Tri-met I have noticed has had some serious service frequency issues as of late that could have been much more troublesome than merely someone being late.  Someone could have died.  But then of course that is why no one should expect transit in this day and age to be even remotely reliable.  I'm one to scream that we want more choices, arguably we need more choices.  But when 2 elderly people are left out in the snow (yup, it was snowing in Portland) along with 3 other young people for 45 minutes plus there is a serious problem.  These people that rely on transit should be able to expect that it will be there, evidently though being that 2 busses just dissappeared from the schedule on this Monday night during rush hour, one can't expect transit reliability.

This whole incident with the poor elderly freezing their tails off got me thinking.  What would the transit agency have to do to provide the reliability that a bus load, or let's say a LRV car load of people could expect from a wide selection of automobiles.  Most cars, even in shoddy shape maintained with an absolute minimum of cash are fairly reliable, and would be less and more reliable than transit in various situations.  A brand new car far exceeds (far as in multiple sigma levels) the reliability of transit.  But if you take the average car, figure there are 100 people that an LRV can carry, how many days could the LRV go out of service to be equal to that of each person using an automobile.

Just from personal experience I have seen multiple days (about 6 so far in 1 1/2 years) where I lose service and end up hours late.  Something that happens maybe 1 time every 3-4 years of car ownership for me.  That ratio just doesn't look good.  Even for someone who could only afford a meager car the odds are in their favor.  Someday I'll sit down and maybe figure this out or maybe I won't.  It's definately an interesting pondering.