Dear TriMet: this evening’s MAX service disruption must’ve happened before 7:00pm, because that’s when I tried to catch a train and the station reader board indicated a problem.
Why was it not until 7:35 that you sent out a Service Alert message to those of us who have subscribed to the service? I’m pretty sure the whole point of having an instant-delivery type system that pushes to e-mail and smartphones is so that folks can get up to date information in a reasonable period of time.
P.S. For those of you clamoring to yell “But TriMet won an award as America’s Best Transit System! That’s what the stickers on the trains say!” I respond by pointing out that award was in 1989.
P.P.S. I’ll preemptively note that this post would qualify as something for the White Whine blog, but had TriMet’s communications been timely I might’ve altered my course and made it home in time to see my children before they went to sleep.
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Obviously there is a difference between your defnination of ‘instant’ and trimet’s definition of ‘instant.’ Just like the defenition of ‘working’ fare machines is, apparently, different between tri-met and its riders. I think a communications session is in order. You could all sit around and define words on a white board. Or, just submit to White Whine blog.
The MAX ride home from the Blazer game on Sunday was a complete and total clusterf*ck due to the same service disruptions. And this was with a crew of help TriMet employees milling about being “helpful”. Except they weren’t “helping” over at the yellow line stop, where the yellow line became the red line heading for the airport instead of going to city center. Never mind the fact that the MAX train had the words “City Center” in yellow on the front of it. Somehow riders were supposed to intuit that the train was now the red line headed for the airport. Sort of like how riders are supposed to intuit whether or not the fare machine will be working that day, and plan accordingly.
Maybe that can be their new slogan – “TRIMET – use your intuition!”
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