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Originally Posted by bvpcvm
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.
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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.
Quote:
Originally Posted by bvpcvm
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.
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Didn't Trimet have the option to say no? There's no excuse for Trimet signing on to this awful idea.
Quote:
Originally Posted by bvpcvm
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.
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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.
Quote:
Originally Posted by PDXDENSITY
"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.
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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
Gee, I wonder why the suburbs hate rail when it's so poorly done.
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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.
Quote:
Originally Posted by PDXDENSITY
in the case of WES it might have been intentional to create more outrage.
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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.