Fareless Square becoming not so fareless?

Saw this article over at Oregon Live: Not-So-Fareless Square?  Basically, the gist is – TriMet is looking into the idea of making Fareless Square into, well, a couple of things:

• Make Fareless Square rail-only – buses would require fare
• End Fareless Square at Seventh, effectively making the Lloyd Center stop outside of the square
• Make Fareless Square into $1-Fare-Square

My Thoughts

Here are my thoughts: if it makes sense, I think there should be a requirement of $1 for fare within Fareless Square.  The problem then is the riders who pay this fare but then go out to Zone 2 or Zone 3; I think this is a major under-reported problem now with 2 zone fare and all-zone fare.  Adding another type of fare into the mix only complicates things more.

Who Is To Blame?

So who is at fault for wanting to change Fareless Square?  I don’t think anyone is to blame.  Business within fareless square foot a bill for fareless riders.  These businesses are seeing slowing business in due part to the “economic crisis.”  (Side note: don’t get me started with how I think the local & national media is helping scare the public about this “economic crisis” each and every newscast).  Obviously, business owners who are footing the payroll tax that subsidize free rides within Fareless Square are seeing a slowdown of spending and don’t want to pay around the same amount of money (or more!) for less consumer spending.

TriMet, then, needs to find a way that some amount of revenue can come from riders who only ride in Fareless Square.

The Best Resolution

For me, I’m unsure as to the best resolution to this problem.  I think adding another fare option only needlessly complicates things.  Perhaps shrinking fareless square would be the best resolution here… but that doesn’t help businesses that would stay within Fareless Square that are paying for it.

How about this: set up a “donation”-type payment for Fareless Square riders.  Say hey, we are providing this free of charge within Fareless Square… if you feel like donating for fare, please do so.  See how that goes.

What are all of your opinions about this?

Wanna learn more about each MAX station?

Do you want to learn more about each MAX station?  Like bus line connections, which lines it serves, as well as some somewhat useless trivia?

For example, did you know the Goose Hollow MAX Station had several cameo appearances in the movie What The Bleep Do We Know?

Well hop on over to The List of MAX Light Rail Stations wikipedia page if you want to learn about your favorite MAX stations and the like.

Wow!  I didn’t know that the MAX stop near my place is the 16th stop for eastbound MAX trains!

…

Transit geeks love this kind of stuff :p

WES and me: a Westside Express Service preview ride story

I was fortunate enough to take a ride on the Westside Express Service (WES) Preview Ride on January 23rd.  The Tualatin Station was situated right next to a Haggens; the parking situation might be a little dicey with the park and ride parking lot being shared with the grocery store.  In any case, got there a little early and waited for the WES:

Al M, Jason McHuff (who has a nice collection of Fickr photos from the WES preview ride), Adron (and his GF) and Julian and I all congregated near the ticket machine while we waited.  Hmm… when will the next Transit Beer be?

At 3:36 or so (right on time!), the WES came up from the southern tracks:

One thing to note here: these aren’t MAX trains.  The WES trains are bigger and bulkier.  A TriMet official told us several times that the drop off from the platform to the tracks was four feet… so watch your step!

When we got on the WES train, a couple of things jumped out at me:

• It’s really nice inside
• The seats are more spread out
• There’s plenty of room

Here’s the view from where I was seated:

And a shot of the seats themselves:

While very comfy (infinitely more comfy than the seats that are currently in TriMet buses and MAX trains), I’m weary of how fast they’ll probably deteriorate.  I can’t imagine when people start sitting in those seats with wet coats and the like.

Anyway, I was able to get a shot (and some video!) of the operator controls for the WES.  First the pic:

You can access the short video clips I recorded on the TriMetiquette Youtube page.  Please excuse the quality – I was only able to use my Macbook’s video to record some footage.

WES Wireless Internet

I was able to test out WES’s wireless internet capabilities.  I saw two networks in my list of available networks when I opened up my Macbook:

I’m guessing the have one towards the front and another at the rear.  The download speeds seemed just fine; pages loaded quickly and I had no problems with my chat program (Adium).  I also tested out uploading one of the videos on my YouTube page and it uploaded successfully.

Here is what the download / upload speeds looked like:

As you can see from the other pics, there were a good amount of people who rode on this preview ride.  Here’s a shot I took that’s looking down from one end of a train to the other (notice Adron from Transit Sleuth taking a picture of ME taking a picture):

We went a couple of stops north then came back south and I got off the WES back at the Tualatin stop.  The scenery is quite beautiful so if you forget your book, you’ll probably be quite entertained looking out the window.

I have to say – the WES really does deliver.  Riding in the train itself is comfortable, it’s quite pleasant inside (along with some nice seating that will probably go down the tubes in half a year) and the scenery is really quite beautiful.

The Westside Express Service will be fully functional on February 2nd.  The ticket machine only accepts debit / credit cards, so if you only have cash you’re out of luck.

Bonus weird-head-thingy that you can move around at the Tualatin stop!

Adron has a great post with some more commentary over at The Transit Sleuth.

Julian of PDX Pipeline fame took this video:

Snipers at Gateway? It’s a rumor – Jan 23

There’s a rumor out there that there are snipers at Gateway Transit Center.  These rumors came from some twitter users (specifically @verso from what I can tell).

I’m currently riding on the Westside Express Service (WES) and asked a TriMet employee about this.  She seemed to not know anything.

If this is indeed true, I’ll try to update this post for more.  But for now, this is only a rumor…

I want to add – it’s definitely not cool to hype this kind of thing up on Twitter if it’s indeed not on the case.  I’m posting this to let those  know that this is STRICTLY a rumor and TriMet employees on the WES do not know about this.

WES (Westside Express Service) Preview Ride

How cool!  I received an invitation (thanks TriMet!) to RSVP for a WES Preview Ride.  So it looks like I’ll be riding the WES later this week.  I’ll try to get some pictures (or even some video?) and a nice comprehensive post on how the experience went probably this coming weekend.

Anyone have any specifics they want me to pay attention to?