While heading home tonight on the #9 at the end of fare-less square a, gasp, fare inspector boarded and checked everyone’s fare.  Of course, as expected everyone on the bus had valid fare.  I think 95% of fare evasion occurs on the MAX, since it is inherently more vulnerable.  The inspector was one of the newer guys for sure, I haven’t seen him before and I think at some point I’ve met every fare inspector on the system that has been working more than 3-4 years.

The fare inspector popping on and off the bus was cool, but what got me writing this entry is pondering what the return on investment is for one form of transport over another.  The obvious answer is simply, it depends.  Measuring transport based solely on one measurement, such as per rider, per mile, per gallon, or otherwise doesn’t really tell one anything about returns.  A person, a town or city, or society gets when people travel by one mode or don’t travel by a particular mode varies depending on too many factors that I won’t even begin to list them.

For instance, New York gains billions by slight changes in subway efficiency or a couple lines being shut down for a few days.  Meanwhile, Portland loses service during the winter for days on end, and it doesn’t cause a blip on anyone’s radar outside of Portland.

Another thought, what happens if a couple major Interstates shutdown.  Let’s say the I-405 shuts down in LA.  The city becomes crippled beyond operation, at least, that segment of LA, which is by far a vast segment of LA.  If one Interstate shuts down like that in New York, barely a word would be mentioned outside the city.  But if part of the subway system is shut down, it would make world news.  Why?  Because in LA the Interstates are the primary mode of transport, in New York the transit is how one gets in and out of that city.

In both cities, one mode over another would obviously add or subtract differing positives and negatives.  If New York had an Interstate cut into its heart, it would probably lose more money than it could ever gain from Interstate access.  But add a Subway, and local values skyrocket and billions are netted just from the ridership.  Do the same in LA and nobody notices.  Just ask an average American about the subways in LA, they probably won’t even know they have one.

Either which way, it makes one ponder what are the best avenues of investment for the Portland area.  Overall I see TriMet & Metro making some good steps in the right direction, but there are some that do concern me.

The first thing I saw the morning of Saturday, while waiting for the #9 to arrive was one of the builders of America.  With over 150 years of building America under its belt, one more train rolled by with a double stack cargo container consist.  Union Pacific, silently and ghost like serves the nation without many even knowing they exist.  I couldn’t help but wonder, where are the parades and celebrations for these trains? But I do digress, on to the Green Line!

Kicking Off the Green Line

As planned the Green Line kicked off operations yesterday.  I must say it was a bit smoother than the Yellow Line switch over, I’m guessing they’ve ironed out a bit more of the signals that were operating oddly 2 weeks ago.  So today, Sunday, is now full operations day #1, and tomorrow will be the first day of operations under regular commuter capacity loads.  Yesterday however was probably at the expected 25,000 or so trips taken on the line.

Train #1 – The Politicos Arrive

Our leadership at the FTA, local and otherwise arrived after their Clackamas Town Center kick off earlier.  I guess it was sometime around 10am-ish.  The drum core was playing and the college cheer leading squad was down to cheer as the politicians arrived and proceeded to the speaking platform.

To the left I saw Jason McHuff filming some video of the drum core just before the politicians’ arrival, to the right Jo and Don surveyed the growing crowd.  I stood afar before diving into the Seattle’s Best for a morning coffee.  Sure, it was almost 11am, but I had not had much of the day to wake up yet.

The politicians arrived and started to do their speaking, which led my father, mother, Don, Jo, John, and I to head off for a bit to do something interesting. John ran into one of the "recall Sam Adams" people, and after a minute of hearing the lady’s spiel I butt in to lay down my 2 cents.  We both concurred that the recall effort was mostly grasping at straws, even if successful, vain at best.  In general, if you do or do not support Sam, the effort is a waste of time.  In addition, there is a simple fact to remember, even when they do not intend to, politicians lie.

Back on the events of the day, we continued our trek via streetcar to the Farmer’s Market.  There Jo & Don picked up some kicking Pine State Biscuits.  Pops, mother, John, and I wandered around checking out various market items.  We caught a raggy time band jamming away upon our approach to the market.

After about 30 minutes we headed back to see about catching a Green Line Train to Clackamas.

We walked up just as the first politician’s train was departing.  It left at 11:24am instead of the advertised 11:30am.  I stated simply, “I guess we won’t be catching that ride.”  We waited, a Type-4 Yellow Line LRV set arrived and departed.  The next set arrived was a Type-3 & Type-1.  Some of the crew was bummed that we wouldn’t be able to ride one of the new trains.  I figured we’d be able to jump aboard a Type-4 set at some point so it didn’t bother me too much.

We made decent time heading out of town, with no delays initially.  At each stop as we passed through, people were enjoying the various booths, tents, events, and such.  Overall the mood was ecstatic.  John, who is from the DC area, enjoyed the ride out, as did all our other crew.

Don, who is a navy man who lives in the Philippines also enjoyed the trip.  He’s in town waiting on his ship to depart, and Friday night Jo and I had met him at Clackamas Town Center (the Mall).  He had arrived there by travelling from Swan Island on the #72 the length of the entire route.  He was more than chill with riding the bus, having been all over the world, one usually doesn’t have any issue getting around.  He did quip, “it’s nicer riding the train the distance than the bus”.

After a wander about the mall, a small snippet of eats, we all headed back downtown and off to various directions.  Jo & Don headed to Target off of the I-205 Mall Stop, I headed back downtown, John & Father headed up to the airport by riding the #72 and transferring to the Red Line.

Streetcar Press – It’s all about the information.

While on way out to Clackamas TC I just happened to meet Justin H. Wright, Publisher at Streetcar Press.  We had a nice long conversation while en route to Clackamas Town Center.  Check out some of the materials published over at the Streetcar Press Website.  I’ll definitely have to meet up and discuss some other possible materials that I could contribute to in the future.

Max, Jason.  We Three Transit Amigos

On the way back the Green, Yellow, Blue, and Red had all started to clump a bit in the Banfield Corridor.  This caused a 10 minute delay in arrival back downtown.  Thus I arrived 10 minutes late to meet up with Max Campos and Jason McHuff.

We all boarded up on a Green Line departure for Clackamas TC after a tour through the Pioneer Square exhibits.  Pioneer Square was a great show, with all sorts of booths and even a bus on display in the square.  We eventually made it all the way to Clackamas Town Center, wandered around the booths and such for a few minutes, and then headed back north.

We discussed dozens of different topics including why we were into transit in general.  Max also pointed out many of the different points of data acquisition and other things available via TriMet.  Great trip, great conversation, will absolutely have to have a get together again in the future.  Yes, I will get on that immediately.  Still trying to find the time to setup a meet.

While out at Clackamas Town Center stop I grabbed a few shots of the line waiting to board the MAX heading back downtown.

The lines and crowds were impressive.  I have little doubt TriMet met expectations of 25,000 plus trips made on opening day.  I just wonder now if they’ll be able to blow past my estimates made in my ridership estimates entry.

I do suspect that the mall will provide a great anchor for the MAX Green Line, I also have my doubts about it providing a significant rider count.  It is possible though, as this mall is the first real suburban mall connected via MAX besides Pioneer Place Mall.  This mall will really provide evidence that light rail can attract young riders that are the standard suburban mall bunnies (or whatever you would call them).  If the line garners a high rider count of young people to and from the mall it could provide catalyst for even further expansion of light rail to these types of end points.

Along the ride a few shots of the green line trains.  The Type-4 LRV set display the Green Line with the little green light, dots, or whatever you would call that green square.  The traditional Typee 1-3s all show the Green Line with a standard green banner display across the front and sides of the LRVs.

The following shots of the MAX show a Type-4 headed to City Center, a Type-3 (or 2?) heading to Clackamas Town Center, and a Type-4 headed to PSU.

I did notice that when the LRVs get to Clackamas TC the icon on the Type 4’s goes hot pink and then shows PSU as the next destination.  Some of the arrivals however showed City Center as the destination instead of PSU.  I suspect that may have something to do with the particular train going in or out of service.  If so, that really throws a curve ball in for planning a trip, hope that doesn’t mess up riders.

Another great thing at the Clackamas TC is the storm swales.  These provide a beautiful addition to the stop but also a very functional cleansing of the waste water that runs off of the station.  Something that is desperately needed in and around more parking lots.  The amount of poisonous waste that runs off of parking lots is mind boggling and a simple swale does a great job cleaning up most of it.

After riding the Green Light the exitement of a successful line made me eally hope that TriMet sees much higher ridership numbers than my previous write up suggests.  I just can’t logically expect more until the economy really starts to turn around (or heaven forbid the Government actually fixes some real issues:  i.e. Federal Reserve, Monetary System, Market Policies, etc).

The last shot of the trip I’ll leave readers with is a shot of the storm swale that is at Clackamas TC.  With the drain easily visible under the rocks, one can see how the water will flow into and through the most greenery in the landscape.  Those weeds, as they may appear, serve as the workers of the cleansing process.  What little waste actually leaves the transit aspect (LRVs, rail bed, etc) station will flow into here.  The real work of this storm swale will be to clean up the bus and auto waste product.

Commute?

I’m tempted over the next few weeks to catch a few trips out on my old trusty #9 Bus and catch the Green Line into town.  I would of course do my regular transit sleuthing activity of checking out the ridership stats, and doing some general observations on the efficiency, usefulness, or as I always look forward to, my personal productivity while on the route.

Sunday, A Little Bit More

Jason, Max, and I all discussed a lot about transit tracker and the general state of web services offered by TriMet.  These services enable all sorts of devices and applications.  These apps are awesome.  They are all extremely useful for trip planning, I think all of them are open source, and they didn’t cost the taxpayers a direct penny!  With TriMet offering this data I couldn’t help but wonder when the Green Line would show up as an active transit tracker route.  Well this Sunday it showed up, but also the Mall MAX showed up!  I was stunned, as I didn’t realize it would actually be referred to as an individual route, but it does make logical sense that it would.  To the right I have a shot of the MAX Green Line and Mall Shuttle showing up via the PDX Bus iPhone Application.

My schedule is shaping up to look like this.  Jo and I are jumping on the #9 to head downtown for the Green Line events around 9:36am.  We intend to meet up with my father, mother, my father & my friend John from Washington DC, Navy Don, and anyone else that wants to jump on the 11:30am first departure (or the one right afterward) bound for Clackamas Transit Center.  There will of course be a bunch of politicians there, but I’m not keen on seeing any of them, I’m going to see the vehicles, see the stations, and see the actual LRVs finally in action.

At 3:00pm I expect to be back downtown to meet Max and possibly others at the chess boards at Pioneer Square.  If anyone wants to join me before, around, or whenever I’ll be riding about please do.  I’ll most likely be wandering around with my lady Jo, with her red dyed hair, flower tats, a Canon 40D, and I’ll be looking about with the curiosity of a 4 year old on my face.

Hope to see all out there.

The Green Line MAX opens tomorrow in Portland in the celebration will be had all along the line.  My estimate might just be off, but I’m not ruling my estimate out just yet!  The excitement is definitely brimming downtown, with coworkers, businesses, and others talking about it regularly.  I hear strangers talking at the sidewalk tables as they sit and enjoy lunch along the new transit mall, I hear them out at the Dinerante (spelling?), people in passing, or people outright asking me, “when is it starting to run?”  People see the trains out and the fervor just keeps growing.

I walked to my normal station stop where I depart work, 5th & Taylor to wait for the arrival of the #9 south bound.  I took a load off in one of the new seats at the stop.  I must say, if one sits properly the seats are comfortable.  If someone is fat, wants to slouch, is excessively tall (+6.4), then the seats might be rather uncomfortable, but for the healthy average builds of Portland they’ll be spot on.  The see through windows are, I must say, very nice.  I no longer feel the necessity to extend my neck out around the corners of the shelters as I did at the old stops.  The old stops having huge blind spots, makes any person that has some street smarts wary of those that sit in or around the corners.  Especially later in the evening when the rat punks, transients, bum kids, and other miscellaneous miscreants start loitering about.

After a 2 minute wait the #9 pulled up on time and I boarded, grabbed a seat and off we went.  Traffic wasn’t too bad on the road going onto the Ross Island Bridge today, but let me tell you about those really smart Interstates!  The Interstates where packed like a parking lot.  Traffic I suspect moved at a creeping 15-20mph, far past the capacity constraints of the lanes available.

Even though the Interstates where packed the Light Rail Vehicles of the Yellow, Blue, and Red Line rolled along on flange wheels uninterrupted.  One could see that each train was packed, as where all the buses.  These 3 lines, were easily moving people in and out of downtown, contrary to the Interstate Counterparts.  The dedicated right of way was paying dividends for the LRVs.  The buses pushed in and out of downtown too, smoothly through the mall without hindrance.  Some buses ran into a little congestion once leaving the transit mall, but not too often.  Today, traffic was moving smoothly except for the standard Interstate catastrophe.

As we rode onto the Ross Island, one could even see the streetcar departing from south waterfront with a respectable number of passengers.  It zipped under the bridge as we rolled above.  As we rolled onto Powell the traffic flowed smoothly still.  I was relieved to have had a short 10 minute commute.  Often the afternoon commute the #9 runs into stiff congestion through the curves leading up to the Ross Island Bridge, but today was a nice exception.

I felt the urge to wander aimlessly and watch this flow of traffic unfold, but conserving my time got the best of me.  I got off the bus at 21st & Powell and noticed something strange.  No less than 15 people between the downtown stop and here were going barefoot.  I still have no idea, finishing this entry, why in the world on a hot and toasty day like this there were a dozen plus people barefoot.  No correlation between them, one girl looked like she was just out of school for the day, one guy looked the part of a punker, one guy looked the part of the “bro”, another girl looked like she was a metal head.

Another commute, another oddity noticed in Portland, no shortage of strangely interesting bits.  Tomorrow, the Green Line.

Jo and I recently went out to the Clackamas Town Center Mall.  Partly just to do it, partly because one can buy really cheap ladies shoes, and Jo wanted some shoes.  So off we went. 

While we where out there I wondered off into thought when we boarded out north bound #72 bus.  This is the mother load of all bus routes in Portland.  With ridership higher than any other route it has a frequency as low as every few minutes during peak hours, and still every 15 or so minutes during the slowest hours.  Riders are often so crammed onto the buses, for so many hours of service, that the dramatically subsidized fares often turn a net operational profit for this bus line.  Considering the paltry amount that a fare represents of the overall cost of operations, this bares a rather amazing value return for TriMet.

Near the #72, running parallel for the busiest stretch of the route, runs the new Green Line.  The Green Line has higher capacity, solely because it is using Light Rail Vehicles while the #72 route is limited to 40’ buses.  The #72 along this part of the route follows 82nd Street (or Avenue, not sure what it is actually dubbed).  The Green Line follows about 10 or so blocks away near Interstate 205.

[In the image I’ve made the Green Line…  green (imagine that!) and the #72 line dotted dark blue]

These parallel routes have the potential to garner more ridership than any other area of TriMet’s System.  Currently I suspect, but am not sure, that the Blue Line Light Rail System holds the crown of highest ridership.  It sits easily within the 25-30k count during a weekday,making it easily the busiest Light Rail Line in the entire North Western United States.  Seattle’s Sound Transit however works diligently to build up their light rail system, prospectively surpassing TriMet’s Blue Line with their first line.

All this led me to wondering a commonly asked question among transit aficionados in Portland and even in other areas of the country that pay heed to Portland’s System.  Will the Green Line take any ridership from the current #72 Route as configured?

My Current Estimates

My current estimate is, if it does take some of the current ridership, it will only amount to 3-6% of it.  I suspect 40% of the Green Line’s Ridership will be new to the corridor, and possibly half of that 50% (20% of total ridership) will be completely new to transit.  These new riders will most likely be drivers who will now park at the park & rides along the Green Line Route to come into downtown or points along the route leading into downtown.

I also suspect that first year ridership, with the economy in the doldrums and the primary rider (*) base being heavily affected by the downturned economy, could be as low as 7000k per day along the corridor.  About half of what the #72 Route currently carries in a day.  However as things play out in the economy, I would suspect ridership to climb, dare I say skyrocket, to within 13-14k within 1-2 years of the opening of the line.  This pending, we at least hold steady with 0-1% growth over the next year or two.  Looking at the US economic history, this should be easy to attain, so I’m going with the estimation the Green Line will at least achieve the 13-14k per day by 2011, possibly as late as 2012.

I wouldn’t expect the Green Line Route to surpass the 13-14k estimate until the area increases the density of residents by about 20% over what it is now or gas prices surpass $3.50 per gallon.  Both of these things will most likely pass around 2013 or 2014, pushing the ridership higher, but at first I wouldn’t suspect too much.  With the looming elephant in the room of massive inflation. Corrective taxation for the overzealous administrations (not excluding the current one) will see a continually falling value in the dollar while seeing incomes not keep pace with valuation needed to maintain cost of living.  Parity will be almost impossible to maintain, which later in the next decade will make ridership increase even more.  Mostly out of monetary necessity than choice by riders.  However I can imagine that the next decade will see a dramatic change in attitudes of people, I doubt any significant change will occur until about 2017-2018 at the earliest, and suspect real change to start around 2020”ish”.

However, depending on the attractiveness of this alignment being rail versus bus, a fair number of preferred riders could be attained.  Currently I would be surprised for this to amount to more than 1-2k rides per day, but TriMet routes have surprised me in the past.

Anyone else have any hard guesses/estimates for the Green Line Route?