TriMet's "slogan" How We Roll, should be, "How We Roll Over the Customers".

It's baloney how they have this crappy "blog" but don't allow any type of interactions to happen there.

Christian: the blog exists so their PR team isn't sitting around playing on Facebook all day. But they don't really care what you or anyone else thinks.

So riders from the suburbs (who get crappy service in the first place) must track to downtown PDX during Trimet office hours to get their tickets exchanged? Tell me, why aren't there other Trimet contractors out there who can do this kind of work? If Trimet is trying to emulate European transportation systems, they have a LONG ways to go to be customer-friendly. But, if there is monopoly on mass transit, I guess you can dish out just about any kind of lousy service and people have to take it. Until Trimet is broke that is. Can't happen soon enough to nicer people.

Hey, it's a spoke-style system, so nearly everyone has to pass through downtown. Oh, wait, their office is only open during work hours.

And, don't forget those all-day passes that were in the back of older versions of the Chinook books.

I wonder if counterfeit tickets are really a drain on the system? An open governmental agency would be happy to share their numbers with their customers and the people who pay the bills. But then again, I see no Tri-Met... excuse me TriMet, comments on the Facebook blog they direct folks to clarifying or reassuring their upset customers. "jus' let 'em rot."

But then again, we are not their customers -- we're just noisy cargo they have to tolerate in order to play with their real estate and developer buddies.

The overwhelming percentage of TriMet employees -- drivers, maintenance, cleaning crew, sign painters, and yes some planners and execs -- are hard working diligent custodians of their positions. But the disdain for the public is inculturated in the organization.

I hate to state the obvious, but there is NOTHING world class about TriMet. I was just on a Bay Area BART train a week ago, and it was far cleaner and better run than anything these amateurs over at TriMet are doing. They had fare machines that actually work almost all the time, station personnel that you can actually talk to for directions; and best of all a police force not affraid to step on the necks of low lifes and criminals. I won't even discuss the much higher speeds BART runs at; making a trip from Fremont to downtown San Francisco in about the same amount of time MAX takes from Gresham to downtown Portland.

The Concord to SF run on BART was really nice. Long time ago I lived in Walnut, but loaded at Pleasant Hill, just so I could get a seat. Fast and safe. Coming home once on a Friday night I slept through the Walnut Creek stop, and was finally woken up in Concord. The last run, with no return back.... but they were very nice about it. And no gang bangers to rip you off or kill you.

So riders from the suburbs (who get crappy service in the first place) must track to downtown PDX during Trimet office hours to get their tickets exchanged?

Even Vancouver - yes, crappy ol' C-Tran, has customer service officers at Fishers Landing and at Vancouver Mall. (They actually do NOT have an office downtown.)

There is no excuse why TriMet doesn't have customer services offices in Beaverton, Hillsboro, Tigard, Oregon City, Clackamas, Gateway and Gresham. Except that it's better to pay six-figure salaries to marketing, I.T. and Capital Projects staffers who don't have any customer involvement and don't do a damn thing to provide transit - just occupy office space and waste taxpayers' money. Just try to get help for a broken ticket vending machine on the weekends...but the Fare Inspectors have no problem writing up tickets instead of helping passengers.

Trimet doesn't even need to directly operate service centers. It would save a bundle on union labor costs and probably yield better service if Trimet were to sub the work out to other vendors. Just like the UPS Stores (formerly Mailboxes Etc.) handles mail service for the USPS, why can't Trimet use a similar system to reach customers outside of the city center? Just a rhetorical question. Of course it can. The real question is, why doesn't it?