You may experience more high schoolers taking buses or MAX in the fall. This is because of a pilot program that allows Jefferson High School & Franklin High School students to take TriMet for free. I remember hearing about this student-driven initiative a couple of months ago and I’m glad TriMet has approved a pilot program to see if it makes sense.
I’ve witnessed different behaivors from high school students on the MAX & bus. They range from the student that wears headphones and listens to music at the level where everyone can hear it and not pay attention to what’s going on around them as well as students who ride and blend in with the rest of the riders.
In any case, I’m sure this will definitely help offset some costs to families that have had to previously shell out $24 for a student-discounted monthly pass. My question is - how much of an increase in riders will this be during the peak times to ride MAX & the bus in the morning? I guess we’ll see in the fall..
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[…] This is a fantastic idea. I actually can’t believe that students had to pay for buses in the first place. Having grown up in a considerably smaller city than Portland I rode a yellow school bus in elementary and middle school - and then drove in high school. We didn’t have bus service for high school - and city bus service was relatively sparse, so nearly every upperclassman had a car… lots of beaters, but we almost all had cars. But those freshman and sophomore years were tough - you had to rely on older siblings or friends to drive you places. And since your high school friend base now spread much farther apart then when you were younger - it was much harder to hang out with them after school or in the summer. In a city with public transportation as good as Portland - allowing students to use it is a no brainer. Plus it frees up parents from having to play chauffeur constantly and gives the kids more freedom to get after school jobs, do extra curricular activities or just hang out with their friends who may not live near by. […]
I dig the idea, but it makes me worry too. Fortunately the school hours are a little off from work hours, so the deluge of working persons vs. school kids isn’t that big of a deal.
I don’t however, like the premise of teaching kids that their is no responsibility to pay for a service, especially a service were most of the costs are shoved off onto the top 50% income tax payers in an area. It’s bad enough as it is, with the entitlement mentality that kids have accrued in the last 40-50 years. The entitlement ideas that many kids come out of school with these days is hisheartening, disconcerting, and above all just kind of absurd. It really brings to bear the idea many Americans have that we’re entitled to oil at cheap prices.
I do think they should still be required in some way, to have a pass (which it sounds like they’ll still need). At least they’ll have an underylying idea of how the system works, even though it won’t do anything for decreasing the entitlement mentality.
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