THE FIRST PLACE I saw a stranger’s scrotum was on the
#72 bus, heading south down 82nd Avenue. It was the middle of the
summer. I was 13. He was a large man in tiny shorts. There it was,
slipping out of the leg hole and resting like old pudding on the
plastic seat.
As I learned at a young age, TriMet buses serve a cross-section of
the populace. Though Portland is applauded for its groundbreaking light
rail system and heralded as the number one bike city in America, more
Portlanders ride buses on an average weekday than those two modes of
transit combined. Buses reach communities that light rail doesn’t,
logging 200,700 trips on an average weekday in September. For better or
worse, buses erode personal space. Office-bound commuters share seats
with rapidly texting teenagers, who rub shoulders with Latino families
heading home from the grocery store.
But critics fault TriMet for neglecting buses as it expands rail
lines. In the same week the MAX’s Green Line opened to Clackamas,
budget cuts went into effect axing four bus lines. At the end of
November, all of Portland’s frequent service lines will become less
frequent. Rather than arriving every 15 minutes guaranteed, TriMet will
pace frequent service buses every 17 to 20 minutes and save $3.5
million.
“Even if they cut equally across the board, buses feel like they get
much harder hit because they haven’t seen any increases,” says transit
activist Chris Smith, who noted that MAX took some cuts, too, as TriMet
scrambled to plug a $31 million budget hole this year.
“The question is where do you want to put your expenses,” says
TriMet spokeswoman Mary Fetsch. Light rail costs a lot more upfront to
build, but it’s cheaper to operate. Fetsch says TriMet is not
prioritizing light rail over buses, describing rail as the “backbone”
of Portland’s transit system and buses as its “workhorses.”
In an act of equal parts celebration, investigation, and
self-flagellation, reporter Sean Breslin and I chose four of the city’s
most heavily ridden frequent-service buses, the buses that will soon be
scaled back, and rode each line all the damn way from start to
finish.
But not before asking Portland’s bus drivers for their insights on
which lines are the most interesting or dangerous. “#67 has the most
diversity, like driving a United Nations bus!” said one, via the
transit operators Yahoo group.
“The #72 is notorious for assholes and the #71 on the 122nd side,”
wrote another. “I get called a faggot ass motherfucker twice a week on
those lines.” It was going to be a long ride. SARAH MIRK
Bus Line: #4
Weekday Daily Riders: 17,610
Route: St. Johns to Gresham via Portland City Center
The #4 is a commuter bus. In the mornings, it’s jammed with students
heading to schools farther south and farther west than their home
neighborhoods; in the evenings, downtown office workers rely on it for
rides back out to where the rent is cheap.
On the Friday night before Halloween, the bus is as close to a fifth
grade social studies class “melting pot” vision of America as I’ve ever
seen. A very young white mom sits in the front seats, juggling a baby
and stroller. An old black man gets on in the Albina neighborhood,
reeking of malt liquor and taking the seat between two chubby teenagers
who are loudly discussing their ethnicity while rapidly texting. The
teenagers are strangers but one, an inquisitive black girl, is good at
making conversation and asks the young white boy what school he
attends. He’s sassy as he lays out a picture of his life in bits and
pieces, acting tough. He was expelled for fighting (“Not without
reason!”) so he’s at the alternative Open Meadow School now, he
explains. His sister’s in juvie, he adds.
The bus hurtles by the new boutiques on N Mississippi, with their
bright window lights. The black girl pulls the bell for her stop, “You
be safe,” she tells the boy. “Yeah all right, girl,” he replies.
Farther north, at the Lombard Transit Center, the bus empties out and
fills up instantly again, mostly with people of color, many holding
small children and bags from Fred Meyer. The bus is quiet through
Kenton—as the light fades, the thin layer of grease speckled with
dog hair on my window becomes less translucent. By the end of the line,
it’s just the driver and me, heading full speed through the dark where
7-Elevens rather than boutiques shine out from the roadside. SM
Bus Line: #72
Weekday Daily Riders: 19,170
Route: Swan Island to Clackamas Town Center via
Killingsworth/82nd Ave
Cough.
You don’t notice it until the person next to you does it.
Cough.
But then you hear it further away, in one of the back seats. Then
the guy standing in front, talking to the driver. Soon you’re reading
the same sentence over and over again, interrupted each time someone
breaks the hum with a cough.
It comes from all over. The Asian man in the wheelchair, the small
child on her mother’s knee, the teenage couple squishing close to each
other. Even the homeless vet’s dog is coughing.
That’s one of the perils of riding the #72 in flu season (or any bus
line for that matter): You’re breathing everyone’s air.
On the morning of Friday, October 30, most people on the #72 are
headed to the Clackamas Town Center mall, cashiers and sales floor
workers in aprons and branded polo shirts sucking down cigarettes as
the bus rolls up to their stop, letting out that last exhale of tobacco
smoke after they’ve climbed aboard.
The #72 lurches down 82nd Avenue, past used car lots with garish
green price tags and a Mexican restaurant with a borderline-racist
mural of a man with a thin black moustache wearing a sombrero. When we
reach the mall, several riders have cigarettes in their lips before
they’ve gone 10 steps from the curb.
On the way back into Portland, a woman in a wheelchair boards the
bus, and the overweight driver helps strap the woman’s chair securely
into the bus. The driver, winded from her effort, has settled back into
her seat when the woman in the wheelchair noticed one of the restraint
straps was broken and asked to be unstrapped so she could wait for the
next #72. I could feel the bus shift as our driver struggled to undo
her own efforts and the woman in the wheelchair rolled down the ramp
and off the bus. She didn’t thank the driver. SEAN BRESLIN
Bus Line: #20
Workday Daily Riders: 10,650
Route: Gresham to Beaverton via Burnside, Portland City Center
I wait 25 minutes for the #20 on a Monday night, the minutes
scraping by as four lanes of traffic roar past me on Burnside and the
sun sets over Big Pink. Four men wait with me, including an old guy who
owns a bike I mentally refer to as “Crazy Socialist Bike” whenever I
spot it around town, completely covered in pro-peace stickers and
enough blinking front lights to decorate a Christmas tree.
When the #20 rolls up Burnside, dark has settled in and the bus is
completely empty—cleaner and quieter than I’ve ever seen it
before. The driver explains succinctly, “Other bus broke down.” Mostly
white business people get off and on for the next 60 blocks or so,
people with Sierra Club tote bags, the kind of people who keep to
themselves and listen to iPods. By 82nd Avenue, they and Socialist Bike
man are all gone and a big crowd of 10 people of all different races
boards the bus, many hauling Safeway bags. A woman in back launched
into a loud cell phone conversation—apparently somebody’s talking
shit who shouldn’t be? Curious. But the rest of the crowd keeps to
themselves as the bus stops and starts along past the new MAX line and
navigates the landscape of Asian restaurants and strip malls named
after the freeway. The Gresham Transit Center feels desolate. SM
Bus Line: #12
Weekday Daily Riders: 12,600
Route: Sherwood to Gresham via Barbur/Sandy Blvds
Tuesday afternoon on TriMet’s #12 bus line heading downtown on NE
Sandy is almost peaceful. I stretch, watch pho restaurants and tire
repair shops rolling by the window.
Wait. No. I take that all back. A man just sat down across the aisle
from me and seeping out from his pink headphones is music I can only
describe as the soldiers from the Nintendo game Contra shooting
spreadfire at a burlap sack full of chipmunks.
If the blaring music shattered my false sense of serenity, afternoon
traffic was kind enough to sweep the shards off the floor. It took
three light cycles to cross Grand, and another seven minutes to cross
the Burnside Bridge.
When the #12 hits Barbur, in Southwest Portland, it goes from nearly
empty to a human zoo. There, commuters heading home scramble for seats
next to chatty high school students who don’t dare put their cell
phones aside. Through Tigard, I am jostled, crowded, talked over, all
while being completely ignored (much like the issue of the
Mercury languishing on the bus floor).
In two hours, I travel all of 20 miles. Barbur, which turns into
99W, is Portland’s main connection to Tigard, Sherwood, and Washington
County. Commuters living in those areas aren’t going to get out of
their cars and onto mass transit if they need to dedicate four hours of
their day to riding the bus. Time is money, after all. So all the way
to the KFC and Target nestled at the end of the line deep in the heart
of suburbia, it’s just me, the teenagers, and the people who have no
other options. SB
Human soup pots..with poor air condtioning and circulation..You can squeeze more miles out of a vehicle..through any manner of cosmetic and mechanical efforts..but a repainted and refurbished 1989 bus has a million miles of wear on the chasis..the windows don’t open, it rattles and groans through town giving a harsh and noisy ride for riders and operators..
I would much rather bike in the rain than take the shame train.
I have ridden Tri Met for 10 years give or take……none of this comes as news to most people I would imagine. Unless you ride your fixie a couple miles to your barrista job or something of that nature this is something most are familiar with. Try Boston or New York some time………hell try Detroit! Yikes. I agree Tri Met needs improvement, but its public transportation so I wouldn’t expect the world. It is one of the safest Mass transit services I’ve used, and I’ve used a few. I think your article in fact points to the conclusion Portland is not all that ethnically diverse, aside for a few areas it is in fact rather segregated.
Shows what you know from your parent-funded, inner-SE haven, Breslin.
When I interned in City Hall and when I worked in Lair Hill shortly after graduating, I lived with my folks in Tualatin, biked to 99W and took the 12 bus to downtown regularly. Part of the issue with your report? It was in the middle of the afternoon. Those buses are packed, diverse and very interesting during commuting hours.
There’s also the 94x that runs that same route with fewer stops, which accounts for the lower ridership numbers for the 12.
Actually, i believe most residents ov Tigard/Sherwoood who work in Portland work in downtown or not far past. Tigard itself is only about 20 minutes from dt Portland. ONLY if they were going to work in Gresham might it take 4 hours for Tigard/Sherwood residents to get to & from work.
Otherwise, most ov what was said in this article is fairly spot-on. The 15 is my main bus now. But when i 1st moved to Portland, i lived on 157th & Division… yeah. Having to ride the 4 to most places wasn’t very much fun, especially when i was sitting next to a tweaker who hadn’t had a fix in awhile. The 72 sucks, hands down. Gresham might as well annex Outer-East Portland up to the 82nd parallel.
Smirk, you had me at “a stranger’s scrotum … resting like old pudding on the plastic seat.”
Its easy to say we would rather ride the bike in the rain but I do not see most people out there when its raining,but the bus always seems crowded.
“…music I can only describe as the soldiers from the Nintendo game Contra shooting spreadfire at a burlap sack full of chipmunks.” Classic.
OMG! I totes ride my fixie daily to my barista job!!! Eff the bus!!!!!!!!!
“The bus is quiet through Kenton—as the light fades, the thin layer of grease speckled with dog hair on my window becomes less translucent.”
I spit up my coffee reading this. Go GO Pulitzer half-ass attempt! BWAhahahahaha!
“Tigard itself is only about 20 minutes from dt Portland. “
20 is the new 30! http://www.trimet.org/schedules/w/t1012_1.…
Light rail is the “backbone” and buses are the “workhorses”? What does that even mean? The analogy makes no sense.
I live in SW Portland, near Garden Home, and have to take the bus… what astonishes me is not only the sparseness of the bus schedule, but how supremely difficult it is to get anywhere else in SW Portland. It is more convenient for me to go to many places in SE, NE and N Portland than it is to go to the WinCo 2.5 miles away from where I live.
This article was neither informative (to those that have actually *ridden* a bus in the last 15 years) or entertaining. I see no value in it whatsoever.
Didn’t Justin Sanders write a very similar article several years back?
Tri-met carried my ass around for almost 10 years, and almost never failed me. The two years I got full-pass stickers from a friend at the Wells Fargo building were my favorites – with a bicycle and a tri-met pass, you can go anywhere in the city so easily (I eman, yeah, you can with a bike, but when it’s 39 and raining, getting from downtown to 42nd & Powell is a long, annoying climb). I didnt drive for 8 years. It was bliss I tells ya.
Now I’m stuck with the MTA. Sure, it works, but they don’t let you put bikes on the busses, and the subways more or less tootle around under the city, and kinda happen to pick up passengers almost as an afterthought. I’ve spent hours stalled under midtown Manhattan, wondering if the F train will ever move again, being assured of nothing by the automated announcements.
I found this article to be racist, elitist, and completely void of any useful information. Basically, I found out the buses get crowded, it can sometimes be messy, and that a diverse group of people ride them – thankfully the writers conveyed this in a particularly snarky tone as though they are somehow above riding the bus on a normal day. Fuck both of you, really. I sold my car after moving to Portland when I found out how all-emcompassing and useful the bus system is. Aside from the occassional annoyances of dealing with the public in general (ever been on a busy sidewalk? Or the mall during the holiday season??) the bus system here is incredible and reaches to just about every corner of the Portland metro area. It gets crowded during commuting hours – NO SHIT! It gets dirty sometimes- NO SHIT! It rains a lot here and people track whatever is on the street in with them. The overall tone of the article (“The Horror! The Horror!” REALLY??) conveyed that the bus is a melting pot full of disease, noise, time delays, and minorities. It’s no wonder that a copy of the Mercury lay languishing on the floor of bus line #12 – it’s full of shitty articles with no journalistic value that insult services and programs that are intensely valuable for Portlanders from all walks of life.
A list of things I’ve seen on the bus (mostly the 4):
A dildo rolling around the front, finally resting at the feet of an unsuspecting elderly woman. Teenagers snicker, thinking its hers (its not, the dildo was there before she got on the bus).
Feces smeared on the wall.
Lice climbing the wall.
Blood smeared all over the seat (they had to call a hazmat team and kicked us all off).
A mouse running around the front, and up the pant leg of a teenager. He was quite surprised.
Of course, there’s been several drunk people wetting their pants or vomiting, but one time I was “lucky” enough to see someone do both at once.
Oh, there was also the time I saw a woman pick up another woman and throw her over two seats in the back. Yeah…the driver kicked both off without even calling the cops.
My bus rides are way more pedestrian. The most interesting experience I’ve had was on the MAX, by Skidmore fountain. A young guy standing no more than 3 feet from the train, facing us, with his cock out. Then he breaks into a big smile and starts urinating. This was around 9 am.
“A list of things I’ve seen on the bus (mostly the 4):
A dildo rolling around the front, finally resting at the feet of an unsuspecting elderly woman. Teenagers snicker, thinking its hers (its not, the dildo was there before she got on the bus).
Feces smeared on the wall.
Lice climbing the wall.
Blood smeared all over the seat (they had to call a hazmat team and kicked us all off).
A mouse running around the front, and up the pant leg of a teenager. He was quite surprised.
Of course, there’s been several drunk people wetting their pants or vomiting, but one time I was “lucky” enough to see someone do both at once.
Oh, there was also the time I saw a woman pick up another woman and throw her over two seats in the back. Yeah…the driver kicked both off without even calling the cops.”
Jesus Edwartica, when the HEll did YOU ride that bus?! I rode the 4 for nearly two years & i never saw ANY of that!
DamosA
Well, late at night (especially on a Saturday) seem to be the times when I see the peeing and puking. The rest usually happen late afternoon, early evening for some odd reason – and only seem to happen once (save for the poo and the lice – ick). I kind of wish the dildo, and even the mouse would happen again. That was pretty darned entertaining.
Nice article!
Johana,
Not everyone rides the bus, just like not everyone should be a journalist — especially those who call people racist and elitist without anything to back it up.
I take the max everyday ’cause its faster than the bus from nw 23rd to Hillsboro.
And the max is not any less glamorous as the bus.
I’ve seen old man clipping his toe nails to ADD children blocking the autistic man trying to exit the train.
The article is a very interesting read, thank you.
Slightly off-topic…
… but i find it annoying that most employers would classify “reliable transportation” as having a car, considering personal vehicles are hardly MORE reliable than public transit.
Say what you will, but the buses DO make their mark most times. MAX is very efficient. Cars break down, get flats. Bikes are awesome.
I think the best thing is if people used multiple modes of getting around.