The Addendum "I tried to write shorter ~Mark Twain
route99west.com/addendum
is an occasional journal of Oregon, from arts and books to public policy & transportation.
All content © 2006- by Alexander B. Craghead, except where otherwise noted.
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Book Reviews
Review: Approaching Nowhere
Housekeeping Note
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Bachelor's Special #1: Instant Noodles Review
Week in Review... in review.
Week in Review, Vol. XI
January 2005
July 2005
January 2006
February 2006
August 2006
September 2006
November 2006
January 2007
April 2007
May 2007
June 2007
July 2007
October 2007
November 2007
December 2007
January 2008
February 2008
March 2008
April 2008
July 2008
August 2008
September 2008
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
RailPixCritic
One person's musings on railroad photography, focusing on discussions of specific images or groups of same
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, August 24, 2008
Housekeeping Note
A quick thanks for a shout-out from RailPixCritic, a blog on railroad photography I had not yet encountered. I've added them to the links list to the left. He's got some interesting posts, I encourage anyone interested in railroad or transportation photography to check them out. Labels: Blogging, Photography, Railroads, Transportation
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Friday, August 22, 2008
Review: The Call of Trains: Railroad Photographs by Jim Shaughnessy
Labels: Art, Book Reviews, Books, New Books, Photography, Railroads, Transportation
The Call of Trains: Railroad Photographs by Jim Shaughnessy
Photographs by Jim Shaughnessy with text by Jeff Brouws. W. W. Norton, 500 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10110; http://www.wwnorton.com/; 12.1 x 10.9 x 1 in; hardbound; 224 pages, 323 duotone b/w photos, 1 illustration; $65.00
Sequels are always challenging projects to undertake. 2004 saw Jeff Brouws, erudite photography scholar and a photographer in his own right, bring us the definitive volume on the definitive railroad photographer, Richard Steinheimer. Brouws gave us a view of "Stein" through an academic's lens; the result was a book that redefined railroad photography. Now in 2008, Brouws has brought us a new book in the same format and with the same approach: The Call of Trains: Railroad Photographs by Jim Shaughnessy. The question is, does it work this time?
The natural pace of sequels inevitably sets up comparisons between this book and the previous book on "Stein". This may or may not be fair to Shaughnessy, as it seems to beg the question of "is Shaughnessy as good as Stein"? The comparison may be further heightened by the broad similarity between the titles as well: one wonders if Brouws could have found a title that didn't mimic that of the Stein book.
A better question may be, is Shaughnessy's work worth the same level of intellectual exploration as Steinheimer? Brouws certainly thinks so. He gives us a rather long essay (22 pages) about Shaughnessy, revealing to us his origins and vignettes of his development as a railroad photographer. Brouws attempts to take this further, with numerous side trips into the broader world of railroad photography. At one point, for example, he debates whether photographers such as Robert Frank or Walker Evans influenced railroad photography, but then notes that Shaughnessy was not influenced by them. Brouws also takes an extended textual detour to describe the "Milwaukee School", a term he has coined to describe the prevailing 20th century railroad photography style as popularized by the iconic TRAINS Magazine. Yet even here the feeling is that of trying too hard: can one really lump photojournalists like Ted Benson and Richard Steinheimmer into the same stylistic camp as traditionalists such as Phil Hastings or gimmick-artists like O. Winston Link? The result is an introduction that feels overly long and unfocused, as if Brouws wanted to write a piece on the development of railroad photography itself, rather than a coherent narrative about Shaughnessy.
Following the introduction comes the bulk of the book, the photographs themselves. Most of the photographs are printed one to a page with white margins, and in fact only one image is printed full bleed. Unlike Brouws' previous work on Steinheimer, all the plates are displayed against a white page. Few images are shown double truck, with a significant handful being presented across the gutter of the book and partway onto a second, mostly white page. Overall, most of the images laying across the gutter survive the experience.
The images that Brouws has selected greatly support portions of his "Milwaukee School" thesis from the introduction, being on average more conventional in nature and focusing more on documenting things and places over experiences. It is as if Brouws is holding up Shaugnessy as a pinnacle example of what was the mainstream railroad photography style of the 20th century. The book is also distinctively of its region: has Shaughnessy's style absorbed what it means to be in New England and upstate New York, or do those of us who call ourselves railroad photographers simply associate the region so much with his photos that the two are no longer separable?
The most memorable photographs in The Call of Trains are the images containing the people who lived with and made the railroads. An elderly station agent, his head as "old and weary" as his employer, the New York, Ontario and Western. A Nickel Plate Road man, about to hoop up orders to an oncoming train. A Boston and Maine laborer washing the windows of a classic streamlined diesel locomotive in the mid-fifties. Best of all of these, perhaps, is Plate 16, an image taken in 1961 in Watervliet, New York. It is dark, and a switchman of the Delware and Hudson Railroad, electric lantern in one hand, is throwing a switch in a yard, his body lit up presumably by the headlights of his train. It is crisp, and one can almost feel the chill misty air; it is a scene of everyday railroading that is as real today as it was when it was shot. Interestingly, Lucius Beebe was so attracted to the image that he used it on a book about the SP, intentionally misidentifying the railroad and location of the shot.
Interspersed with these human-centered photos are bucolic panoramas, gritty scenes of fading New England industry, and dramatic night scenes. Strangely, though, I find that one of the least typical images of the collection is the finest, Plate 64. The photograph is uncharacteristically stark for a Shaughnessy piece, with a plain sky, minimal scenery, and an empty foreground. We look straight on the side of a train, a single diesel locomotive hauling a single car down the track in late 1980s rural New York state. Little traffic, no people visible, no industry or life; if plate 16 had a timeless quality to it, plate 64 was one of the few images I have ever seen to have captured so well how much the railroad world had changed.
Following the plates, we are treated to a two page essay by the photographer himself. Shaughnessy recounts for us a series of memories, including an intriguing one of assembling a story on a day in a life of a hostler on the D&H in 1957 that strangely was never published, and an amusing anecdote about a railfan tradition, fun with rental cars. The stories are charming, and if any fault could be had with them, it's that there aren't enough of them. After Shaughnessy's too-brief afterward comes a series of extended captions for each of the plates in the book, and the final plate, plate 143.
Overall, the book that Brouws gives us is a valuable insight into a photographer who arguably represents the best of mainstream railroad photography from the last century. Although The Call of Trains could be faulted for over-ambition, the quality of both the content and the reproduction makes the book a standout. Anyone who is interested in the progress of railroad photography or who has an interest in the railroads of the New England region would be well served to purchase this book.
The Call of Trains: Railroad Photographs by Jim Shaughnessy will be released in November 2008, and will be available for purchase from Powell's Books as well as from Amazon.com.
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Friday, February 15, 2008
Week in Review, Vol. X
First up this week: the saga of railroad service in Southern Oregon continued this week. RailAmerica, owner of the Central Oregon & Pacific, sent a response back to Oregon Governor Ted Kulongoski stating that the company would undertake repairs to the currently shuttered Coos Bay line on its own dime. The hitch? The railroad conglomerate wants a commitment from the state that they will receive assistance for both repair costs and operating expenses on the route. Labels: Food, Portland History, Public Policy, Railroads, Transportation, Week in Review
The Governor wasted no time crafting a response, which said in no uncertain terms "no deal". As it sits now, it appears the state is still on track to pursue a forced transfer of the line to public ownership. That said, the fact that RailAmerica was willing to change their proposal at all suggests to this observer that they have "blinked", and can likely be moved further with the right amount of pressure.
The Seattle Times printed an op-ed this week highlighting the conundrum freight transportation is in: it's just not that sexy."Interestingly enough, the same representatives who want tax dollars to supplement ferry service to Vashon and Maury islands are not arguing that Puget Sound would be harmed by increasing ferry traffic.
In short, passenger services are considered worthy projects, while freight mobility gets the short shrift. Yet freight mobility is often responsible for vast amounts of the economy, and improvements there can make huge impacts on pollution and congestion.
These representatives also do not seem to be taking into account that transporting sand and gravel by barge, instead of by truck, saves fuel, reduces heavy truck traffic on area roads, reduces greenhouse-gas emissions and helps keep down the cost of state-(taxpayer-)funded transportation projects that benefit the entire region. One average barge keeps 186 heavy trucks and trailers off the road."
Two industrial stories of note this week. First up, the Willamette Week has a neat story on Oregon City's Blue Heron Paper. The company is one of the few independent paper companies left in the region. Less satisfying news comes via the Statesman Journal, who notes that the old Steinfeld Pickles plant is closing. Wonder where the pickles are made now?
Odd news roundup: the Albany Fire Department has gone retro; Stumptown Confidential brings us mod churches; LEGO hits the classroom; and a postcard mailed in 1929 arrives at last.
A quick hat-tip to VanPortlander for pointing out this tour of Interstate Avenue's neon. Cool stuff.
Lastly, a big loud amen to Katlheen Bauer over at Good Stuff NW for her post on foodie terminology addiction:"Then this morning I'm reading a seemingly harmless Valentines Day article in the NYT about couples who have different food preferences, and one woman says that she's been able to tolerate her husband's occasional need for animal flesh because she's not a "vegangelical." What?"
Kathleen, don't tell me you haven't heard about vegansexuality yet?
On that very sketchy note, I think I should leave now, quietly!
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Saturday, February 9, 2008
Week in Review, Vol. IX
Thanks to the good old viral hokey-pokey, this installment of Week in Review is a tad late. It seems everybody has caught it, or some variant of it, this week. Ugh. I'm still recovering but I'm at least functional again. I also managed to donate a significant amount of money to the "keep Ricola making cough-drops" fund. Thank you, Switzerland! Labels: Civics, Photography, Portland, Public Policy, Publishing, Railroads, Transportation, Week in Review
A lot of streetcar noise this week. Portland Transport on Monday broke news that the new loop for the Eastside had made the President's budget. Metro is now seeking public comment on the project.
The AP story, however, has not gone down well with some:"But the federal agency said that the Portland transit agency, TriMet, has to develop better ridership models and show the benefits of the streetcar system to get past the last hurdle for funding in 2009."
The Portland Streetcar, Inc., is not a division or affiliation of TriMet. Although TriMet has handled making federal funding applications for them, they are not responsible for planning decisions on the streetcar.
Meanwhile I can't help but feel that the grand expansionist visions of the streetcar system are eventually going to come into direct conflict with TriMet's extensive bus system. Why would the agency view streetcars on their bus routes, taking their riders and their fares, with anything other than alarm and anger? It makes no sense to build a competing system in the city; neither TriMet nor PSI will be healthier for it.
The remaining transportation roundup jumps all over the place. Also on Monday, a MAX train struck a TriMet bus downtown. Thankfully there were only minor injuries to one person on the bus, and no injuries to anyone else.
On Tuesday the Oregonian published a story on the design of the Columbia Crossing project. The story laments how plain the new bridge will be. At $4.2 billion, I'm not sure if all this debate will be moot anyway.
On Wednesday the Roseburg News Review put up a rather amusing Op-Ed on the closure of the Central Oregon & Pacific's Coos Bay line. The name "Snidely Whiplash" is used. Why do I feel that I need the voice of Edward Everett Horton to read the story out loud?
Friday brought an amusing story in the Big O about the TriMet hearings in Salem."One senator read a constituent's e-mail message.... [suggesting] replacing MAX with express buses that have drivers who can monitor riders."
It's nice to see the politicos are now being blatant asses by reading ludicrous comments such as that. After investing how many hundreds of millions -- its probably over a billion -- in federal and state funds, we should abandon our investment and convert back to buses? All so we can have a false appearance of safety? Or, well, you know, we could add, uh... enforcement?
Lastly, my friend Dan the history man should be happy to see that the Figo House will be saved after all.
A few other odds and ends of news. The Seattle P-I will have to treat online reporters the same as paper ones, which amounts to a victory for their unionized workers. Also in the Emerald City, some artists have created custom audio tours of the Seattle Art Museum. I wonder if we could do one for a walking tour of Portland? And in an "only in Portland" story, we now have a Vegan stripper joint.
In the photography world, Whiskey Texas has a lot of new stuff. Grain elevators, buZ blurr, and anti-sagging-pants billboards. Strange combinations, Wes.
There's also another essay up from Martin Burwash. Nice stuff as always.
That's all for now. Take care, folks, and if you catch what I've got, I recommend a lot of green tea and miso soup.
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Thursday, January 31, 2008
Week in Review, Vol. VIII
There's been a lot of infrastructure news this week. First up, Seattle's Sound Transit might get an expanded authority to oversee general road projects in the region. I'm not sure if this idea is a boon of synergy or a monopolistic boondoggle. Labels: Automobiles, Food, Media, Photography, Public Policy, Railroads, Technology, Transportation
Rail has been front and center in a lot of the news. In Oregon, Governor Kulongowski has told the Central Oregon and Pacific that there will be no discussion of helping out with maintenance or rehabilitation costs unless the company reopens the Coos Bay line first. (Good for Ted!) Meanwhile, the Port of Tillamook Bay's coastal line has until February 7th to get their FEMA request in. I don't know if this means they need their 25% share by then, or just a pledge towards it, or what, but I can hear a loud ticking reminiscent of the intro to 60 Minutes. Lastly, a proposal to restore the Amtrak Pioneer continues to drag along.
Then there's the continuing saga of the bridges. Of note: Salem wants $680 million for a new one, while the Portland metro area's new Columbia River crossing just may not pencil out.
At the rate that infrastructure costs are climbing, we'd either better start flooding the market with steel to bring prices down, or face the possibility of reduced weight capacities and a reduced flow of people and commerce.
Meanwhile developments in cellulosic ethanol may make this plan obsolete before it's finished. Hat tip to Bojack.
In related auto news, Autoblog gets a first drive of the Tesla, and reports that speed bumps aren't green! Finally, a PC reason to get rid of those bone-shakers!
Oh, and one more via Autoblog: the strangest cooking contraption ever. If George Foreman endorses it, watch out America.
Lastly, news that Jaguar may be planning a hard-core sportscar. I'm drooling already.
Lewis County was hit pretty hard by the flooding on December 5th. Among the victims of the rising waters was the Black Sheep Creamery. Irony of ironies, while the local residents hand-wring over the reopening of the local Wal-Mart, the creamery is relying on rebuild money from a fundraiser in -- guess where? -- Portland.
Am I the only one who finds it strange that it's the cities of the region that may be the salvation of small family farms?
Speaking of food, Good Stuff NW reports of the rebirth of a local grocery store. My only question, can I have one in my neighborhood? Please?
And in Seattle, things aren't all they are cracked up to be. Says Portland Food & Drink's "Food Dude", "No wonder our washed up restaurateurs are ending up in Seattle."
Ouch.
Before I go, a two photographic notables around the web this week include a photo essay by Martin Burwash the decline of rural Washington, and a nice collection of images from Elrond Lawrence on the vintage signs of Salinas. Love the neon, El.
Take care, all.
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Friday, January 25, 2008
Four from the Gorge
I've always been a bit of a procrastinator, and developing film is no exception for me. I tend to let rolls pile up until I realize I'm nearing a three-figure processing bill, and only then do I hit the lab. It could be better if I had lab space at home, but laziness combined with a lack of time tend to prevent me from getting there. Instead the rolls fill the fridge and eventually I end up taking them to Blue Moon. Such an event happened this week. Labels: Art, Photography, Railroads, Transportation
I'm still sorting through the images, but here are four, all from May in the Columbia River Gorge. 
The Portland section of Amtrak's storied Empire Builder heads west towards Portland in the morning light, east of Goodnoe, WA.
Goodnoe, WA. An eastbound BNSF Railway stack train heads through the scrub and gloom of mid-day.
A westbound BNSF Railway manifest freight at Maryhill, WA. 
Near Lyle, WA, an eastbound manifest passes by in rather grim afternoon light.
The versatility of the black-and-white film once more impressed me. The days these were shot was not all that blessed by weather, and I hadn't expected any images to turn out as well as these. None of them break the bank in any compositional way, but I think they all turned out solid. I would like to hand-print a few, however. I miss the darkroom so much....
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Thursday, January 24, 2008
Week in Review, Vol. VII
Well can anyone remember a stretch of cold weather thats lasted as long as this? Sure, we've had colder winters, and more snow, and more ice. However, I cannot recall a winter in my (relatively short) lifetime thats been as cold for as long. It's enough to make me want to stock up on things like scarves, gloves, and flannel-lined pants. What is this... Ohio? Labels: Art, Automobiles, Books, Civics, Photography, Portland, Public Policy, Railroads, Transportation, Week in Review
Let's dig right into the big stuff: OHSU. Following a ruling that removed indemnification for OHSU employees, the educational hospital announced closures and major service cuts.
Local blogger extraordinaire Jack Bogdanski doesn't buy it, and he's not alone. Big O columnist Steve Duin more-or-less agrees.
The TriMet security saga continues. Following a rather botched public hearing on their proposal to reduce Fareless Square hours of operation, the agency withdrew the plan. (See the Trib's take here).
Of course the proposal is not quite dead yet. Instead it's going to be "studied" more. Some, however, are of the opinion that the supposed link between farebox recovery and violent crime is a farce.
I must agree. The crime problem on TriMet is real, but it's more widespread than MAX and it's not primarily downtown!!. Indeed I had a discussion with a friend at one of the major newspapers in town, and he did a bit of research on the MAX attacks. Guess what? Most of the criminals involved in the crimes lived within 1-2 miles of where the crimes had been committed.
We need to have a serious discussion about security -- system-wide and in all modes -- not about Fareless Square. This isn't to say we won't be looking at fares as part of a solution, after all security must be funded, and costs are not going down for the bus system. But our first concern needs to be security personnel on the ground, and probably station redesigns to eliminate security hazards like brick walls people can hide behind.
TriMet's Mary Fetsch on today's Lars Larson show has mentioned that the agency is re-adjusting its security to put security officers on transit vehicles at least 75% of the time. Yet the agency is still proposing that Fareless Square's elimination is a tool towards increasing security. To be fair, she did mention the disconnect with the Fareless proposal and the large number of incidents occurring in Gresham.
Sam Adam's street maintenance plan won't be split into three proposals after all. The reason offered: advice of legal counsel to the City. Willamette Week, however, reports a different take: it's all about a deal with the Oregon Petroleum Association that gives them a lower rate."They didn't get what they wanted, but we compromised on their rate," Adams said.... "Now that they've agreed not to pursue a referral, I feel comfortable moving forward with one ordinance," said Adams, who's running for mayor."
Gotta love Portland politics.
Meanwhile, the Columbia River Crossing is in the midst of proposing a toll for the new Interstate 5 bridge. (Hat tip to Portland Transport).
I am actually, amazingly, in favor of tolling on freeways. However, I can't see how tolling just this bridge will work. And I am highly skeptical of all these electronic tolling systems. One of the points of this project was supposed to be to remove an alleged choke-point on I-5. As the project proceeds further and further, it's becoming more and more apparent that the new bridge will itself be a choke point, and a highly overpriced one at that.
I think we have now reached the point where the law of diminishing returns kicks in. Lets just maintain the current, perfectly safe bridge, and forget it. I won't dare mention the idea of a supplemental bridge cutting across Sauvie's Island to connect Washington County to Clark County, of course....
Rounding out the news, the Daily Astorian has an update on the Port of Tillamook Bay Railroad. The line, which links rural Tillamook with national markets, experienced major damage during early December 2007, and remains out of service. Reading the tea leaves, it's really starting to look like the Tillamook Branch may be gone for good.
This is a major challenge for how the state addresses the needs of low-volume rural areas. If the rail line is not rebuilt, it will have a major impact on Tillamook County's economy. And if the state does not provide some alternate solution, it will be telling rural areas across Oregon that they are not a priority in Salem -- a mixed message at a time when ODOT is promoting the Connect Oregon project.
I have a soft spot for British automobiles, having grown up in the back seat of a 1959 Triumph TR3. Thus the future of the Jaguar marquee has been of great interest, which is why this report about difficulties between current owner Ford and future owner Tata Motors is slightly disturbing. Lets hope this doesn't mean the deal falls off.
Strange things amuse me, and perhaps this is too obscure. However, it appears Union Pacific does have a sense of humor about itself.
Heh.
Once upon a time in Public-Broadcasting-Land, there was a show called Masterpiece Theater. It was a variety drama show, much like the old "Carnation Milk Presents" shows that aired on broadcast television in the U.S. throughout the '50s. (In fact, oil giant Mobile used to sponsor Masterpiece, and it was known as "Mobile Masterpiece Theater"). Each week the host -- first Alistair Cook, later New York Times columnist Russell Baker -- would introduce a classic work of literature (and occasionally an original screenplay) that had been made into a film. In some ways this series was the ultimate intellectual feather-in-the-cap for PBS.
Apparently that's not so much the case anymore. PBS has re-branded the series as "Masterpiece Classics" -- a case of painfully obvious duplicative phrasing if ever there was one -- and has replaced Baker with actress Gillian Anderson. The move is reminiscent of NBC's recent decision to use the actor Micheal Douglas as voice talent for the NBC Nightly News. As the Ellen & Jim blog put it:"The appearance and demeanor of the introducer, Gillian Anderson, her talks and inset commercials (if we needed more evidence) show how little respect the PBS stations now have for their audience. Their original goal which was to have an alternative place for intelligent talk and decent art. Anderson is made up grotesquely; she leers at the audience; I expect she knows little of Austen for real or the 18th century, but the people who wrote the speeches clearly also know little. I didn’t stay for her closing one -- it actually comes after a commercial. PBS now puts commercials inside their shows. They assume the audience will sit through the commercial for the sake of watching and listening to this woman again."
Ouch.
They're also getting heat for having cut up the recent Jane Austen film adaptations so much to have made a joke of the original material. (Hat tip via the Chronicle Blog).
Kevin Scanlon sends along notice of an interview on Public Radio International's Studio 360 with the photographer David Plowden. Plowden has recently published a retrospective book titled David Plowden: Vanishing Point: Fifty Years of Photography. (I will be reviewing it sometime next week). Studio 360 took the time to visit with Plowden in New York and has made their interview available in audio format. The interview is about 12 minutes long, and in it you can hear Plowden's sense of wonder and personal curiosity shining through. For an admirer of Plowden's work, I found the interview informative and inspiring:
In addition to the main interview, Studio 360 has made available a 4-minute bonus interview with Plowden on his fascination with bridges:
If the embedded players do not work for you, the interviews are available as downloadable .mp3 formats from their issue archive page. (It's on the right).
One last note before I go. While we're discussing photography, Martin Burwash has another photo essay up. Check it out.
Have a great weekend, and look for some book reviews before the next Week in Review.
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Thursday, January 10, 2008
Week in Review, Vol. V
Reason has an interesting review up of Andrew Keen's Cult of the Amateur. An interesting topic, and I'm not sure I wholly agree with Keen, but I am sympathetic to many points he makes. Labels: Blogging, Book Reviews, Books, Civics, Media, Photography, Portland, Public Policy, Railroads, Transportation, Week in Review
And yes, I'm aware of the hypocrisy of saying that on a blog.
Speaking of book reviews, there's been a lot of bally-hoo about their decline in recent memory. You know the drill, the usual "the Internet killed the radio star" schtick. There's definitely a bit of truth to it, although I wouldn't go shouting about the demise of the book just yet.
Still, I must admit that the concern inspired me to begin adding book reviews to the Addendum.
Of course, as a freelancer, book reviews can be a major pain. Getting review copies is difficult, and I just plain can't afford to buy every book I want to review. On the other hand, I'm a confirmed book-a-holic. End result? Most of my reviews will be of books going into my library anyway. This includes both new and out-of-print, used books, but hey, we live in the state that gave the world Powell's Books, so that's not that big of a problem now is it?
Naturally, if you'd like to help, you can always buy me a book to review. Heh.
While we're on the subject of book buying and wishlists and the like, a minor rant. Why can't Powell's have a wishlist function similar to Amazon, that would let others see what you are wanting to buy? It would be especially handy during the holidays, and I would far rather send prospective gift-buyers and friends to Powell's than to mega-monster Amazon.
It wouldn't hurt to let use have some simplified profiles too, for those of us who post reviews on their site.
And one more book-related item. I would be remiss not to add the PowellsBooks.Blog to the blogroll at left.
And then there's the Blogosphere! Yet more additions. Photographer & graphic designer Dave Styffe brings us The Unauthorized Observer; a very noir title for his SoCal photoblog. This is followed up by news that Elrond Lawrence has started another, titled Outside Is America.
Whew. Lothes returns, Carr and Kooistra surface, and then Burwash goes blogging. And now Lawrence and Styffe.
What is this? 1998 all over again?
The holidays are over at last, and many are still groaning under the weight of the feasting. it wasn't the vast Christmas repasts that hit me, though, so much as the culinary delights of Portland.
How about a little Cafe Cubano and Camarones Enchilada?
This is bad. I think I have a new addiction.
I almost feel sorry for the Portland Building. How overjoyed the city was when it was first built. A fine example of cutting edge, post-modern architecture, designed by rising-star architect Michael Graves. We were lucky, and it made Graves a real powerhouse, designing everything from major buildings to consumer goods for Target.
Time has not treated the building well, however, and it has become the building Portlanders love to hate. (Granted, it is a bit of a maintenance nightmare now).
Poor thing. Portland is one of those cities where nobody will ever stare at you, because you'll never manage to be the weirdest person on the block. In a way, the Portland Building fits in a city like that -- hell if anything it's too tame for a city like that.
Oh, don't get me wrong though; I don't like the building either.
Politics schmolitics. Eric Sten resigns and Sho Dozono files to run for mayor.
Plenty has been said elsewhere about these events. You can always go over to Bojack for the latest.
Sten's departure will leave a much larger hole in the council. Presuming that Adams is elected mayor, it means two spots are open, in addition to Randy running for his seat again. Sten's departure makes it far easier to change the majority make up of the council in one election sweep.
As for Sho? I'll say only this: Sho fills a vacuum. Before him, there was the potential for a serious contender to emerge. Sho seems like a nice guy, but Portland politics isn't about being nice. If I were Sam, I'd be really happy about all this.
Will the weather madness never end? Vancouver gets a tornado. They do happen in the region now and then.
As usual, the media are making a big fuss, giving us tornado survival advice now that the tornado is gone and after having given no warning.
I like Tigard Mayor Craig Dirksen. He's a nice guy, and he has the best of intentions. I often find myself defending him when people suggest he's too soft. For once though I must issue a minor rebuke. In his state of the city address, Craig says he has really only good news to tell you.
Then there's this story.
And while we're discussing transportation financing, Sam has a plan for Portland.
I'll have more to say about this later. For now, folks, I've got to run.
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Sunday, January 6, 2008
Review: The Lure of Japan's Railways
Labels: Book Reviews, Photography, Railroads, Transportation, Used Books
The Lure of Japan's Railways
By Naotaka Hirota. Japan Times, 5-4, Shibaura 4-chome, Minato-ku, Tokyo, 108-8071, Japan; http://www.japantimes.co.jp/; 11.3 x 8.4 in; hardbound; 168 pages, 8 color and 108 b/w photos, 2 diagrams, 1 map; $25-$40 used.
New books come out by the boatload these days, but how many of them are truly memorable? Now and then a gem shows up, but most of them are pretty stock stuff. Old books, though, can be a wealth of material, and that is one of many reasons for the success of Portland's Powell's Books. Among its exhaustive collection, a remarkable book came my way, Naotaka Hirota's The Lure of Japanese Railways, a masterpiece that is more than just a railroad book, but rather a photographic window into another time and place: Japan, circa 1969.
Following a brief introduction by the photographer, the book is divided into four sections; a short series of color plates, a vast number of black-and-white plates, a technical appendix on the status of Japan's railways, and a section of captions. Most images are either double truck or full page, grouped by titled themes, and are accompanied by only a small plate number for a caption. Stylistically the photos take center stage, with the text playing a minimal and highly supportive role: this is a true photographer's monograph and nothing else.
Hirota is a contemporary of American railway photographers like Richard Steinheimer. His work has been noted occasionally in U.S. publications, including 2003's Starlight on the Rails. Hirota lives up to his contemporaries well; his images display a thoughtful creativity and a playful composition that raises the book's subject matter to a far higher level than most railroad books achieve. Hirota has a keen photojournalist's eye and virtuosity, and is as adept with human interest subjects as with abstracts, motion-heavy images, and scenic landscapes. There is excellence here.
The subject matter itself is extraordinary, a time capsule of a "modern" 20th century Japan. Teakettle steam engines take diminutive passenger trains to rural stations; massive steam locomotives assault snow-laden lines; sleek white bullet-nosed Shinkansens speed at aircraft-like velocities past iconic Mount Fuji. Hirota doesn't miss the context either, and in some cases puts the context right up front where it can't be ignored. Plate six, for example, places a field of yellow flowers in soft focus for over 80% of the frame; it's only at the very top that you see the white-and-blue Shinkansen streaking by in a blur. The bold imagery is a delight to behold. In a somewhat less provocative example, Hirota places workers and commuters in the forefront of images throughout the last half of the work.
The Lure of Japan's Railways doesn't come without flaws. Many images are printed double-truck, which in a book this size is sometimes awkward; the center of plate 31's speeding Shinkansens gets lost in the fold, robbing the image of much of its impact. Overall reproduction is excellent, although I wish that the black-and-white images were printed on the same gloss stock paper as the color images up front. The book originally came with a dust jacket, but some examples I've seen at booksellers have long since shod theirs.
In the end, The Lure of Japan's Railways is more than just a railroad book, or even a railroad photo book. It is an excellent work that stands as a remarkable touchstone of 20th century photojournalism. Anyone with an interest in photojournalism would do well to have the book, and it would be welcome as well to those with an interest in industrial photography, railroads, or the culture of Japan.
The Lure of Japan's Railroads is occasionally available from Powells and Amazon, and usually trades between $25 and $40 for a good to excellent copy.
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Friday, January 4, 2008
Week in Review, Vol. IV
It's been long enough since my last Week-in-Review that maybe I should call this a "Three Weeks in Review". In that time, I managed to pick up some new (to me) books, so there should be some book reviews in the near future. Stay tuned. Labels: Automobiles, Blogging, Photography, Portland, Portland History, Railroads
Today's windy weather had some interesting effects. Check out this slideshow of trucks blown over on I-84 in eastern Oregon. All I can say is, wow.
Last time I mentioned the continuing plight of the Oregon Rail Heritage Foundation. Over the course of my break, the Trib put up a story.
Here is a wonderful online photo gallery of the now gone Penn Station in New York City. Hat tip to Kelly Lynch for that.
Aaron Hockley points us to For Portlanders Only, a hilarious page of images & video about what makes Portland unique. I have to say that Les Scwhab's free beef campaign and Bob the Weather Cat scared some of my non-Oregonian friends. More amusing to me is the anti-tourism campaign:"Tom McCall, ex-governor of the great state of Oregon, cordially invites you to visit Idaho, Washington, Wyoming, Utah, Arizona, California, Hawaii, or Afghanistan."
If nothing else explains the Oregon psyche, that does.
Though I suspect top honors for oddest-true-story is this coverage of the one-year anniversary of the eruption of Mount St. Helens. All I can say is, wow.
I've added two blogs to the blogroll on the left.
The first is the Portland history based site Stumptown Confidential. If your a history nut you should enjoy the image laden posty goodness there.
The second is Blair Kooistra's Under the Weather. Blair's blog has a bit of railfan photography, but it is much more than that and is quite well rounded. Fans of BoJack will probably like his non-railfan content.
Speaking of blogs, many of my fellow photographers seem to be getting active in the Blogosphere all the sudden. Scott Lothes has a new post, now brought to you from North America. Scott, here's hoping you have the time and inclination to keep this up. Meanwhile, Martin Burwash is trying his hand at photoblogging too; check out his homage to the railroad and Little Bighorn here.
The paper in Mac has a video story on the return of their galloping goose. (Warning, it took a while to load even on DSL. Slow connection...?) Good luck to them, but I kind of doubt that a stuffed-and-mounted, obscure piece of rail history is going to draw people off the highway to tour Willamina.
It is nice to see a piece of local history come home, however. It's by far preferable to the shotgun-approach many museums have towards old equipment. You know, the "get anything old while you can" approach that lacks any semblance of context.
On a marginally related note, I don't think I've ever seen a newspaper website before that has a department titled "Who's In Jail".
Lastly, Autoblog brings us this story about Steve McQueen's review of eight sports cars in 1966. As a friend of mine says, "all kinds of awesome".
'till next time.
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Saturday, December 22, 2007
2007: Ten Best Images
Blair over at Under the Weather recently posted his ten favorite shots from 2007. As Blair said over on Obscar, "I'd like to see what others consider their favorites of the year, and why they chose 'em." Labels: Photography, Portland, Railroads, Transportation
So, here's mine. The order is chronological, and clicking on the image will yield a larger image. If some of them appear soft, mea cupla, I'm still a filmie, and my scanner leaves much to be desired.
1.
The first shot is from the Portland & Western's Newberg District, also known as the Rex Hill line. Here, a westbound -- by SP parlance -- welded rail train, led by PNWR 1853, rounds a curve near Chehalem Station on its way downgrade from the summit.
Rex is an oddball, mountain grades in the middle of the Willamette Valley, a legacy from a narrow-gauge would-be empire that Southern Pacific swallowed in the 19th century. But what an oddity! Within a short drive of Portland, every day, SP SD9s and SD40T-2s ground up Rex, and then glided back down again with the telltale mechanical whine of their dynamic brakes roaring away.
In 1995, PNWR picked up the line, making it an integral part of their operations, but it was not meant to last. Combining parts of SP's branchlines with branches taken over from Burlington Northern, Rex went silent, victim of a new, better, lower gradient route to the south.
I thought I would never have a chance to see the storied hill that was in my backyard the whole time. But construction on the lower Oregon Electric route resulted in detours over Rex, including this welded rail train, bound for the Seghers District. Could anything be more emblematic of the PNWR? Welded rail, bound for upgrading a branchline, being transported over a branchline that they've shut down.
2.
A small switcher, waiting to cross Yeon Avenue in Northwest Portland, the Freemont Bridge soaring through the gloomy skies in the background. It seems like something out of the 1970s or 1980s, but it still happens today -- if you're lucky enough to catch it.
And indeed it was luck that, while giving the "grand tour" to my friend Seth the reluctant Californian, we ran into the BNSF switch crew working the old 12th Street yard (that is actually closer to 27th Street). The switchman hanging off the front pilot is getting off to go push a button on the signal case that will activate the warning lights over Yeon, allowing them to cross and enter Lakeyard.
We waited and watched them go all the way in. Seth was wearing a Union Pacific Steam Program hat he'd got from somewhere, and when the engineer saw us, he pointed to his head, then made a thumbs down gesture out the window, smiling all the while. We were, after all, not in Harriman territory.
3.
TriMet is widely known for stylish smart design on its MAX light rail line. Not all ideas, however, work out so well. Station platforms on the original east-side route were not built to accommodate growth and change, and so have had to be torn into to rewire in the past. Trains still use antiquated catenary hangars on the Steel Bridge that date back to the Portland Traction system of the 1940s and '50s.
This image, taken in midsummer, shows another of the not-so-successful designs, a stylish stainless-steel receptacle for recyclable trash. The idea was to keep dumpster-divers from opening up trash cans in order to score aluminum cans and the like. The general public, however, never seemed to see them as anything other than decoration.
4.
In July I finally had a chance to "meet" fellow photographer Scott Lothes. He and I had been conversing via email for years, during which time Scott went from Midwesterner to being a resident of northern Japan. Now, though, he was returning to the states, and on his way home was passing through Portland.
For a few hours, we walked about the vaunted Vera Katz Eastbank Esplanade. This mostly floating walkway continues the tradition of naming major infrastructure in Oregon after still living (and in some cases still serving!) politicians. Anyway, we had walked out to the end of a floating dock (with no boats, big surprise) in order to get a better side shot of the Union Pacific's Steel Bridge.
At the end of that dock was this gate. I don't think it was part of the officially approved public art program. But I could be wrong.
5.
Later in the month came a trip east to visit the Sumpter Valley Railway. On the way, our party had time to kill, so we took a side-route via Walla Walla. Once again, I was in good graces with luck, and we found a local on the Palouse & Coulee City branch up from Walulla. Here is an eastbound grain empty headed to Stateline for loading, climbing up grade near Touchet.
Something about this photograph captures in shorthand the entire region, from the sweeping vista to the "forest" of windmills on the distant ridge. The dichotomy of "not-in-my-backyard" public policy and natural beauty seems breathtaking.
6.
This view is of McEwen, on the Sumpter Valley, taken from the top of a dredge tailing pile. What struck me when I saw this image was how much it looked like it could be a hundred years ago. Nothing obviously screams 2007. And yet it wasn't taken with that intention. It's not my usual style, and it has a bit of a model railroad feel to it, but I can't help but enjoy the image nonetheless.
7.
Anyone with a passing familiarity with my photographic tastes knows I love signs. It should be no surprise, then that this one -- along the scrappy (but not scrap yet!) City of Prineville Railroad -- caught my eye. I love how they just restenciled a new sign right over the old one.
8.
August saw me make a pilgrimage to the Midwest once more. This time, I took a jaunt into Cleveland with my friends Brian & Duane. Among the shots that emerged was this publicity-style image, taken off the closed Broadway Avenue bridge. Below, an eastbound train passes on the Norfolk Southern's ex-Nickel Plate Cleveland District. To the right is the heavy rail line of the RTA, headed towards Terminal Tower in the background.
9.
The towns of the Midwest are depressing yet fascinating. So many have boarded up storefronts, and an air of defeat. Yet in the gloom, some towns find strange ways of waving the flag of community pride. In Corunna, Indiana, the locals painted the antiquated State Route 327 bridge a patriotic star-spangled blue. Below is the the Norfolk Southern's ex-New York Central Chicago Line, on which a westbound NS train barrels towards us.
Interestingly, this is a bit of a cursed spot. There have been two major derailments here in the past five years, yet both times the bridge has survived. Brian tells a story of having overheard a train calling to another over the radio as they passed, asking about the near collision with the span:Train one: "You guys about took that bridge out last week, I heard!"
Train two: "We'll aim better next year!"
10.
Lastly, a classic image of life at Portland's venerable Union Station. The Italianate, castle-like structure is the oldest continually operating union station west of St. Louis, having opened in 1896. Although she doesn't see nearly the hundred or so trains a day she once did, the structure routinely serves lines of passengers on Amtrak's popular Cascades service to Seattle and Eugene. Typical Portland: the more things change, the more they stay the same.
Well, that's it for this year. And 2008? Probably a lot fewer rail subjects, and a few more highway ones. But who knows?
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Thursday, December 20, 2007
Week in Review, Vol. III
The Willie Week has an article on the future of garbage hauling in the Portland region, specifically in how to get it to Arlington dump. Overall it's not bad, but writer Nigel Jaquiss does make one mistaken statement: Labels: Photography, Portland, Public Policy, Railroads, Technology, Transportation, Week in Review
"Barges and trucks cost about the same."
No, no they don't. Look earlier in the piece for the answer:
"The trash currently travels by truck. Every week, according to Metro, more than 350 tractor-trailer loads, each carrying about 31 tons of trash, roll up I-84 to the Arlington dump... (By comparison, four barges linked together carry 280 truckloads of trash in one voyage.)"
That's 70 trucks per barge. So each week, we'd have 350 fewer trucks on I-84, thanks to the use of just seven barges. I think that's a net gain for commerce and transportation, not a "cost"
Has anyone seen the new diner-lounge cars destined for Amtrak's City of New Orleans? Very nice, and very... familiar? They look like the inside of the Cascades Bistro Car, just a little.
In related news, it appears that Paul Weyrich has converted another politician to support passenger rail:"Commissioner Tom Skancke of Las Vegas, Nevada, also spoke: 'At the Commission's first meeting, I was sitting next to [Commissioner] Paul Weyrich. One of my opening comments on transit and inter city passenger rail was that 'transit and passenger trains don't work in the west. We don't zone for it and people won't use it...' ...Over the past 18 months, Paul and Frank [Busalacchi] have done a marvelous job of educating me and the rest of the commissioners about passenger rail and transit. I'm now an advocate and believe rail is the future of transportation in the U.S. It has to be."
Between the rapid growth of commuter rail options in the west, the continuing success of light rail in Western cities, and tremendous ridership growth on Amtrak corridors in the region, it's getting harder and harder to make the case that rail only works in the Northeast.
The drama in Southern Oregon isn't getting any better. The Central Oregon & Pacific railroad announced on Monday that the Siskiyou rail line between Medford, OR, and Weed, CA would likely close in April of 2008. This is the second major line closure from CORP this year, following their abrupt shutdown of the Coos Bay branch earlier in the fall.
Interestingly, this week also saw the announcement by the Oregon Department of Transportation of the qualifying participants in Connect Oregon II. Notably, the International Port of Coos Bay has a project on the list to repair the branch, and also has an expenditure request for money to purchase the line. For ODOT to overtly court a proposal for the Port to purchase the line is a slap in the face to CORP, whose short notices and poor communication have earned it the enmity of political and business leaders in the region, including the operator of Oregon's largest lumber mill.
And so the rusty wheel turns.
In the "really cool news" department are the plans for a joint Jaguar-Land Rover high-tech design studio. The facility will make use of advanced 3D rendering and virtual reality techniques to create an automotive design studio that is truly worthy of the 21st century.
Explain to me how this works, someone.
Crime hits MAX on the east side of Portland. Gresham, East County, etc....
Big summit on transit security is convened.
West side gets more police.
Huh?
While we're on the subject, how about the transit project that will not die?
The Trib reports that it's complicated by the Sellwood Bridge project too.
I have a lot of thoughts on this one, but I'll spare them for an in-depth post at some future date. For now, though, I'll just say this: is there any transit project in the metro area with a longer record of failure to move forward?
This week, the Boston Review posted a story about historians' renewed interest in Alexander Hamilton with a rather amusing statement:"This year, Hamilton crossed all the way over to pop. The once 'forgotten founder' is now the subject of a PBS American Experience feature, which aired in the spring and is likely to live on in classrooms on DVD."
American Experience. Pop. Wow. I'm not sure what world the writers at the Boston Review live in, but is there any world where a PBS documentary show is "pop"?
Not to get up the nose of VanPortlander, but here's another Portland MeMe. Drexel University's The Smart Set published an article on a new-age do known as the Body, Mind, and Spirit Expo. Guess where the 2007 digs were?
Mmhmm.
I've always been a lover of signs. Street signs, advertising signs, railroad signs, you name it. Sure, you can go overboard, but even then, there's an intensely human vitality to such overkill.
Occupying the opposite end of the spectrum are the small towns of Texas, as posted on Wiskey, Texas' blog. Nice work, Wes. Its funny how many of those signs make me think distinctly of Texas, and how many of them also make me realize how little difference there amongst the Western states at times.
Congratulations to the Center for Railroad Photography & Art at Chicago's Lake Forest College marks its tenth year this December.
Earlier this fall, the CRP&A started up a web-based version of it's magazine, Railroad Heritage. Photographers and artists alike, check it out.
Christmas is coming soon, and New Year's too. Smack dab between the two, and overlapping a bit, I'll be taking a bit of time away from my usual routines. It's quite possible this will be the last Week in Review for the year. Who knows, though; when you write your posts offline you can get a lot done even when you don't have Internet access. Or want to admit to the world you were awake to post. Heh.
Here's wishing everyone a Merry Christmas, and as they say in Vienna, ein Prosit Neujahr!
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Thursday, December 13, 2007
Week in Review, Vol. II
Does the weather never stop getting "interesting" this time of year? Last weekend brought the northwest more rain than it could handle, and this week it brought us snow. Labels: Photography, Portland, Portland History, Public Policy, Railroads, Transportation, Week in Review
Bet when the flakes first fell, Vernonia was just thrilled.
While looking for some odd facts about 19th century railroad baron, stagecoach king, and political boss Ben Holladay, I ran into a strange fact I had not heard before. Among his many business ventures was the founding of still-extant McCormick Distilling Company.
So the next time you buy off a state legislature, remember to toast it with a nice spirit from McCormick.
More can be read in this PDF over at the Federation of Historical Bottle Collectors.
Newsweek had an interesting article on photography this week:"Yet wandering the galleries of these two shows, you can't help but wonder if the entire medium hasn't fractured itself beyond all recognition. Sculpture did the same thing a while back, so that now "sculpture" can indicate a hole in the ground as readily as a bronze statue. Digitalization has made much of art photography's vast variety possible. But it's also a major reason that, 25 years after the technology exploded what photography could do and be, the medium seems to have lost its soul."
The creation of digital photography was a controversial issue in photographic circles. It's caused all sorts of soul searching and argument. Certainly a lot of great photography is being created on digital, and many of my fellow photographers are digital. I can't say, with a straight face, that photography done on a pixelated medium isn't photography.
What Newsweek's Peter Plagen's said, however, is true. The borders are wiped away. The ability to manipulate is available on an unprecedented scale.It's caused some major problems with some journalistic publications that rely on amateur photographers. The most common occurrence is the photographer editing out objects -- wires, poles, graffiti, what have you, which is fine as far as it goes, but when you don't tell the publication they start wondering what else you edited out.
Perhaps it's not that film photography is "real" and digital photography is "fake". Perhaps it's that film photography is a specific medium within photography that has its own rules, and the lack of any other medium until recently lead us all to falsely believe that all photography would be like film photography.
Metro Magazine arrived in my mailbox this week. Usually I only skim the publication -- it's nice enough but it's far too heavy on bus subjects and that holds little interest for me. This time, though, before I tossed it into my recycling box, I ran across an article by Cliff Henke about the Federal Transit Administration's New Starts funding program. The program is responsible for disbursements to fixed-guideway transit system projects across the nation.
Over the last decade, applications for FTA funding has been increasing, outpacing funds, and the FTA has been lengthening its application process, possibly as a way to cut down on applicants. Naturally such a strategy isn't too popular outside of the Beltway. "Perhaps most troubling to the industry, in [the FTA's] final version of the [New Starts] regulation implementing these provisions the FTA included considerations that were not in the law or its legislative history: a category for "very small starts" for corridors with 3,000 riders per day and capital costs of less than $3 million per mile, excluding vehicles, and evaluation bonuses for inclusion of congestion pricing."
Scuttlebutt has been that FTA is creating the very small starts program to try and sell communities that want light-rail on the cheaper to build streetcar concept, allowing them to stretch the same amount of funding across more metro areas.
Jack Bogdanski notes a new addition to Portland's corner of the web: Alameda Old House History, chronicling the history of the Alameda neighborhood of Portland. History buffs rejoice; we can never have too much Portland history online.
Stupid criminal stories are always great. The latest? The Coos Bay World reports that a man broke into a tire dealer by digging a tunnel under a wall. The burglar got in fine, but save for $63 or so in cash, he left empty handed.
The problem?
The hole wasn't big enough to fit a tire back through.
Seattle's new South Lake Union Streetcar has had an interesting time in the media this year. For a time, people referred to it as a trolley -- at least until someone realized that spelled SLUT. T-Shirts soon appeared, despite the fact that this was not, in actuality, the official name of the system.
And now? Now a song.
It's been an interesting month for infrastructure issues in western Oregon and Washington.
First, Connect Oregon dough has begun to land in Washington County. The Portland & Western's new rail yard in Tigard should improve the efficiency of freight mobility in the region, and represents a model for how Connect Oregon money is meant to be used. Unfortunately, Southern Oregon didn't make out quite as well; when the Central Oregon & Pacific abruptly ended service to Coos Bay, the state withdrew Connect Oregon funds for a similar facility in the Roseburg area.
On a related note, the flooding and heavy rains of early December have taken their toll on the Port of Tillamook Bay railroad. Numerous track washouts have closed service on the 100 mile line. Damage reports indicate that things are worse than they were in the 1996 flood, and repair estimates are hovering around $20 million. To put that in perspective, that's 1/5th of the entire 2006/2007 Connect Oregon budget. While the line is vital to Tillamook County, it does bring up the question of how much return on investment the state should expect on expenditures for transportation infrastructure. Is it wise to spend such a large sum just to subsidize the transportation of (primarily) lumber from Tillamook? In this instance, it's likely that ODOT will find a way to pay the bill. With increasing funding demands from regionally significant infrastructure, however, you have to wonder: will this be the last time the POTB gets bailed out? And if so, what happens next time heavy weather hits the coast?
Meanwhile, up in Washington, an operation dear to my heart has suffered damage of its own. It looks like things are repairable, but it may take some time. Considering how bad the flooding was on the Chehalis River, really it's a miracle things weren't worse.
That's all for now, folks.
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Thursday, December 6, 2007
Week in Review, Vol. I
It seems one of the stock investigative journalism stories in the post-9/11 world is the "TSA Security Breach." You know the drill. Reporters get together some kind of security violating package, like dummy weapons or fake explosives, then smuggle it past security at a major airport. Thanks to a few hidden cameras, the whole shebang gets broadcast on television about a week later, with alarmists "are we safe?" comments slung back and forth throughout the accompanying monologue. It's over-the-top, and it's also borderline instruction video for wannabe terrorists, but it's not surprising that the average journalist doesn't even comprehend such a thing. It's all about shock, sensationalism, and a degraded notion of what a "scoop" means. Labels: Journalism, Media, Portland, Portland History, Public Policy, Railroads, Transportation, Week in Review
For those of us a bit sick of such fabricated news, check out this video from The Onion. As usual for this parody news outlet, they've done a great job capturing everything that is absurd about such reports. It's no small wonder that Reason Magazine's Greg Beato called The Onion "our most intelligent newspaper".
And now, add to that, our most intelligent television news.
We're still taking stock of the damage up here after the high winds and flooding that began late last week and lasted through Monday. The predictions made by TV weather reporters for the Willamette Valley became largely untrue. Although some creek drainages did overflow their banks, nothing on the scale of the 1996 floods occurred.
The coast, however, is another matter. Everywhere from Lincoln County north to the central Washington Coast got hammered, and every major highway to the coast north of Newport shut down. Lewis County -- an inland county up in Washington -- got hit bad, with jet-boats and helicopters handling evacuations of folks stranded by the rising Chehalis River. Interstate 5 shut down due to high water, with travelers in the Portland-Seattle corridor being routed over the Cascade Range twice via Yakima.
Further south, Astoria got hit with wind-speeds in excess of 85 mph. Thousands lost power, and the Coast Guard even closed the Columbia Bar to all passage.
It wasn't a hurricane, and there were relatively few casualties on the human side. Still, it'll take a while to pick up the pieces from this one.
While the rain fell and the Coast receded into the pre-industrial age, the news media finally found something else to put in its headlines beside alarmism over MAX light rail security. Lost, too, is the absurdity of the pile-on; for a while it seemed as if TriMet was going to get blamed for inventing everything from petty larceny to manslaughter.
TriMet critics, naturally, used the opportunity to pull out every tired grievance they have with the transit agency and shout it at the top of their cyber-lungs. Comments in articles at the Portland Tribune as well as at many local blogs became borderline hysterical. The objections themselves are nothing new. TriMet is subsidized, and therefore an evil. TriMet brings in transit-oriented-development, and is therefore evil. Sam Adams sleeps with a stuffed TriMet plushie at night, and is therefore evil.
As the agency itself began to openly discuss how best to provide security on its light rail system, the issue seemed to get muddier, rather than clearer. Crime near MAX was somehow linked to eliminating fare evasion, which in turn was then linked to eliminating Fairless Square.
Has all use of logic been lost in this city? First, how many of the offenders who commit violent crimes live in downtown Portland? I'll bet on average the the criminals who commit crimes in Gresham are from -- surprise! -- Gresham. And I highly doubt they somehow go all the way downtown in order to get on at Fairless Square and then ride all the way back to Gresham to go mug some unsuspecting soul. And for those who want to install turnstiles, another question. How many of these crimes occurred on board MAX? Most of them occurred on the platform. Does anyone think that just because a criminal can't access the platform he'll go away? No, he'll just move twenty feet away, outside the turnstile. Or he'll jump it. Even Jack Bogdanski -- normally a critic of TriMet -- has noted the absurdity of the shotgun-blast of claims out there now.
Many people are angry, and they should be. Let's stop and breathe a moment though and decide who that anger ought to be directed at. While all the pundits decide to point the finger at MAX, let me ask this: What is the responsibility of the local community to police the system? Do police now stop patrolling at the doors of public transit? Does this mean that if MAX comes to my community, that my own police force will say, "sorry, Charlie, we don't vouch for security on that platform. Everywhere outside of it, sure, but that platform? It's like Switzerland, we can't go there, you're on your own."
That idea is absurd. If the force here were refusing to do their duty just because the area a crime is being committed belongs to TriMet, I'd be very angry. There is no question that TriMet should have seen these problems and tried to do something about them earlier. And TriMet needs to do something serious about it before it gives one of the best transit systems in the nation a permanent black-eye. But if Gresham (and Hillsboro) residents want to get angry at anyone for negligence, they should look at their own police forces and their own local political leadership, both of whom apparently decided to play a territorial pissing-contest rather than keep you and I safe.
Meanwhile, Aaron over at VanPortlander notes an interesting side effect of the flooding:"With I-5 shut down in the Chehalis area, truckers heading to and from Seattle aren’t clogging up I-5 or I-205, leaving the two routes into Vancouver clear for passenger vehicles. Even though I left work about half an hour later than normal, I got home only 5 minutes later than when I’ve driven on a typical day. The removal of long-haul trucks from the interstates cut my commute nearly in half."
Welcome to the future? Well, probably not. Not any time soon, anyway.
It does, however, reinforce the argument that there will come a day when we may wish to divert truck traffic between Seattle and Portland to other means, such as rail. Why we continue to move multiple semi-trailers of mail between the two metro areas every night on I-5 when we have regularly scheduled and reliable Amtrak service between both points boggles the mind. In the mid '60s we separated mail, less-than-carload, and other parcel services from our passenger rail network. Maybe it's time to rethink the wisdom of that.
Returning to transit security, the American Public Transportation Association is a bit ticked about the issue right now. It seems the Presidential Administration has proposed cutting back Federal funding for transit security. As APTA President William Millar puts it: “If this is true, this is an outrage. Transit security is a national security issue and national security is the responsibility of the federal government. Why should public transportation riders, who take public transportation 34 million times each weekday, be treated as second class citizens?"
Millar sent a letter this week to Office of Management and Budget Director James Nussle, requesting an immediate meeting, and stressing much the same points.
It seems anytime that media prints an online story about light rail construction, it brings every NIMBY, nay-sayer, and Libertarian critic of government spending out of the woodwork in the comments section. Then I happened onto this article about an impending light rail project in Norfolk, Virginia. The comments section, for once, had some really intelligent backtalk from locals who liked the proposal.
Best of all, though, is the post by one "Bryant E." in Virginia Beach:"People are complaining that it will take 35 years to pay off not counting maintenance. That's funny, do you own a home? How long is your mortgage? 30yrs plus with each refinance & that doesn't count the maintenance but you are willing to pay for that. What benefit are you getting from that mortgage? Is it making you money? No it is serving a need, which is a roof over your head."
Brilliant. One of the best arguments for public infrastructure funding ever. I'm going to steal it. Hope you don't mind, Bryant?
Meanwhile, Portland will be playing host over the next two weekends to the 3rd annual "Holiday Express" train excursions. For an extremely affordable price, anyone can ride behind one of the largest operating steam locomotives in North America, Portland's own SP 4449. The engine has called Portland home since 1957, and in the 1970s was restored to pull the American Freedom Train around the country during the U.S. Bicentennial.
Sadly, the engine -- along with two stablemates -- has no permanent home. Currently it is housed in the former Southern Pacific roundhouse in Brooklyn Yard, near S.E. Holgate Street. The property owner, Union Pacific, has been very patient over the years, but does plan to develop the land into something that makes more money than storing old relics.
Although the engines are all owned by the City of Portland, the city provides no funding for them, and the volunteer groups who maintain and operate them are responsible for raising all needed funds. The Holiday Express runs are one of a number of strategies aimed at fundraising.
So if your kids liked the Polar Express movie, or if you want to support a valiant historical preservation effort, or if you're just a big kid yourself, please go down and ride this weekend or next. Trains board near the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry, and parking is free.
Well that's all for now, folks.