Remember that episode of the Simpsons: Monorail!!!!!!

"that flexibility discourages many visitors from taking a bus because they're not secure about where it's going."

WTF?

Maybe the bus-riders are not the only ones unsure of where they are going.

A more general problem with the downtown public transportation plan, which Bojack has pointed out previously, is that the system is based on the notion that people are willing and physically able to hike several blocks to and from bus stops, MAX stops, etc. And there are sections of downtown with no direct service via any form of public transportation.

When the transmit mall re-opened last May, bus stops were suddenly five blocks apart, instead of two or three blocks. The excuse given was that this would speed up service. But what good is speedier service when all of the time that you've supposedly saved is taken up by the extra time walking to and from your destination? Add to that the fact that many riders are elderly or have limited mobility.

Shields Obletz is a master at using the Delphi Technique so groups think they agree with whatever is being shoved down their throats.

What a flippin' irony.

After fifty years of using Portland mass transit, I recently effectively quit using it. The reason? It was not anywhere near as reliable as they claimed it to be.

Tri-Met's schedules are basically lies.

Gee I wonder where Fred Hansen will go next.

"the system is based on the notion that people are willing and physically able to hike several blocks to and from bus stops, MAX stops, etc. And there are sections of downtown with no direct service via any form of public transportation."

It's chaos that's been hyped and misrepresented for a couple decades as a model for the nation.

We have the bike fanatics who embellish everything while trumpetting their fantasy that the role of the bike is, should and can be a major substitute for driving. The bike will never be anything but an "alterntive" for too few to mean anything but more BS in the making.

The light rail transit mall makeover was on par with WES in lunacy and dishonesty.

More alternativism for the sake of alternativism by politicians, bureaucrats and activists clinging to the absurd and casting their folly as successes to be expanded.

And right now there's some of them reading this and foaming with their default excuse that the only other choice would be some polar opposite of zero planning and death by cars and sprawl.

Never the vast middle ground of various approaches with common sense and reason.

I think (some) people in Portland don't ride the bus because they're snobs, flat out. A streetcar is so, so .... European and trendy and matches their double lattes with shade-grown beans. A bus is South American and you half expect chickens and people moving a household of personal items.

Fortunately for those of us who only sporadically have business downtown, the collapse of reliable TriMet service has coincided with a pronounced decline in downtown traffic and a greatly reduced demand for parking.

that flexibility discourages many visitors from taking a bus because they're not secure about where it's going

Oddly enough, the only compelling argument I've ever heard for streetcars over buses is that the tracks are a nice, informative graphic. But just imagine how much information could be made available to potential riders through other media with the same amount of money. Today's WWeek has an interview with Fred Hansen, prompted by his announced retirement. It's easy to see why he's been shy about public statements in the past — he's more or less incoherent. For him, it's all about capital investment, even while facing operating deficits they can't cover, so that we'll be ready for the next million inhabitants in twenty years. Meanwhile, people who have jobs can't get to them reliably, and downtown merchants like Saks and New Balance are closing those stores in favor of the suburban malls. What a mess.

The biggest drawback to light rail and buses is they typically double or more the commute time, allowing less time for things like family. If you are travelling more than five miles, bicycles begin to have the same type problem.

Then there is also things like shopping and the need for space. Then there is inclimate weather. Then there is the creepiness of some trips I've made on the Max lately with teenage gangs hanging around, and folks high on something and screaming sporadically.

Streetcars and rail are very much 19th century technology being shoved on folks by a greedy government/corporate complex. Metro and its restrictive land development policies is necessary to keep this complex in power. Without it, competition would develop between communities with many communities becoming more friendly and less densified.

But a more promising technology is driverless cars equipped with sensors to judge position and speed for safety. This technology was invented back in the 1960s by an American, and is now being experimented with in Europe. Such technology could help blind people get around. It could also help significantly reduce congestion by more efficient driving habits.

It could also help significantly reduce congestion by more efficient driving habits.

Like knowing how to merge into speeding freeway traffic?

This looks more like "how guys named Jack pimp blogs".

You shifted the focus of his statement a bit away from Smart Growth and density. This was more about planning (it was a group of planners he was addressing) and less about streetcar.

Makes sense that the background color of your blog is yellow.

Does being "more about planning" make the outright lies more true or does it just make it ok to lie?

You shifted the focus of his statement a bit

Not so much, "The". The three quoted paragraphs are about streetcars and their alleged effect on development. Just read them. And although this is not my blog, as a reader I'm offended by your tone. You should try to be civil

Messenger,

So which local government agency do yo work for?
Or are you just a Sam Adams supporter -portlandtransport.com regular?

Leaving gas/electric/etc power aside, is there any difference between a streetcar and a bus except for the streetcar being bigger and on tracks???

Maybe the difference is the cost of the tracks?

Dman, the tracks are just part of it. Once a bus has been purchased by a transit agency, it can pretty much go on any road rated to handle its weight. If city dynamics change, and a route needs to be changed to bypass construction or minimize congestion, a bus route can be changed with a hearing and a quick replotting. Just try that with a train.

Back in the Nineties, Tri-Met and the San Francisco BART system were held up as the paragons of mass transit, and the board members of DART here in Dallas spent a lot of time studying them. Our train system is still growing, and recent budget shortfalls threaten to change a lot of bus routes. The difference is that we're still depending upon buses to service the sections between train routes, not to compete against each other. In the process, compared to where it was in the early Nineties when I first started using it, the DART bus system is ridiculously fast, clean, and effective, and I never figured that I'd be defending the train system. I was in Portland last summer for a book signing, and took a Tri-Met bus to get around, and I had to wonder "What the hell happened?"

And for the streetcars? I'm all for streetcars...so long as they're privately funded. San Francisco only has streetcars because they're a tourist attraction in their own right. In Portland, they're only being pushed because of yuppies who feel unclean having to share buses and trains with mere mortals. Yeah, they want spiffy and shiny streetcars...to get between their favorite bars and the parking lot with enough time to sober up before going home.

"Leaving gas/electric/etc power aside, is there any difference between a streetcar and a bus except for the streetcar being bigger and on tracks???"

A streetcar holds more people. 170 max sit/ stand. A comparable articulated bus is going to only hold, from what I know, 100 people sit/stand.

Portland doesn't have too many articulated buses, if people are wondering what they are.

Gustafson said they're preferable to buses; the flexibility of buses is useful for bus owners, who can redeploy them or adjust their routes. But that flexibility discourages many visitors from taking a bus because they're not secure about where it's going.

And we have that problem today with MAX. People downtown are easily confused about which MAX train to get on, at what stop, where it's going. People frequently ask me "Is this train going to Portland" because the headsign says "Hillsboro" or "Gresham" or "Airport". It doesn't help that there are two separate MAX lines in downtown Portland, plus the Streetcar (which is actually nothing more than a variant of light rail).

Bus routes don't change as often as the light rail supporters/anti-bus crowd claim they do. Yes, I've been on buses where the bus driver re-routed for no reason (and a complaint was quickly sent to TriMet regarding such unauthorized route deviation). But that only has happened a couple times, out of the thousands of times I've ridden a bus. Yes, occasionally there are route changes, or legitimate detours, but a benefit of the bus is that the bus will keep moving, and almost always will make stops as close to the regular stops. A streetcar or MAX, when it needs to "detour" forces you on alternate buses that do not follow any prescribed route, and TriMet will even mix it up with buses that go different places so you can easily end up on a bus that goes to the wrong place, or the wrong way. And the bus stops are poorly marked.

The major bus routes are very unlikely to be moved, ever; if so they are only slight changes (for example the 12 bus was once re-routed from the "Burlingame Transit Center" (the back side of the Burlingame Fred Meyer store) to remain on Barbur Boulevard, making a stop in front of Freddy's. Not a huge deal.

I think (some) people in Portland don't ride the bus because they're snobs, flat out. A streetcar is so, so .... European and trendy and matches their double lattes with shade-grown beans.

I've been to Europe.

I travelled extensively through Germany.

I rode exactly one streetcar, and it was a "heritage streetcar" at that.

I rode exactly one "light rail" system which was partially subway and partially surface.

I rode numerous buses and commuter trains.

I rode exactly one high speed rail train (ICE), and that was only between two stations within Hamburg (Hamburg-Altona to Hamburg-Hbf). I think we hit a top speed of 50 Km/h.

The Portland planners want you to believe that every city in Europe has a streetcar system but that just isn't true. Yes, more cities in Europe have streetcars compared to the U.S., but over there many people just ride the bus. In Europe you would have North Plains, Banks and Gaston all having the equivalent of "TriMet" service (neither of these cities have any substantial transit today); while Hillsboro to Portland would be connected not by light rail, but by a subway line.

Europe, and Germany in particular, also has lots and lots of freeways. Four lanes across if not wider. Most major arterials are huge boulevards with six, eight lanes - in each direction. Imagine Burnside four times the width it is now, or Powell, or McLoughlin, or MLK - in Europe, each of those streets would be exceptionally wide boulevards with massive traffic circles at major intersections. And the Pearl District and SoWhat would have never been built the way they are - as a continuation of the grid system with four lanes (two for driving/two for parking); because you just don't see development like that in Europe. Portland planners love to say how great the grid system is and how it works to efficiently move people in high-density areas, but extremely few towns in Europe have a grid system.

Portland doesn't have too many articulated buses, if people are wondering what they are.

Portland has, exactly, zero articulated buses.

http://www.busdude.com/TM/TM_0714_1.jpg

Here's a picture of one of TriMet's old 700s. Admittedly, these particular buses had issues. They were built by a Hungarian company trying to branch out of the Soviet Bloc. As we all know, Soviet businesses were hardly concerned about quality because there was no incentive; while there was plenty of incentive to develop a parts business. The buses were very different than U.S. made buses. They frequently broke down. The engine was in the middle of the bus (not the rear) and the exhaust was right outside the driver's window. The ride was bumpy. These buses were TriMet's first with wheelchair lifts (mounted in either the second or the third door, I can't remember) and a wheelchair user fell off the lift - prompting TriMet to disable all of the lifts. (On routes that used only these articulated buses, that meant TriMet had to call taxis for each wheelchair rider - at TriMet's expense.)

And my last ride on one of these buses? The rear two doors refused to open and the farebox was broken.

But despite all the problems, these buses entered service in 1981, and were removed from service in 1998. 17 years of service. At that age they were beyond retirement, served well in daily, regular service on some of TriMet's most grueling routes, six days a week (for some reason these buses were never used on Sundays). They were on TriMet's busiest routes, including having to climb over Sylvan every day, make local stops, and on the longest runs - the 9, 12, 33 and 57 routes among others.

When the artics were retired in 1998 (when Westside MAX opened), TriMet was forced to introduce "Frequent Service" and increase frequency on the routes that used to have the articulated buses. A young Fred Hansen incorrectly judged that MAX would take the load off the routes, but was proven wrong with 57 buses quickly overloaded; and the 12 line was nowhere near MAX. So buses that used to run 20 minute headways, now were forced to run 15 minutes, with scheduled extra buses during rush hour. Hansen then placed a order with New Flyer for new articulated buses which were simply longer versions of the now common D40LF - but would shortly later cancel the orders.

Many of the light rail supporters/anti-bus fanatics claim the problem was the articulated bus. When the problem was actually the specific model of the bus, not the articulated bus itself. Artics are quite common throughout Europe (yep! More common than streetcars!), and in many U.S. cities including Seattle which owns some 500 artics - in other words, Seattle has an artic fleet almost as large as Portland's entire bus fleet. And they are ordering more.

Even Spokane has artics; so does Eugene and Snohomish County - areas that are SMALLER than Portland.

As for a comparison between the Streetcar and a New Flyer DE60LF bus:

Streetcar: 30 seats
New Flyer D60LF: 60 seats

Streetcar: 85-141 standees
New Flyer D60LF: 50 standees

Keep in mind, if you're on a Streetcar with 141 standees, you are literally crushed like sardines - 6.66 people per square meter. Now draw a line on the ground that is just a tad over three feet by three feet, and then stick six people, plus one person standing two-thirds in that square. Now push that square along at 20 MPH, with the occasional jerky stop. Throw in a 90 degree day and a failed A/C system.

Yes, in theory a Streetcar can carry more people than an articulated bus, but it is not desirable to do so. Unlike a MAX train, you can't just couple more cars to a Streetcar (they lack couplers). Unlike a bus, the Streetcar still goes just one place; where you can have a half-dozen buses lined up, but half way down the road they split up into individual routes. Just like how buses run on McLoughlin to Milwaukie, or Barbur to Capitol Highway and Burlingame. A streetcar (or light rail) would force riders to get off and wait for another vehicle.

Erik, my newly retired Bro in law made a good living repairing those artics. They were POS's but sure were job security!

OKLAHOMA seems to be all excited about the streetcar.

These are nice big fat construction projects which is why the Federal government loves them.

Developers love this stuff!

What stupid comments. I am from New England, and have been to Portland Oregon many times. They are really building a beautiful city. If their funds are going to that city, then more power to them. Its far better then wasting it on wars, and super jet fighters no one needs.