To Salem by transit: Thoughts

Earlier this week I had to be in Salem for most of the day, so I took a trip via WES and SMART/Cherriots to the capitol. Although I have never made this trip before, I had heard through the grapevine that there were people making this commute every day. Atop this, there have been numerous calls to extend WES to the capitol [PDF], most recently in the Metro RTP draft. The following is a brief overview of the run. I apologize for no photos, but I was far too tired to be motivated to take any snapshots of the trip.

Prior to my trip, I did some digging to plan my schedule. I didn’t need to be in Salem very early, so I tried to find the latest possible bus to Salem. According to both the SMART and Salem-Keizer Transit web sites, that was the 8:00 am bus from Wilsonville. According to both, that was a connection The Salem-Keizer site doesn’t mention which train I’d need to get there in time, but the SMART web site said I had a train that would get me to Wilsonville at 7:55.

All seemed good, so I checked in at TriMet to see when that WES train departed Tigard. Using the Trip Planner, I set it to look for a train that arrived at Wilsonvile by 8:00 am. Result: a 7:09 that arrived in Wilsonville at 7:25. No matter how often I ran the numbers, however, that’s what I got. Oddly, the Trip Planner doesn’t think the 7:39 out of Tigard exists.

The run itself was neither full nor empty, but somewhere in between, with a dozen or so passengers boarding the train at Tigard. The lost held about 30 cars, and considering there’s almost no residential adjacent to the lot area and almost nothing is open at that time of morning, it’s apparent that these are commuters. I also noted a few people getting dropped off at the station, the so-called “kiss-and-ride” routine. Last, but not least, the transit center itself was hopping, with a Beaverton bound bus outbound, 12s both ways, a 64 Marquam Hill Express waiting to leave, and two 45 Garden Home buses at the station at the same time.

Departing, we picked up more passengers at Tualatin but were still only about half full at best. On arrival at Wilsonville, about a third went dashing off to the various SMART buses waiting, and most of the rest went to the Salem bound bus that was waiting for us. This route is known as the 1X Salem-Wilsonville, and it is jointly operated by both SMART and Cherriots with the two agencies both supplying busses and drivers for the route. Our bus filled most of the way up before it departed for Salem. Cost of fare: $2.50. That morning’s run was a bus from Cherriots, a full size with plush reclining seats, overhead luggage racks, and an internal reader board. It was somewhere halfway between the level of the newest TriMet busses and the commuter buses that Sound Transit and C-Tran both operate. After a few small stops in Wilsonville to pick up a couple more passengers, we made a dash for Interstate 5. Interestingly, one of the last passengers to board simply stood at the front of the bus, his laptop set up on the deck above the passenger side wheel well, typing away.

The trip to Salem on I-5 was pretty smooth and uneventful. The traffic although moderate kept pace, and about 45 minutes later we were pulling off the freeway and into the capitol. (Interestingly, there are no intermediate stops, not even in Woodburn or Keizer.) The bus makes a few stops around the capitol mall area and then terminates at the transit center downtown.

For my return trip, I caught a 4:30 pm bus north. This time, it was a SMART bus that picked us up. This bus was noticeably older. The seats were still fairly well upholstered but were not reclinable, and the overhead luggage rack had been modified with some kind of plastic material to keep things from falling through; this was dirtier and grungier than anything I’d seen on a transit bus before, even on the worst TriMet or rural routes. The bus also had a simple glass box with a slotted lid for fares, which I found fascinatingly antiquated. I suspect that given that SMART is mostly a free system, it wasn’t worth installing a sophisticated farebox mechanism, but it was a jarring thing to see when other transit cooperative initiatives in the region are moving past regular fares and onto regional card systems. After departing the transit station, the bus again snaked around the central area of the capitol mall, stopping a few times to pick up passengers. After we made our last pickup, the bus was almost entirely full, with only maybe one or two seats empty.

The SMART bus also rode worse, but that didn’t keep me from falling asleep on the trip north.

By the time we reached Wilsonville, it was about 5:15. About two thirds of the bus riders went straight for the 400 car parking lot, presumably to drive home. Interestingly, one of the people on my bus was from the Tigard area, and had parked at Wilsonville. I suspect that the reason he parked at Wilsonville and then rode the bus down, rather than park at Tigard and use WES and the bus is that there are no fare transfers between TriMet/WES and the SMART/Cherriots route 1X. This is a matter that TriMet should seriously consider looking into, especially given that only a handful of people were getting onto WES from the bus for a northbound trip.

Overall? The experience was not the greatest I’ve had in commutes, but to be honest there are cross-town TriMet trips that are far lengthier and far more painful. A trip north to WSU Salmon Creek a few weeks prior consisted of three buses with two significant layovers and a total trip time of nearly two hours; getting to and from Salem for an hour and change, $5.80 total, and almost no wait times was a pleasure by comparison. If I were a regular commuter to or from Salem, this system would be a very practical and worthwhile option to use.