EMPLOYEES AT a NE Columbia music distribution center are
demanding safety improvements on the trail they use to walk from the
bus stop to their work.
Two years ago, CD Baby Human Resources Director Craig Hennecke
bought yearly TriMet bus passes for all the company’s 100 employees, in
an environmentally friendly effort to discourage them from driving.
“We also encourage our employees to bike to work,” he says. “But
Columbia Boulevard is a pretty tough commute for a biker, with all the
traffic and broken glass in the bike lanes.”
As a result, many employees take the bus. The #86 stops right
outside the company’s warehouses at NE 80th and Columbia, but it has
infrequent service. Since many employees work later shifts, they take
the #72 bus, which stops a couple blocks away at NE 82nd and
Killingsworth—but they have to run the gauntlet of a 200-yard
trail along the edge of NE 82nd, to get back and forth from NE
Columbia.
“The city that works?” says Alessandra Silver, who works in customer
service for the company. “Try the city that has to walk down a trail
that’s littered with used condoms, dodge scary people, and climb over a
train to get to work. It might be more accurate.”
A walk up the trail last Friday, March 7, found it paved but uneven,
littered with empty beer cans and spirit bottles, soggy pornography,
and indeed, at least one used orange condom. There is no lighting on
the path, which ends with a climb over railroad tracks, and several
workers at the small business say they’ve had bad experiences on the
trail.
“One night there was this group of three or four guys all drinking,
and one of them started walking in our direction with a five-inch knife
in his hand,” says employee Kevin Spafford. “It was pretty scary.”
Spafford also saw a man defecating where he stood, with his trousers
around his ankles.
“I saw a man with his pants round his knees, masturbating in broad
daylight one afternoon last September,” says shipping clerk Stephanie
LeMieux, who now braves the bike ride up Columbia. “And then and there
I decided I was done with the trail, for a while.”
Another female employee used to run down the trail screaming, hoping
to ward off potential attackers. The trail also serves as a route to
work for employees from the Ramada Inn, the Holiday Inn, and the
Radisson Hotel, which are all based in the industrial park on NE 80th
and Columbia.
CD Baby employee Lindsey Collins has had enough. Collins, who
recently had to start riding the bus, wrote an email to TriMet on
February 1 entitled “Where to find me dead.”
“I’m a 23-year-old 110-pound woman,” she wrote. “I have to walk what
we here call The Bum Trail, others simply call it a possible Rape
Trail.”
Collins pleaded with TriMet to increase the frequency of the #86
route so she could avoid the trail, or at least to light the trail
better. She heard back via email from TriMet representative Grant Hein
on February 7, saying they’re not responsible for “problems outside the
confines of our vehicles and property.”
Hein also advised her to try taking the #86 bus—the one that
runs every 30 minutes and stops at 5 pm.
“They just brushed us off,” says Ryan Gross, who works with Collins.
“It’s not so much the city’s problem as it is that we’re the customers
of TriMet, and they don’t want to take responsibility for our safety.
The city’s not the one dropping off its customers on NE
Killingsworth.”
TriMet spokeswoman Mary Fetsch says the agency is making contact
with the city to see about improving the walkway, and looking at
trip-by-trip ridership on the #86 to assess ridership potential for
more trips.
Meanwhile, after the Mercury contacted the city about the
issue on Monday, March 10, Commissioner Sam Adams’ public advocate for
transportation issues, Cevero Gonzalez, has been looking into it.
Gonzalez has promised Hennecke at CD Baby that he’ll talk to his
contacts at TriMet about increasing service on the #86 route, and get
the bike lane on Columbia Boulevard swept of glass so that it is less
treacherous for bike commuters. Unfortunately, the Oregon Department of
Transportation (ODOT) owns the trail itself, says Gonzalez, and they
will have to investigate the matter for themselves.
“That cement area is actually a drainage ditch, not a pathway, which
obviously presents a safety issue,” says ODOT spokesperson Christine
Miles. “This is the first we have heard of the issue and we
are
going to look into it and see what can be done.”