Local bike-ped-transit news magazine Portland Afoot has dug into the numbers on TriMet’s bus routes and determined which lines are the most and least reliable.
Here’s the rundown of 2012 Portland bus rankings:
MOST FREQUENT: The 72-Killingsworth, with 218 trips, followed by the 4-Division, with 174 trips.
LEAST FREQUENT: SW Portland’s 55-Hamilton has only four trips per weekday and the 18-Hillside has only five.
MOST RELIABLE: TriMet records how often buses “bunch” together on a route, arriving one right after the other, which means one bus is running late. Of the “frequent service” buses, the most on-time lines are the 57-TV Highway and the 75-Cesar Chavez.
LEAST RELIABLE: Of the frequent service buses, the most frequent are also the least on-time, with the 72 buses “bunching up” 28 percent of the time and the 4 line bunching up 26 percent of the time.
MOST CROWDED: The 35-Macadam takes the prize, for being “above capacity” on 11 percent of trips.
I take the 15 every day. For me, it’s fine going downtown b/c I live on 90th and I’m the first one on. By the time it gets downtown it’s pretty full. But evening rush hour is when it’s really crowded. You know they need to run more busses when every bus from 5-7 is over capacity and it’s standing room only.
While I think these statistics are sort of neat, they don’t really go into how difficult Trimet has made it to move around since moving some bus routes. For example, they took the 6 off of Lombard because it makes no sense really to have 3 bus lines running up the same road. Great, but to transfer from the 75 to the 6 to get on the bus that services MLK now oftentimes includes wait times of up to 20 minutes. Sort of ridiculous.
And now, as if riding wasn’t stressful enough, we have to worry about John McAfee sitting next to us on the bus.
@ Todd:
no way will McAfee be on a bus — most of the women i see riding are adults.
Yeah, the 15 often has to turn away passengers in the morning closer to downtown, and in the evening before it leaves downtown. I didn’t think it was affected by the service cuts, but I swear three months ago it wasn’t this bad in the mornings.
Yeah, it’s pretty lousy when you’re waiting up to 20 minutes on a “frequent service” line, only for two (sometimes three) buses to show up back-to-back. The #72 is often guilty of this, especially in the morning.
The 8 up to OHSU is covered in homeless vets and full of urine. Or vice-versa.
USA! USA!
The 71 in the morning is a fucking joke. It’s always running behind, which makes the connection to the 4 even more frustrating (thanks for making me late to work all the time).
Finally got some decent winter riding gear and am now biking to work. The bus can suck it.
the 15 is fine until it gets to SE 23rd when all the methadone patient get on board and loudly share the crack-iest of crack tales amongst each other.
76, 33 and 15 all suck.
Naw, the addicts on the 15 add a bit of color to my morning commute. I actually kind of like it. They are respectful for the most part.