Category: Streetcar

  • How Do We Get an Antifragile Transit System?

    It would appear that the failure of a single surge protector effectively disrupted most MAX trips during the morning rush hour yesterday. That would seem to be the definition of “fragile” – a small failure has a non-linear (and much amplified) effect on the whole system. I could draw a similar analogy with a car…

  • Oregon Iron Works Responds

    With an op-ed from their chairman.

  • Semi-Truck / Streetcar Collision

    The afternoon of Tuesday, April 30, 2013, a semi-truck collided with a Portland streetcar at the intersection of SE Market St. & SE MLK Blvd. I happened to be nearby and captured the process of separating and removing the two vehicles. The truck had a flat tire and bent wheel (in addition to major body…

  • What’s an Industry Worth?

    Brad Schmidt has a lengthy piece in the Sunday O about the delayed delivery of streetcars from Oregon Iron Works. I won’t debate any facts in the article, I think Brad has a fix on the chronology and events, and I’m not in a position to comment on what he found internally at OIW. I…

  • A streetcar in Hillsboro?

    One of them things that make you go hmm… The Oregonian is reporting on some planning work being done between TriMet and the city of Hillsboro, on the city’s plans for the Amberglen development. Amberglen is a proposed high-density community in eastern Hillsboro, in an 600-acre area boxed in by the MAX line, NW 185th,…