STOP! Traffic Lights, Cops and the Dimwits Who "Lead" Us

TriMet, if it had any sense of a smooth-rolling bus operation, should sue Metro, the City of Portland, Milwaukie, Beaverton, Oregon City, Gresham, Hillsboro, and all other towns within its grasp. For billions of dollars of wasted fuel, time and intense frustration of its operators at the least.

Why? Deep into the 21st century, our traffic signals are stuck in a bass-ackwards time warp. They change on a timed basis, rather than a modern scheme based on intelligence-based patterns. No matter the time of day, they are at the very least, predictably programmed to cause gridlock at the worst possible moment.

A few years back, I read about a European transplant, a former traffic engineer in his former country, who exposed Portland's archaic traffic signal algorithms, based on equations formulated in 1912. He was charged, if memory serves me well, with some outdated law pertaining to engineers practicing without a license. Simply because he spent the time to expose an outdated system the city wanted to hide. Embarrassed by its ineptitude, it decided to punish a whistleblower. 

What are our city traffic engineers doing these days? Stuffing donuts, slurping coffee and joking about the Blazers' current woes? It's horribly implausible to believe they're doing anything constructive in their cozily-protected jobs to ease the ridiculousness along our busy boulevards where traffic signals should be programmed to ease the flow rather than increase the pollution/frustration they have not been held responsible for. 

Left-turn signals which go green automatically even when there are no vehicles waiting for it. Lights which remain red late at night when no traffic is there to take advantage of a stale green. There is no reason why there should not be blinking reds and yellows after 10 p.m. 

We bus operators carefully time our routes to arrive precisely at time points as we should, only to be foiled by irregular traffic signals. There are so many signals that change precisely to the second on a timed cycle no matter the traffic flow, it is insanely ridiculous. Couple that with "gotcha" cameras which flash in your face and capture a bus slipping through an intersection when it would be unsafe to slam on the brakes simply to "comply with the law".

The law? Nowadays it's a laughable, a negligible joke to the average motorist. Obeying the law seems only to slow his race to be the first to his own funeral. There aren't enough cops to catch the thousands of red-light-runners, speeders and outright fools who operate vehicles every hour of the day. Let alone the masses who rudely suppose our "Yield" signal is but another minor annoyance to their daily rush.

People simply ignore traffic law these days, taking risks which could spell disaster for YOUR loved ones. Cops have been under the finest of microscopes the past five years. Seems that traffic violations are low in priority in comparison to the excessive shootings we have suffered lately. Lawbreakers have slipped into the the Wild West these past two years. Cops have been busier delving into gunfire-inspired mayhem than paying attention to traffic voodoo.

While it's about time they answer to the umpteenth-millions of times they have racially misbehaved or suspiciously handled calls where they are expected to "protect and serve". However, somewhere along the way, we forgot the thousands of good men and women who put their lives on the line to protect US. Given this, we're now faced with a shortage of cops. Those who remain are understandably more careful as to how they operate, and that's good for us all. 

I'm one of the lucky ones. I'm white. My kids never had to worry walking around Gladstone at night. I mourn for those whose color being darker than mine, worried or mourning over a child who was needlessly killed while simply "chilling" or trying to negotiate dark streets on their way home. I cannot conceive of this fear, because of my skin color. Still, it's a chilling feeling to feel empathy to those who don't share my lucky color. A huge chunk of guilt follows this stroke of DNA. It's incredibly sad to think my brothers and sisters whose melatonin differs from mine must constantly worry their sweet children might fall victim to violence where mine remained relatively safe. I'm often reminded of this whenever I see a child of someone has been brutally murdered. The very thought of my own children suffering this fate scares me more than I care to think.

Police officers have an incredibly-difficult job. They must combine compassion with a human's DNA  sense of self-preservation. I cannot fathom the horrendous responsibility of knowing whether to shoot to kill or have that innate ability to know when less-lethal means are warranted. I constantly pray for the safety of those entrusted with our collective safekeeping. It's a delicate balance for them, and for those of us who trust them to make the "right" decision. All too often, their actions are sometimes horribly wrong; other times sadly justified, often judged based on "race". All too often, a police officer has only split seconds to act regarding the use of their weapon. Surely, I believe their at-the-moment, precise deliberations are based on their own safety, and I hope they have the ability to see "beyond race", which most I believe do.

There's that "white boy" mentality. Sorry. I cannot speak for those of you who came up differently than I did. I can pray your loved ones remain safe, because of my love for all with whom I share this "human" race. I'm a father, husband, grandfather, uncle, nephew and friend. Just like all of you are. We all share the same fears and intense love for those who are most dear to us.

Back to the original meaning of this post, I believe it's long since time the Metro Portland area take a hard look at its traffic patterns. They are horribly outdated, and costing US billions of dollars each year in wasted fuel and precious TIME. It's beyond ridiculous to sit at a red light at 1:00 a.m. when there is no cross-traffic to take advantage of a TIMED traffic signal. There are pressure plates at thousands of intersections which could alert a SMART signal to a waiting motorist, especially a transit operator, to allow actual traffic to flow, rather than to wait for the same sequence programmed for that intersection as it is 12 hours earlier.

One of us off to greener pastures, another rolling the rails.
Fond memories of brothers consume my rolls.

Wake up, Portland, Metro, TriMet. You project an image of cleaner air and all that namby-pamby "green" drivel, are severely contradicted by your incompetent traffic engineering. Buses expend millions of gallons of precious fossil fuels each year simply waiting on traffic signals which turn red for nothing other than an outdated algorithm. A mega-billion lawsuit is necessary to wake up the sleepy bastards who simply allow such waste to occur rather than actually doing their jobs which are to decrease logjams and increase an intelligent flow of traffic; simply via their programming traffic signals to work on demand rather than upon an antiquated algorithm that should have been updated in the 1940s.

We pay taxes on everything save our private parts. These are likely next in the sights of our tax-hungry legislators; mark me. We pay a transit tax and a nauseatingly-increasing list of other such fees sucking the dollars out of our paychecks while Oregon boasts our lack of a sales tax. What good has that granted us? The next outrageous rape of the working Portlanders is a toll on I-205, which will likely entail a logjam of people who are sick-to-fucking-death of taxes/fees only to congest our side streets adjacent to the toll-targets. These elected tyrants are hoisting yet another "fee" upon the working poor, forcing residents to breathe even more toxic fumes of legislative failure via excessive taxation. 

Instead, I vainly insist our local "leaders" take stock of the monies they already suck out of their already-fleeced citizens and put them to more progressive use. Remove the "tent cities" of downtown. Force these drug-addled litterers to clean up the mess they have made. Yes, pay them for actual work, cleaning up after they messy asses. Find a place they can live, with an attached address so they can find meaningful employment. STOP allowing them to aimlessly trash our city. STOP bowing to the lowest common denominator while honoring those whose taxes power this local economy which has crashed due to pandemic a slowly-recovering economic depression. Put people to work empowering Portland to restore itself to its long-lost luster. It's time we bond together to help one another, while also sprucing up this city which was once a destination, rather than a national disgrace.

TriMet, Metro, other local governments, whatever... you have failed us. Operators of bus and rail have endured through the worst this generation will hopefully ever suffer. Yet you still fail to grasp our grand  opportunity to RISE as ONE. You whine about conditions without actually finding the most obvious solutions. Your political affiliations matter NOT; your failure to find actionable solutions to our many woes is pathetic. Our great city's founding roots are collectively spinning in their graves as our city continues its nosedive into third-world reality. Wake the fuck up all y'all, willya?

Traffic lights regardless, we're living in a time of either great opportunity, or decisive decline. I'm unsure right now where we're headed. As long as "The Elk" is restored and forever honored as an integral historical point of pride for Portland, I have a slight glimmer of hope. In the absence of last year's massive protests, I wonder what happened to our collective, passionate VOICE?

As a bus operator who sees everything positive or negative about our collective metropolis on a daily basis, I can only hope and pray the wisest of minds prevail. Right now, our prospects are about as dim as a sunset on Mars.

Some of my most favorite people, ever. Period.