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| Dig the sign, eh? (Zoom in on the date.) |
Since late August this year, Oregon City Transi(e)nt Center has been closed “due to construction”. At long last my transit agency was slated to upgrade a long-ignored vital hub. My elation was heavily muted once I realized they had closed the TC a year before construction was to begin.
Meanwhile, the bus stops were pushed to a Main Street, already over-burdened with lawless motorists hell-bent on doing whatever they want. Areas once welcome to parking were suddenly off limits. Whenever the "law" tells Oregon motorists not to do something, they take daring up several notches and say, "We'll do what we always have. Fuck transit."
And so, here we are at the age-old standoff with the entitled-at-large. They park directly next to "NO PARKING" signs as if they read ("Except for you"). They don't care that a 40-foot-long vehicle needs that space to lay over for an extremely-short break after an excruciatingly-long 115-minute rush hour roll. Yeah folks, we gotta pee. We gotta smoke, eat/stretch/appreciate even a few minutes not captive to the seat of our 20-ton office. That space between the NO PARKING signs is designed to allow one or two buses space to park. Your not being there is greatly expected. No, it does not allow for "Hey I have my 4-ways on just wait a minute while I go pick up my UberEats delivery order" or "Just chill I'm waiting for my drunk cousin to come outta the bar over there."
We. Don't. Give. A. Flying. FUCK. WHY. You're illegally parked! Our bladders are screaming to be relieved. Our nerves are shot after being disrespected at every moment we're stuck in the same traffic you are. Meanwhile, our break time ticks off with every missed traffic light where inconsiderate morons block intersections because they're damned if they have to obey the law. A bus operator with several passengers says "FUCK Y'ALL" and eases through an intersection on green only to block the inconsiderate motherfuckers who would block us.
I have no choice, or I'd be stuck at that red light for hours waiting for the "optimal/legal" moment to the intersection. I have people aboard hoping to connect with another bus line, so excuse me for caring enough about THEM to block YOU as you do me by running your red light to sit in the middle of an intersection with a faux "who, me?" look on your smug face.
Back to the transient center deconstruction. It's evidently not set to begin for another year. Meanwhile, we're pushed out of our routine. Those of us who have driven routes through here have considered OCTC a moment where we can kill time. Breathe, piss or relax if need be. Re-calculate our route's time considerations given traffic.
Instead of consulting the bus operators who constantly use this transit hub, Capital (Wasting) Improvements arbitrarily close it for no good reason a FULL YEAR prior to construction. WHO COMES UP WITH THIS IRRATIONAL BULLSHIT?!? There cannot be ANY rational reason for doing so.
Not only do you disrupt a time-honed system without a cohesive and concise plan, but you fail to account for regional weather patterns by pushing intending passengers into the rainy Portland ecosystem with absolutely NO SHELTER. It's not just inconvenient, it's cruel and disgustingly-inconsiderate of those whose patronage you're begging to increase.
It's just plain stupid. Good grief! It's like starting a pilot project to put lights on otherwise-dark bus stop poles to alert an operator someone is there waiting for us, then abandoning it. It's reminiscent of that joke of a project called "Transit Priority Signals", then disabling said feature when funding dries up. I'd argue that those who conceive these foolish schemes oughta be fired, but in transit, non-union employees are transitional, leaving half-cooked projects half-studied and half-implemented, leaving little or no documentation for those who follow to bring good ideas to fruition.
Meanwhile, operators are left with bus stop lights passengers are woefully ignorant of and traffic lights that change when Mickey Mouse alarm clocks tell them to, even though nobody is at the intersection except a bus waiting for yet another ridiculously-long red light.
Transit management everywhere, it seems, is wildly incompetent. Very few municipalities actually hire people who have the mental acuity to study, plan and competently/fluidly carry commonsense ideas through to logical implementation.
Want to rebuild a transit center? Here's what a rationally-thinking group would do.
1) Determine the best time of year to complete a project. In the Portland metro area, there's one logical choice: SUMMER. The Pacific Northwest has TWO seasons: summer and RAIN. Three months and that's that. Period, italicized.
2) Form a committee of operators and (competent) capital improvement personnel to study and plan improvements a full year prior to completion. Approve a comprehensive plan based on the best ideas of all involved.
3) Given the funds on hand, put out bids to local construction vendors. Choose the best price based on merits and time constraints. Project managers coordinate with approved vendor to schedule construction. Set a schedule and inform public one month prior to implementation.
4) Fully inform bus operators of the plans and what changes will best facilitate the most fluid methods to move passengers without disruption and confusion.
INSTEAD, incompetent management chooses this route:
1) Decide after decades of complaints and recommendations to say "HEY, WE OUGHTTA fix this transit center!"
2) Anybody got ideas? Oh well, frontline workers don't matter. We'll screw it up on our own, thank you very much. Then, years later after several position changes, someone new says "let's do this THIS WAY! Who cares we don't know WTF we're talking about, WE know better because we knows better than anyone else! We gots college degrees an'chit."
3) "LET'S CLOSE OCTC!" It's arbitrarily so for 18 months, maybe longer, given Oregon's penchant for extending lucrative construction projects. Best scenario: close the area just prior to construction, not a FULL YEAR before.
4) "HEY PASSENGERS MOVE OVER HERE!" Away from shelters of Portland's nine months of wet/cold/rainy/icy/snowy/hot weather. "Oh sorry, we're not funded to build any temporary weather shelter; y'all can just hang out in the elements or crowd beneath KFC's skimpy awnings. Sorry business owners, you just gotta deal with it."
5) And the best one I just noticed, somebody must have realized the glaring OOPS on the sign in the photo which precedes this piece VS. this photo:
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| Gee, we screwed up, but just maybe nobody will notice. (Zoom in on this most recent date.) |
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