Other Notable Blogs

Cafe Unknown
Travel, History and Portland Oregon by Dan Haneckow

Jack Bog's Blog
By Jack Bogdanski of Portland, Oregon. (Like he needs any other introduction by now? -- A.B.C.)

For Portlanders Only
"Why buy a mattress anywhere else?"

Good Stuff NW
Featuring stuff that is good in the NW

LOST Magazine
LOST Magazine is an online monthly magazine that combines elements of many other literary, online, and national magazines with a singular mission--to reclaim in writing lost people, places, and things.

Mapes on Politics
Way West of the Beltway

Outside Is America
A journal about photography, roadtrips, trains and life, with occasional detours into movies, baseball, music, family and more.

The Photographers' Railroad Page
Good photos usually have good stories to go with them.... The goal of The Photographers' Railroad Page is to provide an outlet for top quality photographs and their story.

Portland Food & Drink
Throwing Ourselves on the Grenade of Bad Food to Save You

Portland Transport Blog
A Conversation About Access & Mobility in the Portland/Vancouver Region

PowellsBooks.Blog
Authors, readers, critics, media -- and booksellers

Rambling West
The musings of a farmer with a typewriter and camera

Stumptown Confidential
Documenting Portland, Oregon architecture, history, and culture through photos, postcards, and words.

The Unauthorized Observer
Observations on faith, photography, trains, baseball, the city where I live (Fullerton, Calif.), anything that I find funny (a lot of things) or irritating (some things) and various incidents involving friends and family.

Under the Weather
...the open road, fatherhood, family life, music, railroads, photography, popular and unpopular culture, sex, violence, religion, the oppression of consumerism and capitalism and the general bullshit that makes up modern life.

Urban Planning Overlord
A blog to counter the myths, lies, and demagoguery others use against sound city planning to further their own ends, fair and foul - but also to urge the profession itself to pull back from the occasional wretched PC exces.

VanPortlander
Living in Vancouver; working in Portland. I have some thoughts.

Whiskey, Texas
...life and experiences in Texas and the Southwest. Recurring themes: Photography, railroads, fading ads / ghost signs, fallen-flag railroad logos, boxcars, bicycling, Texas music, pop culture, sports, road trips, literature, kids and family.

World Scott
The Travel Writing and Photography of Scott Lothes

Blegs & Bargains

 Amazon Book Wishlist

 B&H Wishlist

 My eBay Listings

 Powell's Books Wishlist

Sunday, January 13, 2008

In response to security concerns about TriMet, the agency is holding hearings on reducing the hours of Fareless Square.

How reducing hours on downtown's Fareless Square will improve safety in Gresham, where most of the violence on the system occurs, is beyond me. Here is the Trib's story on the matter.

The hearings are this Wednesday, the 16th, one near Lloyd Center and one downtown. (See here for details).

Personally I don't see how this is going to help things at all. The majority of the crime is not downtown, but at the extremities of the system, especially Gresham. What is needed is more enforcement, not an inconveniencing of non-criminal users.

Further, the downtown area is a site of numerous bars, clubs, & entertainment venues. It seems smart to leave Fareless Square operating all evening, allowing less-than-sober (but law abiding) Portlanders to get around downtown without being behind a wheel.

And meanwhile, enforcing the new fare restrictions will require yet more fare inspectors and transit police downtown, when where they are needed, once again, is in places like Gresham and to a lesser extent Hillsboro.

If you can't make the meetings, you can send written testimony by mail to:
TriMet-MK2
4012 SE 17th Ave
Portland, OR 97202

You can also submit comments via email at comments@trimet.org . The deadline for both is 5 PM, Thursday, February 21st.

Labels: Civics, Portland, Public Policy, Transportation

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