Today is day one of a house sitting task that I have promised to fulfill over the next 10 days.  This house just happens to be all the way in Vancouver, far out of reach of decent transit service.

What I have planned so far, which might change during the course of the coming days, is to jump the Yellow Line and ride out to the Delta Vanport Stop.  There I would transfer to a C-tran Bus into downtown Vancouver.  At that point I will either catch another bus or get a ride via the 350Z the rest of the way to the house.  I'm fairly sure that this effort over the next few days will do nothing more than cement my dislike of long commutes and especially auto based suburban sprawl commutes.

As I left work around 5:20pm I headed across the street to Pioneer Square to pick up a fare for the TriMet portion of my trip.  I got an all zone ticket for $2.05 and bolted to the closing door on the Yellow Line LRV that was preparing to depart.  I made it on and looked around.  The vehicle was not too full yet, it was after all only the second stop of the north bound run. I headed up to the raised floor section and got a seat.  Pulled out the new Dell 1720 and resumed working on various things, namely this entry.

At 5:31pm we stopped under the Burnside bridge to wait for "traffic" going across the steal bridge.  I wondered what the failure was since the light rail isn't supposed to share the tracks across the bridge with anything except buses.  Well, for some reason or another the bridge was jam packed with traffic today and people where illegally driving on the MAX right of way.  I couldn't help but think negative things of these people, and want to ring some necks.  I'm staying of their damnable interstates and roads and now they're clogging up my train.  Argh!

At 5:36 we got moving across the bridge and then the fun began.  As we passed the cars sitting in traffic and got back into our truly dedicated right of way.  We stopped at the Rose Quarter and traffic was heading everywhere.  We pulled away from there and headed toward the Mississippi Albina Stop.  We cruised past traffic that was jammed up from people attempting to turn left and right off of and onto the street.  Funny how badly things work when you push the throughput just a few cars past the limit.

The Yellow Line I was on moved along at the speed limit, taking off quickly and zipping past the autos to the left and right that where attempting their rush hour chaos dance.  I watched as I typed with a happiness that I don't have to sit in that stupidity anymore.  But I will in a few minutes, hopefully Vancouver won't be too bad.  The I-5 bridge, even on the bus, will probably be annoying.  One day, maybe, they might have light rail across that one can timely assume will get them to at least downtown Vancouver in a reasonable amount of time.

I don't envy the I-5 commuters at this point time in the least.  If Interstate Ave is this backed up, and it isn't all that bad, then I-5 must be utter hell.

The Yellow Line LRV at this point is a single unit, completely packed now, slowly ebbing patrons here and there at the stops.  My estimate is that there are at least 88-96 people on departure from the Rose Quarter.  Many of these individuals are still on the LRV several stops  later.  The 25-30 people that get off are replaced by 30-40 people at the Overlook Park stop.  The LRV is now pushed up to about 95-110 people easily.  We keep moving, the stop after Overlook Park we shed approximately 35-40 people.  We board about 9-11 people at this stop.  At North Portland Boulevard we shed another 26-30 people and only replace them with 6 boarding patrons.

All this people watching is great entertainment at this point.  Many individuals are dressed as everything from a spotted cow to an absurd looking strawberry and I think one person was even dressed as a television set.  I could have been wrong, he might have been Sputnik.

North Lombard gives us 2 bums, 8 passengers, and 2 beautiful women boarding and we leave the stop with about 36-40 riders.

A short way from that street some #$%! pulls in front of the MAX across a short break in the right of way and causes us to stop for about 6 seconds.  Not cool, not cool at all.  But I digress, and the commute continues.

At North Denver we gain about 6 and lose I believe 5.  At stop before the Expo Center the whole train basically gets off.  With a quick count I get 40-42 people still on the MAX.

The C-tran bus is sitting there waiting for passengers, it being completely empty.  Only 7 people, including myself, board the bus.  All the others head toward their cars.  Either way, all 72 of us are about to be sitting the the tail end of the north bound I-5 commuting hell.  I whip the laptop back out without concern and begin typing away again.

The view is sickening gray in the sky, a dry night, almost foggy.  I-5 stretches on before the bus with hundreds of cars, our travel speed at no more than 25-30 mph.  We pulled onto the Interstate via the bus on ramp, probably the only time we'll get over 40mph on this trip.  As we turtle our way down I-5 the cars slowly swarm behind and around the bus, making a mighty 2-3mph faster than the bus.  We get up to about 30mph for 230-250 feet before getting pushed into more traffic via one of the on ramps.  The bus driver smartly pulls into the merging on ramp lane and starts clocking a nice smooth 45-50mph!

Immediately after making that great speed, we pull off into Jantzen Beach, the silliest waste of space, traffic causing, catastrophe between Vancouver and Portland.  If we could get rid of the stupid on and off ramps to Jantzen Beach, maybe just connect with it via local bridges, the I-5 Traffic problem, at least north bound, would dissolve into nothing.  But here it sits, with a single bus stop, for the shopping abyss of cookie cutter stores and miscreant teenagers.  Here we board the stink of cigarette smoke permeating people and obese, messy, loudly eating, rude creatures that attempt a preposterous claim to humanity.  The bus ride becomes almost intolerable at this point.  My future plans are quickly unraveling at this pathetic mass of patronage.  With all 6 of us original riders and now an additional 14 persons, the bus has made an amazing stink.  Somewhere before getting back on the Interstate we boarded one more rider, fortunately not increasing the stench.

The bus circled back around onto the Interstate.  The bus stops at one of the stop and go lights that holds traffic at bay in an attempt to prevent traffic congestion.  Looking ahead one can see that it has not let up at all.  The speed however of all vehicles is closer to 45-50mph.  In fairly short order the bus gets across the bridge and turns into downtown for the bus mall.  The fading days of the bus mall.  I go toward the #25 bus but find that I have at least a 25-30 minute wait.  I pull out the cell, make a call, and start walking to meet with Joleen and the 350Z.  This commute is done.  End time 6:18pm.  Ugh.

Tomorrow I hope that things go a little smoother.

Random Statistics:

  1. C-tran Riders:  21
  2. Yellow Line Riders:  296-334
  3. Delays Because of Illegal Bridge Usage:  4 minutes total
  4. Delays Because of Interstate Congestion:  2 minutes total
  5. Delays Because of Poorly Designed Interstate on/off Ramp Access:  3 minutes total
  6. Blog Entries Written:  1.5
  7. Revolting, Nasty, and Unsightly People on TriMet:  2
  8. Revolting, Nasty, and Unsightly People on C-tran:  12, possibly 14.
  9. Ratio of Nasty to Decent Humanity on TriMet:  1 to 148 worse case, 1 to 167 best case, really good.
  10. Ratio of Nasty to Decent Humanity on C-tran:  5 to 3 - not good.
  11. Entertainment Rating:  Good.
  12. Italian Food in Downtown Vancouver that I had after the trip:  Good!  Smile [:)]
  13. Total Gas Cost: $3.35 (Price of 1 Gallon in Vancouver)
  14. Total Ticket Cost:  $3.30 ($2.05 all zone TriMet Ticket and $1.25 C-tran Ticket)
  15. Rail Failures: Zero  (Because if you where expecting from the headline, it IS just a headline)  [:H]

Number of Useless Facts:  14