This is an old article, but classic none the less.

Report: 98 Percent Of U.S. Commuters Favor Public Transportation For Others

I went walking around yesterday, just for fun and snagged a few IPhone pictures of the streetcar.  There was one thing I noticed, which I find to be one of the superiorities of open track streetcars and rail versus flat non-porous roads.  Flowers.

You might be thinking, WTF are you talking about Adron!  Well I’ll explain.

Tracks, with standard road bedding allow for water to run off but also run into the ground directly from the tracks.  It also allows for plants to literally grow in and between the tracks.  Sometimes this is ok for the trains, sometimes it isn’t, but more often then not weeds, grain, or even flowers can grow up and live without interrupting the transit and without the transit interrupting the plants.  An Interstate, Highway, or almost 99.999% of the roads in the US and the world can’t allow this.  Between the black top, concrete, and high coverage of tires on roads it just can’t support life of any sort.  Roadways are the embodiment of death in this sense.

Joleen and I went to the protest on the waterfront about the prospect of having a new bridge built over the Columbia to replace the current I-5 Bridge.  It was pretty good, I’d love to have seen more people, but it was a good start in the effort.  With how many people are idiotically apathetic to action like this it is no wonder the Government can shove dumb ideas down our throats without much resistance.  Well for the CRC, specifically the 12 lane bridge, the resistance is growing larger by the day.  Even Vancouver residents are wakening up to the idea that a 12 lane toll bridge is NOT a good idea for them either, or for anybody in the metropolitan area.

A 6 lane, with other local traffic bridge, a light rail bridge, a pedestrian bridge, fixing the rail bridge or the current corridor, there are at least a dozen, if not 2-3 dozen alternatives that have a VASTLY SUPERIOR monetary, environmental, economic, and traffic impact than the current idea of a MEGA BRIDGE.

Please, check out the following sites and see if you can’t help us make some impact into this future destruction this 12-lane bridge proposal is suggesting.

6:33pm Departure.  I finished the other entry, totally forgetting I had another leg of my day’s journey’s to complete still.  As I sat waiting for departure, for the first time I heard it called via dispatch, “High ball!”  One has to love that.  🙂

We headed out into the street running segment of the trip with barely any traffic in Beaverton now.  The jams of the 4 and 5 o’clock hour where gone.

As we pulled through the crossroads and onto the mainline I noticed that some idiot had smashed into the east bound crossing gate.  I tell ya, people in cars, they’re special kind of idiots.  It really, honestly, sincerely doesn’t take that much more effort to pay attention.  The inherent problem is a lack of wrote training and such.  People just don’t watch what they’re doing when driving.  I ponder, if people had a short little 20 hours worth of training what our fatality and accident rate with cars would drop to?  It’s low already, but would probably be safer than air travel in a short period of time.  But oh well, I don’t much care as I just try to stay off the road and away from the American Car Driving Louse.

With 18 people aboard we arrived at Hall/Nimbus.  2 left us and we gained none.  The conductor did walk over to someone buying a ticket on a bike, but the cyclist was just getting a ticket for later or something.  The conductor turned and stepped aboard as the doors began to shut.  We were off again en route to Tigard now.

In Tigard we gave up 2 more riders.  We now had…  …7 people.  ?  😐   Argh!  I sure hope ridership picks up.  It is about what TriMet expected though.  We met the double train here and as always, the conductors exchanged their data bits about the trips and I’m sure a bit of friendly chat.

We rolled through the yard south of Tigard and I noticed the engine I saw previously in the day, dubbed Willamina by Portland & Western, sat there idly.  I dig that they name their engines, it adds an element of the going theme this week of pride.

The other thing I noted was that in Tigard the north bound train had easily 30 people aboard, more than 2x what our single DMU had.  I get the notion that most of the north bound trips are going to have more riders than the south bound trips.  However that is working it appears to be true so far this week.  Maybe people go north but then end up heading back south via some other means.  Maybe it is just an oddity for this week?  I’m not particularly sure but it is what I’ve observed.

As we pulled into Tualatin the skaters where at the skate part hard at work shredding away.  Traffic here had died down to tolerable levels also.  The town center next to the station opposite of the Haggen Grocery Store seemed not to stir at all.  I’m tempted to go wonder around in the area sometime, but the draw just isn’t quit there.

We left Tualatin with about 4 people, including myself and excluding the conductor and engineer (I always exclude them).

At this point, that gives us a whopping 3.x MPG per passenger.  Roughness.  😦

Ok, this is the last one of the day.  I’m done with the ole’ blog for tonight.

On the south bound stretch of the WES my father and I got to ride on the cab car instead of the DMU.  The sound is different, and quieter than riding on the DMU.  Ride quality is flawless just as the DMU.

On departure from Beaverton we actually had our tickets checked by the conductor.  I was rather stoked by this as I thought there wasn’t going to be any enforcement.  The conductor asking, being they have that railroad matter of fact-ness about them, is the prefect candidate to be asking for fare.  One young kid didn’t have fare, but I admit he seemed to be a bit perplexed by the whole “train” concept and how fare was supposed to work.  The conductor explained it to him and let him grab a fare at Hall/Nimbus Station.

We then cruised smoothly with our double unit consist on down toward Tualatin.  Without the engine noise of the DMU.  For kicks I decided to ride back and make possibly another round trip of the whole affair.

Once we arrived in Wilsonville we sat tight for the 20+ minutes for the return trip.

The stats so far are:

• One non-paying customer that became a paying customer.
• 43 people boarded in Beaverton.
• 12 more en route and others offloaded.
• 17 passengers detrained in Wilsonville.
• Peak load was 43.

Our departure was then set for 4:53pm.  At 4:53pm we headed north.  In Tualatin we actually picked up a number of people and barely lost anyone.  In Tigard we gained approximately 16 people on board and lost no one.  Peak load so far is approximately 30.

In Tigard we, as usual, met the south bound train.  The south bound train had an approximate load of 35-38 just from viewing the seat load.  We departed, on time, north for Beaverton.

On this north bound trip father and I sat in the DMU for a comparison.  Since I had ridden on the DMU for every other trip I’ve made this week I was able to compare that with the DMU under load of the cab car.  Let me tell ya, the vibration and extra effort the DMU had to make to get going was rather extreme.  Compared to single car operation it felt like it was just going to give a piston away at any moment.  We however got going after a few moments of acceleration and everything would quite down to regular operational levels.

At Hall/Nimbus we had 9 on, with one runner at the last second making 10.  I think at this point we lost 3-4 people, it however is rather hard to tell with the dual unit train.  I don’t think I’ve ever struggled to count so much.  With the platforms and configuration though it is not easy to see all the egress points.

• 14 People north bound.
• Peak load north bound was 32.

That’s it for the day.