when eventually the schedule hits every 30 minutes about 10:30pm and then shuts down at about 1:00am.  18-24 million.
• #4, #15, and over a dozen other east side buses should all have 60’ buses run during rush hour for at least 2-3 of the frequencies so frequency can be pushed out to reduce bunching, and increase capacity without having followers bunched with leaders empty.  The current method of trying to fill in the gap, is inefficient and doesn’t really provide increased ridership because a number of buses end up during rush hour undertilized while some are jam packed because of the bunching.  Easy fix $5-8 million or so per line.
• Fix WES.  By that I don’t mean spend another penny on it.  What should be done is fixing up the stops according to their transfer points.  TriMet really didn’t finish the bus stops according to what I believe most people thought would be done.  The transfers are difficult at all TriMet transfer points.  In Tigard, the transit center is kind of just “blagh”.  It needs life, rezoned, and fixed.  This can help WES and every single line that comes into Tigard.  Same goes for the other stops such as the silliness at Tualatin.  One doesn’t even see the bus stop without diligently searching for it.  Total cost about $18-120 million.  From that estimate one can guess, the west side needs some serious help with the buses.

These fixes should be pushed up in priority, otherwise I do see a point when TriMet will hit a serious functional breaking point and possibly even litigation if they don’t actually serve routes as they could actually be serving them per demand.  If TriMet experiences another ridership boom on the primary arterials going into Portland (#9, #4, #15, #14, etc., etc) the uproar will absolutely get louder.  To not prepare, and encourage ridership in the meantime is absolutely neglectful of the duties TriMet is created and responsible for providing.  Being that it is ridiculously cheap and there are pro-transit leaders in Washington, the reasons not to build out appropriate bus routes for the future is relatively nonexistent.