The people "managing" Portland's transit system are too busy hassling honest customers to be bothered with the muggers and thugs who often populate the trains and buses. The managers are also not smart enough to refrain from persecuting riders for not having their tickets when they can't find a ticket machine that actually works.
Today an outraged rider who got a summons from a fare inspector as a result of the malfunctioning machines had her day in court, and bless the judge, she won. The bumbling Tri-Met folks not only didn't get the $115 fine, but they also shed more light on their own maintenance failures. For example, until I read today's story, I had never heard of TriMetDown.com, a private site where patrons can report (and everyone can read about) malfunctioning machines and other service failures.
New blood is badly needed over there at Tri-Met.
UPDATE, 11:34 p.m.: A reader sends this photo of two Tri-Met employees manually selling tickets at a downtown Max stop yesterday -- apparently the machine there was broken:
Comments (4)
TriMet fare inspector Laura Berlin said she might have only issued a warning if the defendant had kept her cool.
Last October a great friend of mine died and a few weeks later - when I was still in the wired grief stage - I decided to walk to the zoo from around SE 39th and Hawthorne. It just seemed like an appropriate thing to do.
I get up there and I'm starting to tighten up, etc...The feet were aching, the back was sore - I had tried to power-walk my troubles away and now I was shot. So I headed right for the elevator where you go down to the train, and the damn ticket machine wouldn't take my dollar bills. You know the scene where you try a bunch of different ones and they keep getting rejected? I didn't want to walk over and get change at the zoo - by now I was gassed. Plus, I started thinking, what if the zoo was closed? What am I supposed to do? Walk back down? Of course I would have just hopped the train and chanced it - I've got worse things on my conscience than that - but I didn't like the feeling.
I started searching for change in the many pockets of my jacket, etc... and just found enough. It turned out the machine would take coins so I got a ticket. But I definitely had a little of that frustration that I hear from other Tri-Met riders when these things don't work right.
I thought about the giant undertaking of drilling through the West Hills for the tracks and the elevator dropping down all that way, juxtaposed with the relatively minor problem of collecting money for all this. In my gloomy state, I had to say, "This is a hell of a way to run a railroad."
Charamba, Douro 2008
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Lorelle, Horse Heaven Hills Pinot Grigio 2011
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Opula Red Blend 2010
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La Bourgeoisie, Red 2009
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Trader Joe's Coastal Chardonnay 2009
Vieux Papes Red
Domaine de l'Aujardiere, Chardonnay 2009
Santa Rita, Cabernet, Medalla Real 2007
Penfold's, Koonunga Hill Shiraz Cabernet 2008
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Neil Young - Waging Heavy Peace
Mark Bego - Aretha Franklin, the Queen of Soul (2012 ed.)
Jenny Lawson - Let's Pretend This Never Happened
J.D. Salinger - Franny and Zooey
Charles Dickens - A Christmas Carol
Timothy Egan - The Big Burn
Deborah Eisenberg - Transactions in a Foreign Currency
Kurt Vonnegut Jr. - Slaughterhouse Five
Kathryn Lance - Pandora's Genes
Cheryl Strayed - Wild
Fyodor Dostoyevsky - The Brothers Karamazov
Jack London - The House of Pride, and Other Tales of Hawaii
Jack Walker - The Extraordinary Rendition of Vincent Dellamaria
Colum McCann - Let the Great World Spin
Niccolò Machiavelli - The Prince
Harper Lee - To Kill a Mockingbird
Emma McLaughlin & Nicola Kraus - The Nanny Diaries
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Sharon Creech - Walk Two Moons
Keith Richards - Life
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Mark Herrmann - The Curmudgeon's Guide to Practicing Law
Barry Glassner - The Gospel of Food
Phil Stanford - The Peyton-Allan Files
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Charles Larson - The Portland Murders
Adrian Wojnarowski - The Miracle of St. Anthony
William H. Colby - Long Goodbye
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Phil Stanford - Portland Confidential
Rick Moody - Garden State
Jonathan Schwartz - All in Good Time
David Sedaris - Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim
Anthony Holden - Big Deal
Robert J. Spitzer - The Spirit of Leadership
James McManus - Positively Fifth Street
Jeff Noon - Vurt
Road Work
Miles run year to date: 29
At this date last year: 66
Total run in 2012: 129
In 2011: 113
In 2010: 125
In 2009: 67
In 2008: 28
In 2007: 113
In 2006: 100
In 2005: 149
In 2004: 204
In 2003: 269
The people "managing" Portland's transit system are too busy hassling honest customers to be bothered with the muggers and thugs who often populate the trains and buses. The managers are also not smart enough to refrain from persecuting riders for not having their tickets when they can't find a ticket machine that actually works.
Comments (4)
TriMet fare inspector Laura Berlin said she might have only issued a warning if the defendant had kept her cool.
What a brilliant argument: "It was personal!"
Posted by ep | March 11, 2009 9:26 PM
Last October a great friend of mine died and a few weeks later - when I was still in the wired grief stage - I decided to walk to the zoo from around SE 39th and Hawthorne. It just seemed like an appropriate thing to do.
I get up there and I'm starting to tighten up, etc...The feet were aching, the back was sore - I had tried to power-walk my troubles away and now I was shot. So I headed right for the elevator where you go down to the train, and the damn ticket machine wouldn't take my dollar bills. You know the scene where you try a bunch of different ones and they keep getting rejected? I didn't want to walk over and get change at the zoo - by now I was gassed. Plus, I started thinking, what if the zoo was closed? What am I supposed to do? Walk back down? Of course I would have just hopped the train and chanced it - I've got worse things on my conscience than that - but I didn't like the feeling.
I started searching for change in the many pockets of my jacket, etc... and just found enough. It turned out the machine would take coins so I got a ticket. But I definitely had a little of that frustration that I hear from other Tri-Met riders when these things don't work right.
I thought about the giant undertaking of drilling through the West Hills for the tracks and the elevator dropping down all that way, juxtaposed with the relatively minor problem of collecting money for all this. In my gloomy state, I had to say, "This is a hell of a way to run a railroad."
Posted by Bill McDonald | March 12, 2009 5:56 AM
"two Tri-Met employees manually"
Great way to fight the recession Tri-Met!
Posted by Steve | March 12, 2009 8:22 AM
Just another example of a monopoly insulated from real resonsibility.
Fred Hansen will be getting a lavish retirement soon.
Posted by Ben | March 12, 2009 8:35 AM