I’ve just cut up a bunch of header images and just thought I’d post them. Any favorites? The next round I’ll aim for a few buses since this primarily came out of my MAX photos from the last 8 years.
Tag / max
MAX Line Skateboarding Adventures!
Today on the way home I rode my bike down to the Tilikum and across to the eastern shore of the river. There I boarded the Orange Line MAX north. The next MAX pulled into the station shortly after my arrival and I racked my bike. I threw the lock on it since I planned to sit on the raised floor section away from my bike.
Once up on the raised floor section I sat down and pulled the laptop out to get some work done while riding. Tons of people boarded at the PSU stop and each subsequent stop, it was after 16:00 so a lot of people were heading home.
As the train approached Burnside and began to cross the driver rang the bell rapidly and started to apply brakes a bit harder than one might expect. However the driver let up quickly and a guy stood on the north street corner of Burnside with a defeated look.
I wasn’t sure what, but he was looking at the MAX intently as we continued onward past where he was standing. We missed our light into the Davis Street Station Stop so we stopped just short at Couch Street. There this same individual came quickly up to the side of the MAX and looked undernearth. He looked relieved but unsure.
The driver popped the side window and asked, “Can you safely get it?” He confirmed with a nod of his head and a verbal yes at the same time. The driver then said, “go ahead and get it.” The guy leaned down in front of the MAX.
To the side I could look over and see where he was leaning down in from the MAX. He was definitely in a position that if the MAX lurched forward he’d easily be caught, crushed, and killed. It would easily be a very painful way to die. But the driver of course held the train steady. In the mirror I could see him working something out from under the train.
Then he stood up and I saw what he had retrieved. His skateboard had slid out from under his feet and managed to land under the MAX as it had passed by on Burnside. So here he was, relieved, that it had stayed entirely intact, and just been pushed along by the lower bar in front of the wheels of the MAX.
All emergencies diverted! Onward we rolled, skateboard destruction averted!
Thoughts from Oakland on Portland, To 2015!
This last week has been a whole host of madness. I’ve tried to kick off the new year with some solid riding, which I’ve been partly successful at. I’ve also started my planning around activism and advocacy for cycling and transit in Portland. There are a number of projects, but the top three I’m aiming to put effort into are as follows:
- I’m working with others to begin citizen observation and video recording of traffic scofflaws. Those that ignore diverters and other traffic control devices are on watch. Think of this as a neighborhood watch but with the prospect of actually pressing charges utilizing citizen citations. Those that endanger others through their actions are officially on notice.
- I’m trying to figure out a way, and would love any assistance, at figuring out how the city can crowd fund and allow citizen activists to actually help maintain infrastructure amenities. All of those downtrodden bus stops, MAX stations, and other areas that seem to be in disregard – I’d like to find a way that myself and others can volunteer to help out with these amenities.
- I’m starting efforts to organize and sustain more regular rides, both cycling and transit rides, that will culminate in various activities that might include: bonfires, camping, hacking (coding), hardware hacking (building cool stuff that does cool things), and possibly hardware build outs (like hacking bikes and building rigs of various sorts).
No bets yet, I hope I’m successful at all three, but I’ll be happy if I can knock out #1 and one of the other two.
Other Network Building & Learning Efforts
I’m also intending to actually meet, face-to-face, a number of individuals that I’ve been aiming to meet for years in the Portland area. Hopefully if I don’t accomplish the later two of my goals above, I can help others knock out a few of their goals for the coming year in activism and advocacy.
For now, cheers, happy new year, and all that jazz.
Some More from the Snowpacalypse on Twitter
Before moving to far ahead, here’s a snapshot of transit at 4:29pm, still actually running pretty good going into rush hour.
Status as of 4:29pm on Thursday
‘A 100 Crashes’ of ‘chaos’. It’s called road infrastructure & auto-dependency dumb ass.
Meanwhile, as usual, the suburbs are definitely failing at this whole snow thing.
Well, except for people on bikes or such. It seems this is the running theme.
One of the only times DALLAS (yes, Dallas) is looking a little like Portland.
Snow day in Portland turned a normally 15-20 minute trip into 2 hours
#pdxtst #PortlandSnow pic.twitter.com/WqOmlIBiuG
— Tom Mack (@tommack) February 6, 2014
Denver, Los Angeles, Seattle and Portland, What Was First?
Portland was first, again, as usual it seems. What was it first for? Well, the list isn’t short, but what I’m talking about today is the MAX connection from downtown to the airport. I just read a summary of news tidbits on The Source titled Transportation Headlines for Wednesday, November 27th. The segment that caught my attention was the Denver East Corridor Rail line to the airport that pointed to the Streetsblog Article complaining about LA’s airport connector that is under construction.
Portland’s MAX Red Line
MAX Red Line, Click for Trimet’s Page on the Red Line.
In Portland the MAX Red Line opened in 2001 on the very unfortunate date of September 10th. The next day being September 11th 2001 really put the airport out of commission. For weeks after the opening date the line barely carried a soul to the airport, for obvious reasons. The entire place was closed after the world trade center twin towers came down in New York City. The world mourned the event and the Red Line suffered because of it, just as we all did.
However, as the city, the country and people got back to the business of day to day activities and the airport re-opened the line bustled with riders. Between 1990 and 2008 the airport had gone from six million passengers through the airport (flying) to over 13 million. 2020 projects are that it will easily surpass that, likely in the 20+ million range. The four stops of the Red Line however do not serve just the airport, and the length of the route serves many other stops with a huge number of riders. For those stops it doubles the service along the Banfield Corridor with the Blue Line all the way out to Beaverton. There is even talk of enabling it to double service even further out toward the edge of Beaverton or even going a little ways into Hillsboro. Time will tell for those changes though.
Why do I bring that up? Because the Red Line serves far more than just the airport, and even a bulk of the ridership isn’t even airport bound. The ridership for the two stops before the airport stop have boomed as retail has exploded around them. An Ikea opened, and along with a number of other retail options. These options benefit from a number of things including Oregon’s lack of a sales tax, creating a situation of thousands of Washington residents driving across the I-205 bridge to shop there. Many of these people drive across that same bridge in the morning commute and board the Red Line at the Parkrose/Sumner Transit Center stop. Some even sneak in and park at the Cascades stop (even though that’s retail parking for the businesses there, we know motorists rarely care nor know they’re not supposed to do that). Overall, all those stops in between the airport and where the line resumes service with the Blue Line (and now the Green Line too matter of fact) on the Banfield Corridor are hugely important.
Time for Some Data!
In 2010 I found some data Michael Anderson had gotten from Trimet for ons and offs. This is the counter data that all MAX trains have that count boardings and detrainings from the MAX Light Rail Vehicles (LRVs) at each stop. Remember this is 2010, ridership is up over 10% since 2010. So even correcting for the +-1% for data reading mistakes or anything like that, this data is a conservative look into what ridership is today in 2013.
Airport Station
Stop ID: 10579 On 1694 Off 1635
Mt Hood Avenue MAX Station
Stop ID: 10576 On 50 Off 253
Stop ID: 10577 On 252 Off 54
Cascades MAX Station has about 450 on and 450 off. Keep in mind, this was in 2010 when most of the retail wasn’t even open yet.
Stop ID: 10575 On 402 Off 46
Stop ID: 10574 On 43 Off 411
Parkrose/Sumner TC MAX Station, MAX Rides on and off only. There’s over a thousand on and a thousand leaving the station everyday, just on the Red Line.
Stop ID: 10572 On 113 Off 926
Stop ID: 10573 On 962 Off 134
The line is technically 5.5 miles long. This accounts for the Red Line segment that is entirely new, between Gateway TC and the PDX Airport. It was finished and opened for public ridership on September 10th, 2001. Here’s a map of the line, running from the airport to Beaverton today. When it originally opened it terminated downtown on the turnaround from the original Blue line that ran from Gresham to Portland. Now the turnaround isn’t used as an active turnaround, but as an area for train extras. The terminus is now on the middle track at Beaverton Transit Center.
The Trimet Rail System. Click for a larger image.
Here’s some other stats of significance. The Red Line was the first train to plane service on the west coast. It was built through a public-private partnership, nothing seen like this for many decades (think pre-1950 when most transportation was nationalized). The funding split was Trimet general fund at 36%, Bechtel/Cascade Station Development Company, LLC at 23%, Port of Portland (for the airport) at 23% and the City of Portland at 18%. No federal dollars or new local taxes were used. This is of significant note, as with Federal dollars it would have likely taken 5-10 years longer to build, if it was even able to be completed then. Federal involvement always makes things dramatically more difficult to get shovels in the ground.
Why Mention This?
Well it seems, since the line was opened Seattle has open their Link Light Rail service from downtown Seattle to the airport. It serves about 22k people per day last I checked, which I’m betting it is up to about 28-32k per day now. It’s been a while since I checked. Los Angeles and Denver are about to join the ranks of cities in the United States west of the Mississippi to offer train to plane service. There has been some debate whether LA’s connector will be worth the investment and if Denver’s isn’t’ a better example.
My Bets for Denver
What I’m betting, contrary to the article fussing for a direct connection to downtown Los Angeles, is that most of the ridership for the Denver line will not actually originate at the airport. Almost all of the ridership I bet ends up being commuters in and out of the city from the 5 intermediary stops along the line. In addition, if empirical data is any proof, then most of the airport ridership will actually be local workers at the airport and not travelers going to flights. However, I counter that to some degree. So here’s my bullet point bets for the Denver line. This bet I’m making based on assumptions of what service will be and what ridership will be from 2016 when it opens until about 2020. After that, all bets are off.  😉
- Most of the riders will be commuters riding from the 5 intermediary stops into and out of Denver. More precisely riders originating from and to the 5 intermediary stops of: 38th and Blake, 40th and Colorado, Central Park, Peoria and Airport (rd/dr) and 40th will exceed 51% of all riders.
- A large percentage of the riders for the airport (into the actual final stop of the airport, not the Airport St & 40th stop) will be airport workers. I’ll estimate that at least ~12%. I wouldn’t bet against someone betting on 30-40% of the riders being workers at the airport. Ideally of course, only about 2-5% of the riders would be airport workers, as one would hope the rider count on the train will be very high.
- It will for the first 10 years be a significantly higher cost per ride then the light rail or bus service in the area. Over the 20-30 year period it will drop below thanks to inflationary cost changes and over a 30+ year it will drop below or be maintained at about the cost per ride of light rail and bus service. Pending of course we still even get around this way in 10-30 years from now. We might just use transporters and aircraft may be irrelevant.  😉
References:
Transit Sleuth 