I'd like to see the lease agreement with Portland and Western RR.

It's no doubt much worse than anyone can imagine. TriMet probably agreed to pay for all maintenence for the entire line in addition to the lease payments.

All those involved are idiots or/and liars.

Tom Brain says the recession is to blame.
Yeah and if unemployment was 5% points less there would be what 30 more riders a day and that would be success?
In announcing his retirement recently Brian said WES was one of his major acomplishments. OK pal.

Fred Hansen makes my skin crawl.

The idea that this guy will soon be living large on a fat retirement is sickening.

The Metro and TriMet people who worked on the computer models to cook up ridership projections are also corrupted.

But the stupidity is so rampant that legislators and others are advocating extending it to Salem.

Ben:"The Metro and TriMet people who worked on the computer models to cook up ridership projections are also corrupted."

ws:What ridership numbers being cooked up do you speak of by Tri-Met? If the numbers were "cooked", then why don't they just show the numbers for WES to look favorable?

Obviously you didn't think too hard about that one.

"WES is great, and not just because it saves me two tanks of gas each month,"

Saves her two tanks of gas, but she puts out $86/mo for the Trimet pass? That would put two tanks of gas in my car.

Trimet's own numbers said MAX costs around $11/per rider to operate. WES is 10x that? It would be cheaper for the taxpayers to provide fuel for the WES riders' cars
instead.

Two real interesting data bit in that story:

1. If TriMet doesn't operate WES for 20 years, TriMet has to pay fed DOT back $ 59 million.

2. Fed DOT told TriMet that its planning projections for ridership - made before the great recession of 2008 - 2009 arrived - were wildly optimistic.

Two comments / observations:

Fred is full of sushi that the recession did in WES ridership; and,

No one at TriMet, from Fred down to the planner who did the ridership projections, and all the mid and upper level folks who "cooked" the projections, -- which even the feds didn't believe -- will ever lose their jobs over the bad estimates and forecasts.

Just like with the Tram -- (or the Garden Home Road pressure sewer failure) no one is ever required to be accountable for million after million after million after million in waste.

'Git a rope!

Not sure if numbers are exaggerated or corrupted, but I do have a question. Are there 1260 individual riders per day on WES, or closer to 630 individual riders counted twice a day for going to and fro?

ws,

I was talking about the projeced ridership numbers.

And you're a naive fool.

TriMet could have the Fed required circumvented just as easily as theyhade the ridership requirement adjusted.

Close the line and prosecute the sleazbags who perpetrated the scheme to build it.

It was fraud from day one.

Everything about it was misrepresented and now it's turned out exactly as the truth predicted it would.

Yet the lying continues.
I don't know why anyone would even trust the current ridership counts.
TriMet and Metro are two long term lying agencies.

It is a fact that trains of any kind are THE most expensive type of public transit. However, other types of public transit do not provide the best opportunities for graft.
Is this trickle down economics?
Enjoy the March snow everyone.

I'd like to see the lease agreement with Portland and Western RR.

It's no doubt much worse than anyone can imagine. TriMet probably agreed to pay for all maintenence for the entire line in addition to the lease payments.

There is no "lease agreement" with Portland & Western Railroad. None. Nada.

TriMet owns the railroad from Tigard to Beaverton - yes, OWNS. That property is yours and mine. From Tigard to Wilsonville, the land underneath the railroad is owned by ODOT (which continues to own the right-of-way all the way down to Keizer) and the railroad atop the right-of-way is owned by TriMet. South of Wilsonville, it's owned by Portland & Western. West of Beaverton, the track/right-of-way is owned by Union Pacific and leased to P&W. Confusing?

When TriMet took over the track north of Tigard (formerly owned by Union Pacific), it filed with the Surface Transportation Board a "permanent freight easement" with P&W. In other words: P&W has the permanent, exclusive RIGHT to operate freight trains on the track.

P&W has an operating contract with TriMet to run the WES trains. The trains themselves are owned by TriMet, and maintained by TriMet personnel. But P&W employees actually staff the trains (Engineer and Conductor, plus a Manager of Passenger Services.) This contract need not necessarily be by P&W, but P&W was the best bidder, and plus had the experience to run the line, the crews in place, and operated the freight trains. P&W also dispatches the route for all trains.

As for TriMet agreeing to pay for all maintenance, it appears that P&W does not pay TriMet for anything, and that TriMet does pay all of the maintenance (performed by P&W but reimbursed by TriMet). TriMet could contract with someone else (and on larger projects it likely would, just as P&W outsources large projects to rail contractors) but if a signal is broken, P&W has signal and track maintainers based in Beaverton to respond.

Are there 1260 individual riders per day on WES, or closer to 630 individual riders counted twice a day for going to and fro?

Yes.

There are 1,260 boardings. That means 1,260 people walk onto a WES train.

Likewise, it is presumed that each person that uses a WES train in the morning is probably taking it home in the evening. I've taken a few one-way WES trips, and returned via another mode (bike, bus) just as I've taken one-way bus rides...but my typical TriMet voyage is a bus ride in the morning, a bus ride in the afternoon.

(Another good example is that yesterday I took the 94 to work but the 12 home. And another good example is that I used to ride a combination of the 94 and 12 one way, so I was actually counted multiple times even though it was one "trip". That's the problem with TriMet statistics - a rider will be counted multiple times, and thanks to TriMet's 1900 era ticketing system, there is no good way to really track someone - whereas most major transit systems now use electronic fare systems (think NYC's MetroCard) that track transfers.

Then again, in Portland, your transit trip is more "private"...so choose your poison - private, untraceable transit trips, or poor statistical reporting. Although in NYC and other cities you do not have to register your card so they don't always know who has what card, but if you register and then lose your card, you don't lose your card value - the old card can be deactivated, and a new card issued. If you don't register your card, you lose it - you lose it. In Portland, it's all about holding on to that flimsy transfer (or on WES, it's a card stock transfer).

(from the photo caption of one Nike employee on an empty train)..."On this stretch of WES, many riders have departed on earlier trains."

Who would have thunk that some "stretches" of rail line are only popular during peak commuting times?

I also love the fact that he always DRIVES to the Park & Ride...Cheaper to send a limo to his house and cancel the WES schedule after peak hours.

Jon:"Trimet's own numbers said MAX costs around $11/per rider to operate. WES is 10x that? It would be cheaper for the taxpayers to provide fuel for the WES riders' cars
instead."

ws:Where do you get your information? Tri-met's numbers have never said that.

Per National Transit Database stats:

http://www.ntdprogram.gov/ntdprogram/pubs/profiles/2008/agency_profiles/0008.pdf

Tri-Met:

http://www.trimet.org/pdfs/publications/performance-statistics/trimetridershipfy09.pdf

Operating expense/ Pass. Mile:

Bus: $1.00
LR: $0.43

Subsidy Per Boarding Ride:

$2.06 Bus
$0.94 MAX
$17.92 WES

As far as operation and system costs, MAX costs the least amount of all transit modes.

Ben:"And you're a naive fool."

ws: Not really considering the reporting of transit numbers is counted automatically for boarding the MAX (lasers, I believe). And Tri-Met has to submit their stats to national agencies by law where their numbers are audited and reviewed:

http://www.ntdprogram.gov/ntdprogram/ntd.htm#overview

Usually most conspiracy theories have at least some evidence behind them. Do you...or I'm just "naive", I guess?

How Tri-Met counts ridership:

http://blog.oregonlive.com/commuting/2009/09/the_educated_commuter_how_trim.html

It wasn't lasers, but infrared.

^^Nice trollish diversion.

I love this:
http://www.kgw.com/news/local/59354462.html

Remember when TriMet was claiming that using someone else's track would save money?

WS, the problem with your perspective on transit operating expenses is that you aren't considering the capital costs. While light rail may be the cheapest to operate per mile, it is also the most expensive to construct.

I'd love to see what the operating costs actually are, including debt service and amortization of the up front capital costs.

To see public transit that really works and is scalable, take a trip to South Korea. They have buses and subways (not light rail). And unlike in Portland, they actually have a functional mechanism for paying for each ride.

TriMet's payment set-up sucks from the top down. It should be set up by time and not by zone, transfer time should be consistent whether you get the ticket on the streetcar, bus or MAX station. Ticket machines should work, transfers should be on sturdier material (remember when Rose City Transfer used tokens as well as cash?), and on the MAX and streetcar, payment should be monitored.

On one memorable occasion, my paper transfer tore when I was getting it out of my coat pocket. The bus driver refused to accept it even though I'd only received it 15 minutes before on the first bus I caught.

Bus drivers used to ask me to put my streetcar transfer into the bill slot like a ticket when I boarded and after they checked to see that it was good. That was good because you only get an hour's transfer time on the streetcar while buses routinely give me 2-3 hours transfer time. This means that even if I'm two blocks away from a streetcar stop, I'll take a bus to get the transfer and gain more time, then step on the street (where they never ask to see my transfer or any proof of payment anyway but - hey - I try to be a good citizen).

I'm not sure how it works on the WES but it's probably fracked up in some way, too.

IMO WES is the tram on tracks.

ws: As far as operation and system costs, MAX costs the least amount of all transit modes.

heditor: the problem with your perspective on transit operating expenses is that you aren't considering the capital costs. While light rail may be the cheapest to operate per mile, it is also the most expensive to construct.

Correct.

Problem is that most maintenance costs for MAX are accounted for as "capital costs", so TriMet gets to take a lot of the ordinary maintenance costs of light rail and keep those costs off the operating books.

However, the bus system is saddled with maintenance costs (especially for an aging bus fleet that inherently requires much more maintenance than a newer vehicle), plus is saddled with a share of MAX costs - the interest costs for MAX construction bonds, the facilities maintenance cost of MAX related transit centers and parking lots (that bus riders have little use for), and MAX's overhead.

I would agree, that MAX's total annual cost is actually much higher, and the bus system is actually lower, than what TriMet reports (using federal accounting guidelines, so I don't entirely blame TriMet here).

Further, TriMet is saddled with running some inefficient bus trips/routes which cause the bus system average to go much higher. For example, the line 12 Barbur/Sandy has a very long route from Gresham to Sherwood. The King City-Sherwood route has very few riders, yet a bus makes the run (using a full size bus, of course) every 30 minutes. It would be more efficient for TriMet to use a smaller "feeder" bus like a Freightliner Sprinter, or even one of the LIFT buses, which are less expensive to run (less expensive operator plus much lower fuel costs, lower maintenance costs) from Sherwood to King City or Tigard - and this would improve the line 12 operating cost...do this type of analysis for each line, and TriMet could lower its bus costs significantly.

It should be noted, the 72 Killingsworth/82nd Avenue bus line, is THE single TriMet operation with the lowest subsidy - the boarding cost is about $1.50 per boarding ride. Since a TriMet passenger pays $2.00 to ride this bus...it's actually profitable.

TriMet's payment set-up sucks from the top down. It should be set up by time and not by zone, transfer time should be consistent whether you get the ticket on the streetcar, bus or MAX station.

Agreed.

When you buy a ticket from a MAX or WES ticket vending machine it is a "two hour" ticket (and then by zone).

When you buy a ticket on a TriMet bus, TriMet Code 19.25(G) states Bus transfers shall be issued to be valid for one hour past the scheduled end of the trip time for
the bus on weekdays, two hours on weekends. The end of the trip is generally the Mall in
Downtown Portland, a transit center, or the end of the line.

However it's well known that TriMet operators do not follow this Code.

If I board a TriMet line 12 Barbur/Sandy bus (which runs from Sherwood to Gresham, per the timetable and route description) in downtown Sherwood at 8:26 AM, the bus arrives in Gresham (yes, it is a through bus) at 10:34 AM. Therefore per TMC 19.25(G) my transfer shall not expire prior to 11:34 AM, or over three hours from my boarding. Since TriMet's transfers are printed in 30 minute increments, then my transfer should, per TriMet's own code, expire at noon.

However, the question remains: Why do MAX/WES riders get two hours, but bus riders only get one hour? It's the same fare!!!

Let's see, run at a loss for 20 years or pay back $59 million. TriMet would do better to close it now, and eat the refund.

If the line is operating at a $500K loss every month, then we're talking about $6M a year. It would take about ten years to lose $60 million. That's assuming the monthly loss doesn't climb -- they will probably lose faster.

The kind of folks who travel between Beaverton and Wilsonville generally have cars, and like to use them. That's not going to change in 20 years either.

Any way you slice it, the smart financial move now would be better to throw in the towel, and turn those flaky DMU's into dining rooms at the Old Spaghetti Factory.