I noticed the Oregonian as well as other sources have made mention of the arrival of the Colorado Car and DMU in Wilsonville.

Mentioned by the Tribune and The Times (publications of the same parent, same articles) that the vehicles had arrived.

I'm really wondering, it mentions they carry 70 persons, at least he DMU does.  So will we have standing room only?  I know there will be people riding, but it is still up in the air how many people will be riding.  There is some serious potential there if real ridership is accrued.  However, as with most politically motivated projects, I wonder if they could even handle excess demand.  This is Portland, and we are known for blowing the socks off of ridership records on transit.

I'm looking forward to checking it out and taking a ride sometime, regardless if I ever need to use it or not.  It looks like service that could definitely be expanded with ease, especially in comparison to the LRT MAX System, which costs about 5x the amount of money (of course it carries about 5x the amount of people too).

I'd really be stoked to see this sucker run, branching out from various points in Portland, to outer areas were it just isn't feasible or necessary to run the MAX.  It would be perfect for Vancouver, Battleground, Camas, areas between PDX and Troutdale, Corbett, Bridal Veil, etc.  I'm sure TriMet, or whatever type of operator would be needed, could extend the service to Salem with ease.  Connecting Fargo, Donald, Woodburn, and Salem would definitely get some serious ridership.

One thing the state could do, which would save Amtrak a ton of money and increase service along the area, is get rid of the southern stretch of Cascades service since it is the most money losing segment, and instead run the commuter rail from Beaverton down to Wilsonville as they are, then extend it to Salem.  At the same time run some Commuter Rail Service from downtown Union Station out to Oregon City and parallel the service.  The Oregon City stretch could then pick up any riders from Salem and continue on to Eugene.  This could be kept much closer to ridership demands, be much less expensive and lose less money than the Amtrak Cascades, and provide multiple avenues of ingress and egress from the Portland area.

Then we could bump up the frequency on the Portland to Seattle, and Seattle to Vancouver BC stretch of the Cascades.  This line could make money (yeah, PROFIT) instead of continually losing money as the southern stretch from PDX to Eugene does.  Most of this line doesn't even need re-worked like Beaverton to Wilsonville did.

The only question is, how will UP deal with it, and will Oregon make sure they don't screw UP out of hard earned freight movements.  They could definitely work together, but there would have to be new levels of cooperation.

Anybody got any ideas?