Got this in a e-mail not that long ago, regarding Portland’s TriMet MAX Light-Rail system:
During a bridge lift on the Steel Bridge this morning, a Union Pacific bridge tender raised the bridge too high, damaging TriMet’s overhead electrical system that powers MAX. Three trains traveled through the span section and were damaged. Repair efforts are ongoing, with TriMet staff and contractors working to expedite the repairs.
There is no MAX service along the Yellow Line or the Blue/Red lines between Rose Quarter Transit Center and PGE Park stations.
Buses are serving riders in these areas and riders should expect minor delays.
The shuttles will continue through rush hour this evening and possibly through the rest of the service today. There is also the potential that Tuesday’s morning rush hour will be affected.
A friend of mine said it was one hell of a light show on the second train that crossed the bridge.
That sucks! Damn bridges.
Brian, I fixed your link. :)
It’s the operators fault not the bridge
The bridge operator’s fault? I can imagine so. I can’t blame the Steel Bridge itself, it’s been there a very, very long time.
Here’s a picture. You can see a MAX train going over the upper deck. The lower deck carries freight traffic, Amtrak Cascades, and the Coast Starlight.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:SteelBridgePano1.jpg
This is why you can’t depend on one bridge for your whole LRT operation across a River. They need that second Bridge on the South End. What if there were an earthquake that knocked out the bridge completely? Yet people are complaining about making that second investment.
This is exactly why the Eastside Corridor needs to be preserved WITH rails. If the Shilshole Bridge or a downtown tunnel fails, then rail traffic thru the city is cut in half for months/years.
The Eastside Corridor is a perfect bypass.
(Off-topic, but since Ben mentioned it… the Coast Starlight is back in service now after the mudslide in central OR cut the line in half a few months ago.)
I’ve never taken the coast starlight, but if you get the chinook book, it comes with a two-for-one deal on amtrak tix to portland or vancouver!
Great deal!
Portland usually has another deal. Call 1-800-USA-RAIL and ask for the “POVA Big Deal Free Companion Offer”. The code changes, but this can often be the same as the coupon, without having to pay $20 for a Chinook book.
I hold on to a spare Chinook book coupon for emergencies – like when the ticket would otherwise be $75 round trip for my companion.
Regarding Brad’s comment on the eastside rail corridor:
You may have a point as far as freight is concerned, but it’s actually quite a minimal risk. The port is to the south of downtown and the rail bridge across the ship canal, and so is the eastbound line to Chicago. As far as north south traffic is concerned, 90 percent of the market is to the south of Seattle. The only things to the north are Everett and Vancouver, and both have their own Sea Ports. There is also an east-west corridor that runs east of Everett along highway 2 to Spokane and reconnects with the main line.
So it’s a stretch to say the region would be crippled as far as freight is concerned without the eastside rail line.
Regarding light rail / sounder:
The problem if Central Link were to collapse would be that no one could get TO downtown seattle, the fact that they could go north and south on the east side has no relevance.
A far more likely scenario and one we should be planning for is if one of the two floating bridges were to collapse. This is one of many reasons that light rail should go east across both 90 and 520.
Regarding north-south redundancy, this is yet another good reason to build the ballard/west seattle line, and not stop there but extend it to reconnect to the mainline at northgate and seatac.
I’m not completely opposed to the idea of preserving rails on the eastside corridor, but while it does offer us many lessons, I don’t believe this portland has much relevance to that discussion.
We rail advocates also often forget just how significant bicycles are as a transportation mode, especially if, like light rail, they get their own dedicated right of way and don’t have to share a street with cars.
i just got back from portland last night around 11pm
we were waiting for the max when the system broke down, actually
there is a major difference in portland vs seattle (i’ll write about it some time later on my blog) along the lines of customer service and quality of service from TriMet vs KC Metro – when the first disabled train rolled through, the driver got out and explained what went wrong and that shuttle buses were coming to pick us up. there was some minor disruption throughout the city as a result of losing the Max service but things got under control pretty quickly and the shuttles were moving people from end to end just fine.
TriMet had uniformed people at every Max station informing people about the situation, as well as answering questions. all things considered, just a minor disaster. of course, portland residents were a little unhappy to be stuck with the indignity of a slow, cramped, hot, jerking bus when they’ve been used to fast and smooth light rail – but they took it in stride.
if this happened on metro (e.g. some part of our system went out), somehow i suspect the communications/customer service aspect would be atrocious. anyway, the trip to portland (via Amtrak, btw) was quite revealing of just how half-assed metro really is. no transit agency is perfect, including TriMet (to say the least), but their commitment to the “little things” – like customer service, empathy and passenger amenities, goes a long way…
what, no trolls on this blog, telling us how awful light rail is and that this incident proves why Portland made a big mistake in building MAX 20+ years ago? How boring.
Tony-
Nearly EVERY rail car that heads north thru downtown also heads east over Stevens Pass.
Very few are going to Vancouver or Everett, only passing thru Everett on their way east.
So if that bridge fails, where exactly will all those backed-up trains (and containers and container ships). Stevens Pass handles approx a train an hour.
That’s 12 full trains a day, sitting in downtown.
And you think the at-grade crossings at Lander/Holgate/Royal Brougham are bad now….
The ripple effect is that Sounder traffic north is dead and Sounder traffic south is jammed up.
Amtrak traffic also is stopped north and jammed south.
And let’s not even begin to think about how UP and BNSF would handle the situation. It’s UP to the south and BNSF to the north. They won’t play well together.
Andrew Cencini –
There’s a big difference in customer service between bus and rail services. Metro can’t really be compared to MAX, or even to Sounder. Look at the staff at Sounder stations – extremely helpful, nice, understanding. The same will likely be the case with Link – those operators aren’t going to be dealing with nonpayment and belligerent passengers every day, so they’ll be a lot more likely to be nice if there’s something wrong.
TriMet’s actual bus drivers can be just as much a pain in the ass as Metro drivers can be – or any one of us can be, for that matter!
Tony, if central link were to collapse, everything else would already have collapsed first – like I-5 and both floating bridges. Don’t worry about it, let the emergency services groups figure it out. If they need help, they know how to ask.
i’m talking more about agency-level consideration in case of a service interruption. sure, an LRV operator deals with a lot less BS than a bus driver, but in both the TriMet and Metro case, the same agency is running both the buses and the trains, and Metro has not exactly proven itself to be very responsive to customers on countless other issues. i’m just saying i think there’s a twofold problem here that we need to (and can, with enough muscle) overcome – one being a bureaucratic non-customer focused culture in metro management, and the other being the puget sound culture of not demanding more of our transit agencies.
Andrew, you continue to miss the point (surprise, surprise) – especially because you were a freaking tourist.
Think about when the transit tunnel shut down last December, the bus drivers were the ones doing the communicating (just like MAX drivers). Why? Because the distribution of passengers whose service was being disturbed was wide and not so dense (basically every one of the thousands of stops in the city!). Even if you only sent Metro staff to the bus-stops just before and just after downtown, you’d still be talking about dozens of stops!
An LRT failure like MAX can be handled by sending transit officers (basically the people who usually hassle you about your ticket) to a far fewer number of places, they were likely concentrating staff on the busiest of stops as I rather doubt that they had staff out at the hinterlands like Hawthorn Farm or Kenton/N Denver (if they did, good for them but that’s a new experience). This comes from personal experience, as I lived in Portland during a previous major disruption of MAX at the river crossing. I got onto the train at a far distant station from downtown (Kenton/N Denver as a matter of fact) and there was no announcement of any potential delay or transfer until well into the ride! A far more minor delay related to someone standing in the tracks in front of the train ahead of us resulted in the operator getting out and smoking (nice explanation). Plus a third of Tri-Met’s riders use MAX – can you think of three bus lines put together that represent a third of Metro’s ridership? They’ll have the shuttle buses up and running pretty quick if they’re available not to have that collapse for a day!
Really, Trimet is just a transit bureaucracy like any other. If you experience it’s customer service as a non-tourist or outside of central downtown (or the Red Line), you’ll see what I mean. I like the multi-line bus stops that haven’t had updated schedules since the Clinton administration, personally.