[PLUG] Off Topic: Moving to Portland

[Elliott Mitchell]

>From: Galen Seitz <galens at seitzassoc.com>
> The land use patterns of the suburbs are hardly Trimet's fault.  When
> Beaverton and Tigard achieve the population density of NY, I'm sure
> Trimet's service levels will be there.  

I'm not. Tri-Met is very much centered on downtown. Service level doesn't
correspond very with the population density. Though downtown might have
four times the population density of further out, downtown certainly has
a lot more than four times the bus service! The irony of course is that
by the very nature of being spread out, outside downtown needs more bus
service than raw population would suggest because people *have* to go
further.

You should note that MAX isn't very efficient. They're absolutely fixed
at two car trains due to being at the level of surface streets. NY can
have trains more than 10 cars long, longer than some of the subway
stations by the nature of being underground. If you're going through
downtown, heading for the Zoo, Memorial Coliseum, Lloyd Center, or the
airport, MAX is also highly inefficient because it has zillions of
intermediate stops in downtown that aren't needed and greatly slow things
down.

For MAX to truely act as a backbone, the bus routes need to reflect that
as well. Most routes still go downtown like that was the center of the
universe, even when they're quite close to MAX.

> SE, NE, as well as close-in SW and NW all have good bus and light rail
> coverage and frequency.  You don't have to live downtown to make
> effective use of the system.  And how many places in the country can you
> get real-time arrival information from your browser or cell phone?

Yeah, but I'd rather have more buses and not care about whether the next
one was 5 minutes or 10 minutes away. Close in SW isn't too good. If
you're in the hills (which is pretty close in) there are severl holes 2
miles or more across.


>From: alan <alan at clueserver.org>
> Tri-Met is a hell of a lot better than some places.  Try getting anywhere 
> on a bus across the river in Vancouver, for example.  (Bonus points if it 
> is after 9pm or on a weekend.)
> 
> It is not perfect, but what is?

Yeah, transit agencies don't tend to handle talking to each other very
well. This is also Vancouver's fault though. The original plans for the
North-South line of MAX had it going across the river. The funding
was mostly lined up, and it was killed by Vancouver.


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