Portland - Milwaukie Light Rail

[MR. Cosmopolitan]

Originally Posted by JordanL

That's a preposterous position to take. Especially if you're using it to justify NOT building something.

You're not even making sense.

I wasn't saying not to build it, I was just saying to delay it until we had a proper bus system for a non U.S city the size of Portland.

[urbanlife]

Originally Posted by MR. Cosmopolitan

I wasn't saying not to build it, I was just saying to delay it until we had a proper bus system for a non U.S city the size of Portland.

now that doesnt make sense, no city does just one thing at a time. That would be like saying we should delay having a proper bus system until we have adequate road and highway system for cars.

Originally Posted by JordanL

Also an interesting point... the longest tunnel in the world, under the Swiss Alps, is being done for less than $7 billion.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gotthard_Base_Tunnel

To add to this, the tunnel for the Swiss Alps goes through a mountain while the Big Dig goes through a densely populated city...so it is easy to see why the Alps tunnel is much cheaper to do.

[JordanL]

Originally Posted by urbanlife

To add to this, the tunnel for the Swiss Alps goes through a mountain while the Big Dig goes through a densely populated city...so it is easy to see why the Alps tunnel is much cheaper to do.

Yeah, they are able to do a decent portion of that tunnel with dynamite.

[northbay]

um, anybody have pix of the new green line? its been open how many days and i havent seen any pix. the green line thread hasnt been touched in like a year

[MR. Cosmopolitan]

I still think that MAX is much underused, 5% of the commutes to work is ridiculous for such an enormous light rail network, and that's an problem that no expansion can solve.

Public transport shouldn't be a reason to take people out of cars, but more a way of moving people that either can't drive or own a car and people that live and/or work in places where the use of a car is unpractical. That means transit should be demanded by the people and not the other way round.

Being the U.S one of the richest and car-friendly countries in the world the proportion of people that don’t know how to drive and can't own a car is minimal. That leaves the third and most important factor that would make people leave their cars and use public transit. Make the driver's life difficult so that it would beg to have a transit line next to its home, but there's a problem with that measure.

There are far to many people with cars, that means that no politician in its right mind would dare bother them. All this brings me to the conclusion that there are three possible solutions to bring people out of their cars:

1.Portland builds the streetcar East side line, the Orange line, the lake Oswego line, the Purple line, the Goose Hollow line, the Brown line, the Hollywood line, the Pink line... etc, to take people out of cars and eventually light rail would reach 15% of the commutes.

2.Portland politicians figure out a way of making the use of car unpractical without people noticing it.

3.People due to an enormous increase in oil prices, a massive economic depression or by some sort of miracle start to change their thoughts towards mass transit.

[JordanL]

Originally Posted by MR. Cosmopolitan

I still think that MAX is much underused, 5% of the commutes to work is ridiculous for such an enormous light rail network, and that's an problem that no expansion can solve.

Public transport shouldn't be a reason to take people out of cars, but more a way of moving people that either can't drive or own a car and people that live and/or work in places where the use of a car is unpractical.

Being the U.S one of the richest and car-friendly countries in the world the proportion of people that don’t know how to drive and can't own a car is minimal. That leaves the third and most important factor that would make people leave their cars and use public transit. Make the driver's life difficult so that it would beg to have a transit line next to its home, but there's a problem with that measure.

There are far to many people with cars, that means that no politician in its right mind would dare bother them. All this brings me to the conclusion that there are three possible solutions to bring people out of their cars:

1.Portland builds the streetcar East side line, the Orange line, the lake Oswego line, the Purple line, the Goose Hollow line, the Brown line, the Hollywood line, the Pink line... etc, to take people out of cars and eventually reach 15% of the commutes.

2.Portland politicians figure out a way of making the use of car unpractical without people noticing it.

3.People due to an enormous increase in oil prices or by some sort of miracle start to change their thoughts towards mass transit.

5%?

You actually believe that there's 2 million daily commutes in Portland that could be transitable? There's only 2.1 million people in the entire metro (including Vancouver).

[MR. Cosmopolitan]

Originally Posted by JordanL

5%?

You actually believe that there's 2 million daily commutes in Portland that could be transitable? There's only 2.1 million people in the entire metro (including Vancouver).

115000 rides by MAX and Streetcar + 310000 rides by Trimet make 425000 rides which Wikipedia says it makes 12.6% of all the commutes taking out the Trimet rides it leaves 3.4% of the commutes maid by MAX and Streetcar alone.

[urbanlife]

Originally Posted by MR. Cosmopolitan

I still think that MAX is much underused, 5% of the commutes to work is ridiculous for such an enormous light rail network, and that's an problem that no expansion can solve.

Public transport shouldn't be a reason to take people out of cars, but more a way of moving people that either can't drive or own a car and people that live and/or work in places where the use of a car is unpractical. That means transit should be demanded by the people and not the other way round.

Being the U.S one of the richest and car-friendly countries in the world the proportion of people that don’t know how to drive and can't own a car is minimal. That leaves the third and most important factor that would make people leave their cars and use public transit. Make the driver's life difficult so that it would beg to have a transit line next to its home, but there's a problem with that measure.

There are far to many people with cars, that means that no politician in its right mind would dare bother them. All this brings me to the conclusion that there are three possible solutions to bring people out of their cars:

1.Portland builds the streetcar East side line, the Orange line, the lake Oswego line, the Purple line, the Goose Hollow line, the Brown line, the Hollywood line, the Pink line... etc, to take people out of cars and eventually light rail would reach 15% of the commutes.

2.Portland politicians figure out a way of making the use of car unpractical without people noticing it.

3.People due to an enormous increase in oil prices, a massive economic depression or by some sort of miracle start to change their thoughts towards mass transit.

option one sounds nice....I guess I am not seeing where you are trying to go with all of this...you sound like you are for it, but against it for sake of conversation....not to be rude or anything, but it comes off as a bit pointless...alternatives to driving are needed because if we didnt have alternatives, then we would just have cars on the road and nothing else, which would actually increase problems rather than decrease them.

[MR. Cosmopolitan]

Originally Posted by urbanlife

option one sounds nice....I guess I am not seeing where you are trying to go with all of this...you sound like you are for it, but against it for sake of conversation....not to be rude or anything, but it comes off as a bit pointless...alternatives to driving are needed because if we didnt have alternatives, then we would just have cars on the road and nothing else, which would actually increase problems rather than decrease them.

I know that I sound quite confusing and I’m sorry for that. I still can't dominate English very well.

I was trying to say with all that, that in my opinion current MAX light rail is still not used on its full potential.

I think that it’s pointless to expand a light rail system that it’s not used on its full capacity so I think that we should make the system more efficient before thinking on expanding it.

To make it more efficient I thought that we should invest more on the bus system, because it’s cheaper and more flexible than MAX and also because it is currently quite underfunded and small.

Then I mentioned other actions that I think are useful to make the mass transit in Portland more efficient and I tried to show how under used the MAX system is in my opinion.

It wasn't for sake of conversation; in fact making all this posts was quite unpleasant for me.

[Atomic Glee]

Originally Posted by MR. Cosmopolitan

because it’s...more flexible than MAX

If I may interject...I hear this all the time as a reason of the bus's supposed superiority to rail transit. "If you need to, you can change the bus's route." That's precisely one of the *disadvantages* of the bus in a lot of ways. A light rail line or streetcar is always in the same place. People can count on it. People can plan for it. Developers can build around it. People can figure out easily where the train comes from, where it goes, and where they can pick it up. Buses, by their very nature of not having fixed guideways, don't have those advantages. They are more nebulous. That's one of the reasons they don't attract ridership like rail transit does.

Sometimes, the advantages don't always work out to be advantages. The "flexibility" of the bus is often a good example of that.

[urbanlife]

Originally Posted by Atomic Glee

If I may interject...I hear this all the time as a reason of the bus's supposed superiority to rail transit. "If you need to, you can change the bus's route." That's precisely one of the *disadvantages* of the bus in a lot of ways. A light rail line or streetcar is always in the same place. People can count on it. People can plan for it. Developers can build around it. People can figure out easily where the train comes from, where it goes, and where they can pick it up. Buses, by their very nature of not having fixed guideways, don't have those advantages. They are more nebulous. That's one of the reasons they don't attract ridership like rail transit does.

Sometimes, the advantages don't always work out to be advantages. The "flexibility" of the bus is often a good example of that.

Which is very true, developers want to see something that has long term effects. Building next to a stop means there will more than likely be a stop there for a long time to come with rail.

Also, to be efficient with rail is to be easily accessible, which in its nature means that it needs to expand...that is like building a line that only has access to 15% of the population of a city then wondering why the entire city doesnt use it. Why would someone from Milwaukie want to drive all the way up to the light rail line just to use it? But it would be more efficient if there was a line that ran down to that portion of the city....think of rail as a spider web, if you cast out your web in different directions it will become more efficient because it will be easier to snag new commuters.

[crow]

Originally Posted by Atomic Glee

If I may interject...I hear this all the time as a reason of the bus's supposed superiority to rail transit. "If you need to, you can change the bus's route." That's precisely one of the *disadvantages* of the bus in a lot of ways. A light rail line or streetcar is always in the same place. People can count on it. People can plan for it. Developers can build around it. People can figure out easily where the train comes from, where it goes, and where they can pick it up. Buses, by their very nature of not having fixed guideways, don't have those advantages. They are more nebulous. That's one of the reasons they don't attract ridership like rail transit does.

Sometimes, the advantages don't always work out to be advantages. The "flexibility" of the bus is often a good example of that.

as well the MAX is a far more pleasant way to commute than the stinky, noisey bus rides. we need both, we need transit at scales and the bus serves the smallest scale - aside from the bicycle.

[alexjon]

Originally Posted by crow

as well the MAX is a far more pleasant way to commute than the stinky, noisey bus rides. we need both, we need transit at scales and the bus serves the smallest scale - aside from the bicycle.

This is what I've been saying for YEEEEEEEEAAAAARS.

Well, not the "stinky noisy bus rides" part, I like buses.

[Snowden352]

Originally Posted by urbanlife

Which is very true, developers want to see something that has long term effects. Building next to a stop means there will more than likely be a stop there for a long time to come with rail.

It also helps when the city gives substantial subsidies to the developers for building near a stop.

[urbanlife]

Originally Posted by Snowden352

It also helps when the city gives substantial subsidies to the developers for building near a stop.

that is all apart of the business of trying to grow.

[MR. Cosmopolitan]

Originally Posted by Snowden352

It also helps when the city gives substantial subsidies to the developers for building near a stop.

I didn't knew they did that, its wonderful.

When did they start doing that?

Do they do that also in Bus corridors?, that would be great.

[pdxtraveler]

Originally Posted by MR. Cosmopolitan

I didn't knew they did that, its wonderful.

When did they start doing that?

Do they do that also in Bus corridors?, that would be great.

It would not be a big draw for developers, because as stated buses
aren't fixed you can change the route to a different place. That being
said PDC does help projects in other high traffic areas like such as
MLK which has bus but not rail. They should eventually have
streetcar though.

[MR. Cosmopolitan]

Originally Posted by pdxtraveler

It would not be a big draw for developers, because as stated buses aren't fixed you can change the route to a different place.

I know but I don't think its very likely to happen to the highly ridden bus lines where the subsidies would go.

[RoseCtyRoks]

Donald MacDonald will be in Portland on Weds to present different configurations for how the bike paths will link into trails on either side of the river. Another meeting of the Willamette River Bridge's Advisory Committee will be held on Nov. 10th, from 3 to 5 p.m. at David Evans and Associates, 2100 S.W. River Parkway, in Portland:

http://djcoregon.com/news/2009/10/26...on-new-bridge/

[JordanL]

Originally Posted by MR. Cosmopolitan

I know but I don't think its very likely to happen to the highly ridden bus lines where the subsidies would go.

As an example, the 19 had its service reduced substantially, and it runs right through an area that the PDC is trying completely reevaluate, (60th & Glisan).

That said, ridership and trip times on the 19 are more than adequate for reduced service, so that was a smart move, but it just goes to show why bus will never be a driver for development the same way rail will. Providence has been buying and building lots of new offices near the 42nd MAX stop, even though most of their services and offices are located on the 19 line, and I can only postulate that it has to do with the idea that the 42nd MAX stop is guaranteed to be more accessible.

It's important for people to remember this: TriMet is as much an economic agency as they are a transit agency. Portland, Metro and the PDC use TriMet as part of a larger plan to encourage and create economic development which benefits both those who use and don't use TriMet, and that's very important. It's one of the reasons Portland has been able to justify spending so much on transit... we make sure that we get a very good ROI by viewing transit investment as part of an economic development plan, and not just a way of moving people.

And I believe that actually increases ridership more than just creating new lines that go where people already are.