They probably wanted to avoid "the third time is a charm". This has not been a good week for mass transit, between the O's editorial
http://www.oregonlive.com/editorials/oregonian/index.ssf?/base/editorial/1187736966159690.xml&coll=7

and the tribune article.

http://www.portlandtribune.com/news/story.php?story_id=118782765516414000

Updated with the delightful picture of your traveling companion on mass transit.

As the Oregonian pointed out it does not paint a pretty picture of this transit oriented town.

Regarding that first link, is it now illegal or against TriMet policy for people who legally own firearms to transport them on the MAX ? Anyone got any statutes on that one ?

It's not like a huge percentage of normal, everyday Oregonians own guns, and never commit crimes with them or anything.

As far as transit-oriented gangbanging goes, well, I won't even work out along the MAX line where it meets Gresham anymore. Too much drama and violence, too many desperate people crowded into that Kunstlerian car-free rail oriented dreamland. Why, walking around in Rockwood, you might forget that hellholes like Houston even exist, it's so thoroughly well planned. No traffic jams or dystopian suburban squalor around there.

I have a few co-workers that drive to work now because of problems on the east-side MAX line. They are afraid to use it. Especially at night.
And I dont let my kids go east past the Lloyd Center after dark on MAX. If they are out that way after dark and need to come home, I will pick them up.

My son regularly rides the east side MAX late at night. His stories are terrifying. He regularly feigns mental illness in order to avoid being hassled or shaken down. It's an absolute travesty that there is basically no security on that thing.

I live in Gresham and the Gresham Police report an almost daily "incident" on or near the East Side MAX Line in the local Gresham Review. Has anyone noticed how silent TriMet and Metro are about this long standing crime problem?

Ban guns, that'll fix it ;) Look how well it worked for drugs :P

"Isn't there anyway we can keep those gangbangers from Gresham from coming donwtown. They really don't belong down here." - Pearl District Lament

Greg C

(It's finally happened. Portland is now San Francisco. Only the very rich and the very poor can afford to live here.)

For 20 years the Eastside MAX has operated from Greshamn to Portland. During that whole time Metro couldn't get the Gresham Station fully Transit Oreinted develope with land Metro owns sitting vacant for years. Only recently has Metro decied to hand over the land and other subsidies to "spur" Transit Oreinted Developement on their 13 acres.
Yet in the Oregonian today a story fails to mention any of the region wide failures, such as this, as a fresh pitch for more of the same is made.
All over the region the story of failure has dominated with

Cascade Station cancelling the entire TOD in favor of BIG BOXES,
The Beaverton Round cancelling condos in favor of routine office space and a 7 story parking garage,
Hillsboro replacing TOD planned market rate housing with a parking garage, Wilsonville abondoning their vehicle trips allotment policy as their smart planning falls apart,
Tigard embarks on a mission of equall outcome,
Beaverton says it aint paying for the new smart stuff planned form Metro's commuter rail "Center" on the wrong side of 217 from Washington Square,
and of course South Waterfront the mother of all clusterpuck Transit Oriented boondoggles has every budget in shambles and pure chaos appearing.

Translation: It's all good, we need more of the same.

Cabbie,

“Kunstlerian car-free rail oriented dreamland.” I take it you are attempting irony. If not, may I suggest that you have someone read you one of his books this weekend? The Geography of Nowhere would be a good place to start. It’s all about places like Gresham and other auto hells where the soul destroying environment would make you welcome being shot.

Having worked as an officer in Rockwood for many years before I retired, I am very familiar with the area and the problems mentions. In addition, I was loaned to the Tri Met Police for a year. The incident referred to occurred 3 blocks west of the Gresham city limits.

The "security" on MAX is limited to 2 shifts of officers, with a maximum of about 12 on Swing Shift & about 7 on days. Frequently, the Officer assigned to East County is working "Missions" in the Central and West side of the lines.

Portland missions like crowd control at anti-war demonstrations, PETA, BTA bike rides, etc. all impact the Tri Met Unit because PPB uses the unit to supplement their ranks, regardless if the incident is related to Tri Met.

Officers rarely ride the lines; remember, the aforementioned numbers have to cover the entire Tri County area, so often their response times are up to 45-60 minutes. If you get a call when your on max, you have take the train back to you car & then respond.

If officers do ride the lines they usually terminate & head back west at
the station at I205 (the name escapes me now.)

There is no police coverage on graveyard; it's left to the local area officers that have their own districts and calls for service to worry about.

District officers often resent this; the member cities pay into Tri Met & even loan them officers for the unit. But it is always about Portland. East county residents pretty much get to go pound sand as to complaints; theirs is the last priority, and often problems go ignored.

Gresham is decidely hamstrung by an artifically low tax rate that was in place when property tax limitation was voted in. It has about 65% of the street officers it needs. So you can imagine how enthusiastic they are about taking Tri Met calls on nights, or when TM officer are tied up.

The intergovernmental agreement specifys a level of service to Gresham; however, It's up to but the Police Administration in Gresham to ensure it's getting enforced. That administration is extremely dysfuctional right now.

Chief Piluso have been an empty suit for the last 4 years; the Second in command is an incompetent. There is a clique of officers dominating the organization that are heavily into SERT/Specialty Units, and the department has militarized to a frightening level.

Alcoholism, spousal abuse, and suicide have all visited lately. I think they "forgot" to do press releases...Piluso got pretty angry the last time a police DV hit the press. And it appears she, and the Oregonian, think she'd be a swell pick to replace Lonnie Roberts.

There are 2 other factors in this; Tri Met
Management and the shift in Portland demographics.

Fred Hansen doesn't give the slightest s**t about security of MAX & buses. It's ridership, ridership, ridership. Frequently, Tri Met overturns officers exclusions of undesireables, or limits the enforcement to keep from "angering the ridership". They can't seem to understand that it is now at the point they are losing riders due to safety concerns.

When I was in the unit, they wouldn't even let Fare Inspectors or TM Police check the NW-PSU streetcar. A Fare Inspector told me that problems with the streetcar would make the politicians that supported it "embarrassed." Fare Inspection is an absolute joke.

Finally, demographics and the City of Gresham. Gresham went on a apartment-low income housing binge in the late 80's.
A considerable portion of this housing is inhabited by low income, illegals, and crank addicts. The middle/working class are fleeing the area.

Yet, Gresham has no mechanism in place to deal withg substandard housing, or the hugh influx of gangs from north Portland. I think the present conditions consign Rockwood to be a ghetto for the next 30-50 years.

I worked in Gresham well before MAX was built. Installation only seemed to bring urban problems from Portland (transients and gangbangers,) and none of the promised benefits.

I'm sorry to say: If you ride the MAX east of Parkrose between 6 p.m and 4:30 a.m, you're pretty much taking your life in your hands. I would walk first.

Sherwood,

Kunstler lives in a fantasy world where everyone enjoys living on top of one another and hates automobiles. In the real world, most people drive because it is the least expensive and most convenient way to get around and because it allows them to live in their preferred housing, which for most people is a single-family home with a yard.

Personally, I prefer to bicycle, but (unlike Kunstler) I know my tastes are unusual. Many people love their cars and the so-called soul-destroying suburbs are actually designed to serve those people very well.

Kunstler's books are an interesting mix of hysteria, junk science, and fallacious conclusions. They should be read only as an example of how not to think.

"Kunstler lives in a fantasy world where everyone enjoys living on top of one another and hates automobiles."

That's a ridiculous, hysterical and fallacious critique of Kunstler's very fine book.

And whether or not "most people love their cars" here in America, or simply rely on them extensively because of this country's generally lousy urban planning over the past 60 years, excessive car use has created a disaster that we're barely starting to come to grips with. Continuing to try to live the 1950s lifestyle will be the death of us--as it has already meant the death of many Americans sent to Iraq to defend our car-loving way of life, as well as many Iraquis who got in our way.

"Americans love their cars" is just a silly, selfish sentiment and is in no way a valid argument to be used when discussing the environment and the immorality of our unnecessary destruction of it.

Kunstler's books are an interesting mix of hysteria, junk science, and fallacious conclusions. They should be read only as an example of how not to think

I was going to say something along these lines, but you beat me to it. Still, Y2Kunstler just keeps jetting around the country, year in and year out, burning up fossil fuels like there is no tomorrow, so to speak, providing disaster porn for so many of us, who are fans for all of the wrong reasons.

HMLA267, you also hit the nail right on the head. I've seen enough soul-destroying stuff along that rail corridor, over a period of many years, to learn to never go there unless I have to, and then to leave as quickly as I arrived.

So Sherwood, lets hear your defense of our crime-ridden light rail system and the failures of TODs. Or is ad hominem the best you can muster?

Freekin' pathetic.

"because of this country's generally lousy urban planning over the past 60 years, "

And Metro does it so much better.

Puke, ralph, choke, laugh? Take your pick.

"And Metro does it so much better."

Yes, Ben, I agree, Metro's planning goals are a great improvement on the kind of development that has prevailed in most of this country over the past 60 years. (Though I think subsidizing a convention center hotel is a stupid idea, and is not the sort of thing Metro should be involved with.)

Chris,

I get it, you own a dictionary and like to type ad hominem. I’m impressed, so let’s move on. As for defending our crime-ridden Max, that’s a little tricky. When people meet in a social situation certain scummy men (it’s always men) choose to behave in scummy ways. In England we have a “newspaper” called the Daily Mail. Its remit is to scare middle-class white people into believing that brown people are out to kill them wherever they are. It is very successful in this - kind of like a print version of Lars. In general the reality is that crime has been falling just about everywhere. I would like to thank HMLA267 for his inside info (the best part of blogs) and am open to any solutions that make sense. The libertarian in me hates to see cameras everywhere but that doesn’t count for public areas like train stations.

Antiplanner, I suggest you pull out your well-thumbed copies of Kunstler’s books and read them again. If you’re going to use that name you may want to have actually done some homework. Kunstler hates skyscrapers (I disagree with him on this like I do about a thousand other things). He lives in a house with a garden and believes that small towns are the only possible future. As I say, I disagree with him on many things but the phrase “the geography of nowhere” summed up everything I was thinking when living in suburbia. If you like riding your bike I would hope that you would support the creation of an environment where you would have that, and other, choices.

Ben, I agree with your last post entirely. Metro is better than just about any other agency I’ve seen but should not be in the hotel business.

Just because I can’t stop typing I thought I would share what my best friend from England said about Portland last week. “Wow, you really have managed to find the least shit area of America.” Here’s hoping that replaces keep Portland weird as the bumper sticker of choice.

Cameras? Those things that takes pictures & video? Please tell me how that's going to stop someone from assaulting another. Sure, it might help them catch the guy, but by that time you may be in the ICU or dead.

I'm also quite surprised at your friends comment. I'd much rather live in one of the worst American cities than that socialist police state England. I don't need a babysitter, thanks.

I think Ben was being sarcastic about Metro, but I could be wrong.

If not, may I suggest that you have someone read you one of his books this weekend?

I just re-read this thread and caught that other snide little jab.

Jam it up your rear end, you arrogant, condescending Limey. Bet you wouldn't say something like that to someone's face, would you ? Oh, wait, this is Oregon, and you actually can say stuff like that to people and not get your grill knocked in.

I have a library of literally hundreds of books, skipped the second grade, was reading Jane Jacobs work before I was 15, and have an IQ tested at well into the top one percent of one percent. I've also been following Y2Kunstler since he earned that extremely appropriate nickname. Look it up.

I come here for intelligent discourse with people I may vehemently disagree with, but who have rhetorical skills and real-world experience I greatly admire, not some pompous prat.

Sorry if this breaks the forum rules and gets me booted, Professor Bogdanski, but I'm simply not built to let stuff like that one slide.

"I think Ben was being sarcastic about Metro"

You are not wrong.

Metro eats up countless millions planning planning and more planning when really they create no plans for the most important and fundemental needs from our growing region.

They produce squat and approach most tasks with only a pretense of comprehensive consideration while haphazardly advancing their agenda of blind environmentalism and theoretical wishful thinking.

Sherwood can offer nothing of substance whereas most people witness daily the failures of Metro et al throughout the region.
Metro for instance hasn't the slightest idea what to do about the worsening traffic while mandsating the region add much more of it and pretending their partner TriMet is a good substitute.
Metro's approach to UGB expansions and providing land for growth is pure chaos without any rationale. Randomly throwing darts on a map, wrestling over selections then n arrowing the cchoices down to gfrand schemes like Damascus and North Bethany that are nearly impossible to advance to construction.
They then spend tax money defending their choices, get distracted by lesser priorities and join the gang tactics to get more tax money to spend.

Their Transit Oriented Developments fail miserably to create the transit ridership gains intended, ingore the added traffic theyr creat and move onto repeat the same model over and over again.
Low and affordable housing supplies are in crisis as workiing families move further away to find their home and yard, commute further and take their children from Portland schools.
The Convention Center has been a lesson in throwing good money after bad, the Zoo has been caught money laundering and tax evading, and our garbage is diesel trucked up the gorge instead of freight railed.
Metro and their favorite activists have been retarding and obstructing our trasnportation system for years as every new road project is muddled up with the concerns their extremists.
The Columbia river crossing, Sunrise coridoor, I-5/99 connector, Sellwood Bridge, Dundee/Newberg by-pass and any hope for any reasonable additions to our road system are being blocked by that Metro "process" mindset which truly despises the automobile.
With each of these needs their troops are there to muddle up the sloooooooow design process to craft forms that least accomodate traffic while pushing their blind enamour for all things rail transit, bikes and pedestrian.
Even as they pretend to be concerned and addressing the growing gridlock of freight and commerce mobility they seek imaginary ways to bring freight releif while making sure they don't automoble traffic.
I could go on and on about Metro/PDC/TriMet et al nonsense and Sherwood would simply come back with, "why don't you move to Houston" or some other boiler plate Metro-like crap.
Never mind the countless millions spent around here on schemes that don't provide more than a shred of the promised public benefit while ignoring every detriment.

Cabbie,

That’s a fine resume which I believe you’ve shared with us before. Assuming it’s all true, I would expect it to come with a bit more self confidence. In which case a simple “f*&^k you limey moron” would have sufficed.

As for intelligent discourse, I’ve yet to see one post from you that wasn’t laced with anger, vitriol and disdain for any alternative viewpoint. Fine rhetoric must exist in the eye of the typer.

Hugs.

Ben, after verifying you were being sarcastic and reading your last post, I can now say *I* agree with you :)

Insult my ideas or opinions, fine, I can take it as well as dish it out, in fact, I rather enjoy it. What puzzles me is that you seem quite intelligent and well read, yet must continually stoop to stuff like insinuating that someone is so dense that they have to have a commonly available pop-culture book read to them. That's the difference. I'm certainly not the first one here to point that out.

Well Boys and Girls I think it comes down to the lack of support we are getting from The Grand Poop aaa's downtown. Rosie's Raiders Don't want to be anything close to Enforcement. Community Policing is their Cupp\ of tea. The "mayor" and the rest are more interested in where the bums and illegals can commit crimes on the taxpayer.
When I retire i am getting out. Until then I am going to vote.

We have an older lady in the neighborhood who opposed bike trails on the basis they would create a new opportunity for thieves to get in/out of the neighborhood.

I used to think she was crazy. Since then, I've been burglarized twice (last house on a dead end street), and nobody saw anything.

Maybe she was right?

Hey, Mister Tee...

Didja ever think that the bike path might have driven your neighbors to burglary?

I'm kinda curious as to why a bike trail goes down a dead end street, too.

Would a new bus route mean that opportunities for scores of thieves to get in and out of the neighborhood?

Those folks down in southeast should worry, too. Just think of the trainloads of thieves that would have the opportunity to move in and out of the neighborhoods.

That also sounds like a damned good reason to close the airport. That way, opportunities for thieves to move in to and out of the area would be foreclosed.

Godfry:

Such cyncism in a young man? Have you ever heard of the "I-5 corridor" being used for drug trafficking?

The bike path is a half mile away from the dead end street...But I guess you're right. A meth addict wouldn't bike or ride a half mile from the path just to get to the very last house on the street (with no neighbors on two sides.

Anyway...You misunderstood my position: I was skeptical when the old woman complained about the plans to build the bike path...Given the crime ridden history of MAX, I may have been wrong.

Mr Tee, not to imply that you haven't thought of this already or anything, but if I were in your shoes I'd seriously consider getting a magnificent German Shepherd or Rottweiler. I sure miss my room-mate's Shepherd; that beautiful animal scared away many a tweaky would-be burglar before she had to be put down. These days, I have silhouette targets full of holes in the "X" ring in the windows facing where the zombies like to come over the fence. They might be totally devolved scumbags, but they damn well know what those are.

But, a loyal dog will be there when you and your police revolver can't be; any cop will tell you that. Darn, I miss that Shepherd.

Getting back to transit oriented gangbanging...here is my question for y'all for today.

Wail until MS-13 finally moves into Metro PDX here, full scale, and begins to set up shop along the train lines and in the developing barrios.

Lots of people from Russia and Ukraine out there in the Eastside suburban rail slum corridor...wonder how that will play out ? Those people will be competing with them for jobs and welfare as well as a slice of the black markets, and they are about as far from politically correct and rainbow-of-diversity multicultural-friendly as is humanly possible.