Mass stabbings in "old town, downtown and LO". Lake Oswego may be on the "cutting edge" if the street car comes.

Ya but we have the most boarding rides per capita!

Didn't TriMet tell us a couple of years ago that there was no crime problem on MAX?

Sure they did. Right before Tri Met and PPB and Washington County / Beaverton established an enhanced transit police unit.

So, obviously these recent stabbings did not happen.

The Max Is Back in Town

Oh, the shark, babe, has such teeth, dear
And it shows them pearly white
But if you want scary, try a Max stop,
That's what's giving us a fright.

When that shark bites, with his teeth, babe
Scarlet billows start to spread
But the light rail and these street cars
Also put our budget in the red.

Now on the sidewalk … early mornin’
Lies a body just oozin' life …
And someone’s sneakin' ‘round the corner
Near a Max Stop with a knife.

Now … Jenny Diver … yeah..Sukey Tawdry
Ooh … John Q. Public and old Lucy Brown
Oh, the line forms on the right, babe
Yes, the Max is back in town.

Well done Bill. Well done.

Bravo Bill!
Luv it!

All we need now is to find someone to put those words to the music and use this as the video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dJWPFJoS3ak

I ride the MAX quite a bit. There is never any sign of authority on the MAX or platforms. You can't even see the drivers through the smoked glass.

Now I'm not a big NRA fan (can you say tin foil Pith helmets?)but see what happens when you create gun free zones...People get all stabby and stuff.

Tacoma has a neat little solution to the problem:

It's "light rail" (really a streetcar line, and it has only five stations, from the Freighthouse Square transit center to downtown), has a security guard on every train.

It helps that almost nobody rides it, and that each train is a streetcar and thus a single car. The security guard spends most of his time kicking off homeless folk, because no fare is charged to ride the train (it was basically built as a way to placate the city of Tacoma for inclusion in Sound Transit, and serves no real purpose other than to connect a bunch of government institutions.)

From what I would guess it costs to clean off the litter and cigarette butts (from the non-smoking platforms), it might be money better spent to put some patrol folks on a platform or a train periodically.

And, does anyone know why there is always a security officer at the end of the Yellow/Green lines at PSU? It appears all they do is kick off the stragglers before the trains go around the corner with the "Out of Service" sign in the windows.