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  #281  
Old Posted Apr 23, 2015, 12:03 AM
babs babs is offline
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Originally Posted by bvpcvm View Post
Wait a second, hang on - WES was Washington County's idea, and it was their project until they foisted it on TriMet...but WES isn't TriMet's fault
I don't know how this garbage happened but Trimet is the agency that built it and their name is on the side of every rail car. Heck, they even bought out the railcar manufacturer. So unless guns were pulled, they could have stopped it.

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Originally Posted by bvpcvm View Post
Besides, there's no ROW that would get you downtown from Beaverton. So essentially, you've either got WES or nothing, unless you're willing to fund a MAX line.
The billion dollar infrastructure of MAX can get you downtown. Running an extension of the Red Line down the WES corridor is going to cost WAY less than the planned spending of the billions on SW light rail. Fix what you got, before building more.
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  #282  
Old Posted Apr 23, 2015, 12:07 AM
PDXDENSITY PDXDENSITY is offline
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Originally Posted by babs View Post
I don't know how this garbage happened but Trimet is the agency that built it and their name is on the side of every rail car. Heck, they even bought out the railcar manufacturer. So unless guns were pulled, they could have stopped it.
"it was their project until they foisted it on TriMet...but WES isn't TriMet's fault"

Either way, a failing commuter project is bad PR for rail, so trimet tried to save it. It strikes me as intentional on Washington county's part especially since the shibboleth down there is to love cars, widen freeways, and hate rail, apparently, judging by recent votes.
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  #283  
Old Posted Apr 23, 2015, 12:07 AM
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hmmmm... I smell a conspiracy. They knew it would fail because they designed it to, and they knew trimet would get the bad PR.
Come on, really? How do you explain the garbage bus service Trimet provides to the area? Must be a conspiracy by Trimet so people will vote for measures to stop light rail funding.
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  #284  
Old Posted Apr 23, 2015, 12:10 AM
maccoinnich maccoinnich is online now
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Originally Posted by PDXDENSITY View Post
hmmmm... I smell a conspiracy. They knew it would fail because they designed it to, and they knew trimet would get the bad PR.
This is like the 10th conspiracy you've smelled this month, and it's only the 22nd.
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  #285  
Old Posted Apr 23, 2015, 12:10 AM
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Originally Posted by PDXDENSITY View Post
the shibboleth down there is to love cars, widen freeways, and hate rail, apparently, judging by recent votes.
Gee, I wonder why the suburbs hate rail when it's so poorly done. Look at the nutty route of SW Light Rail into downtown Tigard. My stomach gets queezy looking at the maps of all the twists and turns they plan on doing to get it there.
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  #286  
Old Posted Apr 23, 2015, 12:12 AM
PDXDENSITY PDXDENSITY is offline
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Come on, really? How do you explain the garbage bus service Trimet provides to the area? Must be a conspiracy by Trimet so people will vote for measures to stop light rail funding.
Terrible urban planning for one. The roads meander in a shitty fashion even without topography to explain it. It's difficult to serve the area because citizens planned it poorly intending it to be supremely suburban. So, that's one reason. Another is that we were in a depression economically and there were bus cuts that happened *everywhere.* These suburbs are still superbly assisted with the service compared to other cities our size.

This WES mess strikes me as political chess, though, given the anti-rail sentiment and angry we-dont-have-enough-buses crowd.
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  #287  
Old Posted Apr 23, 2015, 12:14 AM
PDXDENSITY PDXDENSITY is offline
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Originally Posted by maccoinnich View Post
This is like the 10th conspiracy you've smelled this month, and it's only the 22nd.
Politicians sure are truthful, eh?

Excercising your opinion to diminish my argument by character assasination of my pseudonym; I support your right.
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  #288  
Old Posted Apr 23, 2015, 12:15 AM
PDXDENSITY PDXDENSITY is offline
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Gee, I wonder why the suburbs hate rail when it's so poorly done. Look at the nutty route of SW Light Rail into downtown Tigard. My stomach gets queezy looking at the maps of all the twists and turns they plan on doing to get it there.
Because in the case of WES it might have been intentional to create more outrage. And if they poorly planned for rail and buses, they probably should deal with the consequences if they don't want transit... in other words, let them pay for their own freeway widening that will end at multomah county line.
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  #289  
Old Posted Apr 23, 2015, 12:39 AM
maccoinnich maccoinnich is online now
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Originally Posted by PDXDENSITY View Post
Excercising your opinion to diminish my argument by character assasination of my pseudonym; I support your right.
I know what all these words mean, but I have no idea what they meant when strung together in that order. Anway, the idea that TriMet and/or Washington County would build a project that they wanted to fail is tinfoil hat stuff.
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  #290  
Old Posted Apr 23, 2015, 12:42 AM
PDXDENSITY PDXDENSITY is offline
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Originally Posted by maccoinnich View Post
I know what all these words mean, but I have no idea what they meant when strung together in that order. Anway, the idea that TriMet and/or Washington County would build a project that they wanted to fail is tinfoil hat stuff.
WORD SALAD! I must be schizophrenic, eh??

Anyway, whether you think it's tinfoil or not, I think it's likely given the political climate in the suburbs.
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  #291  
Old Posted Apr 23, 2015, 3:48 AM
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Originally Posted by bvpcvm View Post
Wait a second, hang on - WES was Washington County's idea, and it was their project until they foisted it on TriMet. There was never an option to go to downtown, because downtown's not in Washington County! Besides, there's no ROW that would get you downtown from Beaverton. So essentially, you've either got WES or nothing, unless you're willing to fund a MAX line.
Then the answer is NOTHING, which means not wasting 166 million dollars and not losing more money on it every single day.

If they couldn't do it the right way, they shouldn't have done it at all. I really hope they shut it down in 14 years if they can't manage to get out from under it sooner.

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Don't get me wrong - I'm not thrilled about WES, and it was doomed from the start, but WES isn't TriMet's fault.
Didn't Trimet have the option to say no? There's no excuse for Trimet signing on to this awful idea.

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Having worked in Salem, I would love to see some sort of commuter rail down that way, but 2oh1 is correct that Salem->Beaverton is silly.
And because we're stuck with WES, there will be no commuter rail to Salem because any attempt would end up being an extension of WES in hopes of making WES feasible, which would turn commuter rail to Salem into the same failure that WES has been.

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Originally Posted by PDXDENSITY View Post
"it was their project until they foisted it on TriMet...but WES isn't TriMet's fault"

Either way, a failing commuter project is bad PR for rail, so trimet tried to save it.
There's zero chance Trimet took on WES in order to prevent the bad PR of a failing commuter project. It's more likely they saw federal money and vastly, but stupidly, overestimated the potential usefulness of a Beaverton based line.

WES was a horrendous concept.

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Originally Posted by babs View Post
Gee, I wonder why the suburbs hate rail when it's so poorly done.
This, This, THIS. Oh. My. God. THIS.

Doing rail poorly is worse than not doing it at all, because it'll be too easy to use WES as an excuse for not doing future projects. Doing it poorly does more harm than not doing it at all.

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Originally Posted by PDXDENSITY View Post
in the case of WES it might have been intentional to create more outrage.
Not at all.

The thing you need to keep in mind about mass transit is that it's often run by, or at least overseen by, people who don't use it as their primary mode of transportation.

I'm sure that whoever thought up WES assumed the idea was brilliant. It even sounds brilliant: Build a commuter rail line along job centers in Washington County that links into Trimet. But anyone who actually relies on mass transit knows it's not enough to just connect to Trimet. You have to connect to the main hub, which is downtown. If you don't, you automatically build in a forced transfer, which doesn't sound like a big deal in theory, but in practice, adding a forced transfer to a commuter's journey, which may already include a transfer, is enough to make the route either too much of a hassle or downright impossible.

Those who planned WES weren't trying to create outrage. They weren't trying to fail. They were simply too ignorant to know better - and I use the word "ignorant" intentionally. A lot of ideas look great on paper, but make no sense in reality. WES is one of them.
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  #292  
Old Posted Apr 23, 2015, 7:38 PM
AdamNorthwest AdamNorthwest is offline
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I realize that this is trivial at this point, but would the SW Corridor be an extension of the MAX Green Line?
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  #293  
Old Posted Apr 23, 2015, 7:57 PM
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Originally Posted by AdamNorthwest View Post
I realize that this is trivial at this point, but would the SW Corridor be an extension of the MAX Green Line?
It would technically probably be, but Trimet would probably do what they did with the Milwaukie line.
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  #294  
Old Posted Apr 23, 2015, 8:04 PM
babs babs is offline
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I realize that this is trivial at this point, but would the SW Corridor be an extension of the MAX Green Line?
How so? What are you thinking?
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  #295  
Old Posted Apr 23, 2015, 8:56 PM
AdamNorthwest AdamNorthwest is offline
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I was thinking that since it appears that the Yellow Line will be extended to Lincoln later this year, the only line left on the Transit Mall alignment that could pottentialy be extended south would be the Green Line. I don't see a MAX Purple Line being created for this project, which would result in having 4 MAX lines run on 5th/6th.
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  #296  
Old Posted Apr 24, 2015, 6:06 AM
zilfondel zilfondel is offline
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Originally Posted by PDXDENSITY View Post
hmmmm... I smell a conspiracy. They knew it would fail because they designed it to, and they knew trimet would get the bad PR.
I think the simpler explanation is called "incompetence."

Occam's Razor and all.

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Originally Posted by babs View Post
I don't know how this garbage happened but Trimet is the agency that built it and their name is on the side of every rail car. Heck, they even bought out the railcar manufacturer. So unless guns were pulled, they could have stopped it.
Trimet most assuredly deserves partial blame for the project, as they designed, bid out, built, and operate it. There was a lot of criticism at the time (now proven rightly so) that it wouldn't be cost effective to build. I think Trimet went ahead with it due to politics, which ironically ended up backfiring: instead of suburban support for rail, it turned Tigard and some other suburbs anti-rail.

Hopefully they learned a lesson.
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  #297  
Old Posted Apr 24, 2015, 6:11 AM
zilfondel zilfondel is offline
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Originally Posted by babs View Post
Gee, I wonder why the suburbs hate rail when it's so poorly done. Look at the nutty route of SW Light Rail into downtown Tigard. My stomach gets queezy looking at the maps of all the twists and turns they plan on doing to get it there.
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Originally Posted by PDXDENSITY View Post
Terrible urban planning for one. The roads meander in a shitty fashion even without topography to explain it. It's difficult to serve the area because citizens planned it poorly intending it to be supremely suburban.
Then they need to do what they did in Milwaukie: elevated rail lines over the streets! It works!
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  #298  
Old Posted Apr 24, 2015, 1:56 PM
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I hope there won't be any more expensive lines. All we need to do is replace Wes with max and some other little things like having less trains using the same tracks. Two trains should be the most
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  #299  
Old Posted Apr 24, 2015, 2:22 PM
PDXDENSITY PDXDENSITY is offline
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Originally Posted by zilfondel View Post
I think the simpler explanation is called "incompetence."

Occam's Razor and all.
To be intentionally pedantic, it's Hanlon's Razor. Not Occam's.

"Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity."

Only problem is, money definitely corrupts, and I'm certain there's some behind the scenes shadiness going on in our suburban counties.
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  #300  
Old Posted Apr 24, 2015, 3:20 PM
babs babs is offline
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Only problem is, money definitely corrupts, and I'm certain there's some behind the scenes shadiness going on in our suburban counties.
In the suburbs only?
Let's see our gov got kicked to the curb for because his girlfriend couldn't turn away anyone with money. The entire Portland City Council (except Amanda) are in the pockets of Greg Goodman and the rest of the old school money donors who fund their campaigns. Most politicians are corrupt. Why point fingers at the suburbs??? There probably is way less dirty money thrown at those guys as compared to big city politicos.
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