# Various short trips around the Willamette Valley



## Matthew H Fish (May 22, 2022)

First, I apologize if this isn't against the rules, but I thought the best way to do this would be to post one thread, and then post each trip as a separate response. I took a few trips during the pandemic, and because of the obvious difficulties, they were pretty short trips. 

I have a YouTube playlist of different places I visit:


But most of those videos are very local trips, some just me walking around my neighborhood. Some of them focus on my attempts to complete a foot journey from Portland to Eugene, sometimes by transit, but sometimes by bicycle. Hopefully, with things returning to "normal", there will be more long distance rail trips. 
Also, I am not sure what "rail involvement" means. Especially during the pandemic, with decreased schedules, I used Amtrak Thruways. So some of these trips involve using Amtrak, but not rail---or, when I go to Portland, using rail, but not Amtrak. But luckily, on a few of them, I actually get to ride an Amtrak train!
A lot of my interest here is the "last mile" problem. Sometimes even when travelling to cities with Amtrak rail connections, I had to use multiple different transit methods to get there.


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## Matthew H Fish (May 22, 2022)

So this is my first time using any type of rail after February of 2020 (I completed a long rail journey on March 1st, 2020). This is from July of 2021. It involved usage of an Amtrak thruway bus, and then usage of light rail and local buses. 


I visited my father in Vancouver, Washington. It isn't a long linear distance, but it was difficult to fit the schedules together. One mistake I made was to get off in Portland, instead of waiting an hour for the Amtrak Cascades to take me to Vancouver. I thought that I could get from Portland to Vancouver by the MAX Yellow Line and C-Train bus quicker than taking the train. In many cases, I would be right, but this day, it took much longer. And as is the case in a lot of my travels around the Willamette Valley, travel up and down the main rail line, or on buses (Amtrak, Greyhound, Flixbus) using the I-5 corridor is easy, leaving that corridor takes a long time. It takes me less time to go from Albany to Portland than it takes to go from Portland to the Portland suburbs. 
Also, the Portland MAX is pretty empty here: the two times since then that I used it, it was much more crowded.


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## Matthew H Fish (May 22, 2022)

This was my first Amtrak rail trip. A month after the Thruway bus trip to Portland:



Prior to May of 2021, Greyhound was only running one bus a day. Some time that month, they went back to two buses up and down I-5 a day. So on this trip, I took Greyhound south, got to Springfield (as I learned in this video, Greyhound had changed their station from Eugene to Springfield, which is one of those minor details that shows how difficult transit can be: the 3 or 4 miles between the bus station and the train station might not seem like much, but for travelers, it is the type of stuff that makes the idea of using transit just that much more difficult. 
Still, at the time, it was nice to be able to travel, and as I mention when I get to the train travel portion (around 8:00-10:00), it was pretty thrilling to be on a train again. The trains were still pretty empty at the time. As I mentioned at the end, this was when the Delta Variant was just starting, and I put my more ambitious travel plans on hold. 

I didn't mention the "last mile" problem explicitly, but it was part of what made this difficulty. Between Eugene and Albany station, the Amtrak train is super efficient, smooth, and hassle free. But then from Albany back to Corvallis, I had to wait for a local bus. So this trip involved a Greyhound bus ride down to Eugene, an Amtrak ride back to Albany, and then a local bus to Corvallis. It would be nice if these services were more coordinated.


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## Matthew H Fish (May 23, 2022)

After several months without rail transit, in February of 2022, I returned to Eugene:


This time, I extended my walk northwards, to the end of the Eugene city bus lines (other than the bus that goes out to the exurban town of Junction City). Most of this was done by walking, but also, on this day, I used the following transit methods:

1. Greyhound bus from Corvallis to Springfield
2. BRT from Springfield to downtown Eugene 
(walking for six miles)
3. From the north side of Eugene: bus back to downtown
4. Amtrak Cascades back to Albany
5. "Local" bus line between Albany and Corvallis
It did take me a few minutes to figure out how to use the bus ticket machines. 
A few interesting things about this trip: first, as much as Eugene is seen as an environmentally concerned, transit-friendly city, that falls away once you leave downtown. A couple miles north of downtown Eugene, we see things we could see in any US city: six lane stroads with big box stores. Of course, unlike most cities, Eugene has pretty good transit outside of the downtown core. When I was in the north part of the city, there were big articulated buses going back to town every half hour. But as far as service on the Amtrak Cascades, this local transit becomes a problem. Because if you want to go from Salem or Albany to Eugene, it is very convenient and fast---as long as you are travelling from downtown to downtown. Outside of a two or three mile radius of the station, it starts getting quicker to just drive. 
Also, one of the comments to this video made me realize how much of a gap there is between me and many people. Someone commented to the effect that downtown Eugene, especially the area "around the bus station" was dangerous. And in my video, I actually show at least a little what the bus station looks like--- clean and safe. For many people, downtowns are basically warzones that they are afraid to leave their cars in. I understand that it is a complicated issue, but a lot of that seems to be unwarranted fear.


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## Matthew H Fish (May 26, 2022)

I hope this one doesn't break the rules:


This is me visiting Depoe Bay, Oregon, which involves taking a bus to the Oregon Coast. At one time, this bus was an Amtrak Route, and contacted the Amtrak station in Albany with Corvallis and Newport. It still starts and stops from the Albany Amtrak station, but is now operated by Benton (Corvallis) and Lincoln (Newport) counties. After travelling to Newport, I then take another bus a dozen miles northwards to Depoe Bay, a town of about 1,000 people. Most of this video is just me walking around Depoe Bay. 
Why this is important in terms of Amtrak and transit is it shows how difficult it is to access rail outside of the I-5 corridor. 1.7 of Oregon's 4.2 million people live in counties with Amtrak stations. (Counting the sometimes-used Oregon City). A little bit more than that live in counties still close to Amtrak (like the 650,000+ people in Washington county, the western Portland suburbs). The Oregon Coast is in an odd position, because the north Oregon Coast has 120,000 people, which is a substantial number, and it is also a big tourist destination. But the population is spread out in such a way that there isn't really any efficient transit either up and down the Oregon Coast, or to the Willamette Valley. It is kind of a hodgepodge of local and state buses, many of which are designed both for local users and long range transit. So if someone in Depoe Bay wanted to go to either Seattle or Eugene on the Amtrak Cascades, while it is theoretically feasible, it wouldn't be a practical choice. 
I think I commented on this in another post a while ago, and @Willbridge might have made a comment about it, but at one point, Greyhound had a coastal route that went from Newport to San Francisco, up and down the Oregon and California coasts. Now, to do that, it would require something like five transfers between local bus companies.


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## Matthew H Fish (May 26, 2022)

This is another trip that was very multimodal:


This was part of my goal (now almost complete) to walk everywhere between Portland and Eugene. I went to Springfield by Greyhound, to Eugene by BRT, to Junction City by city bus, and then walked back to north Eugene, where I took another city bus back to the center of town, and then I took an Amtrak Thruway back to Albany, and from Albany, took a city bus back to Corvallis. 
A couple interesting things about this. One of the first things that comes to mind is that the last Amtrak Cascades leaves Eugene at 4 PM, and so after that, it has to be an Amtrak Thruway. Most of the time, there is not that much of a difference between a train and a bus (when it is an Amtrak bus), but it also shows the limitations of the Amtrak corridor service. 
Second is that while transit inside Eugene is good, the network of buses that goes to the exurban locations around the city (Cottage Grove, Veneta, Junction City) only runs three or four runs per day currently, so they aren't feasible for normal commuting. And they are especially not feasible for someone who is coming in by train. 
Third is that the Eugene airport has no bus service. The 95 bus that goes to Junction City doesn't stop at the Eugene airport, although it passes right by it. And of course, if it did go there, it wouldn't be very practical because it only runs a few times a day. This also effects whether someone would use the Amtrak Cascades: it might seem like a good idea to take the train from Salem or Albany if someone wanted to use the Eugene airport (which is much smaller than the Portland airport, but could be more convenient), but they would only get as far as the Eugene train station and would need to find out a way to get eight more miles to the airport. 
So I guess the point of this video, which mostly shows me walking down a rural road, is that even in transit-friendly cities like Eugene, the "transit friendliness" mostly is confined to the central part of the city, and that connections between long-range and local transit are still haphazard.


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## Willbridge (May 26, 2022)

Matthew H Fish said:


> This is me visiting Depoe Bay, Oregon, which involves taking a bus to the Oregon Coast....
> and @Willbridge might have made a comment about it, but at one point, Greyhound had a coastal route that went from Newport to San Francisco, up and down the Oregon and California coasts. Now, to do that, it would require something like five transfers between local bus companies.


I've posted this before, but the 1975 Oregon Intercity Bus Study had a schematic of the intercity bus service, including the Coast. And it has recommended improvements, some of which were made, and a few of which remain.

In the '60's and early 70's the long-distance Greyhound Lines service, descended from Oregon Motor Stages (the SP) covered the coast on US101 2x daily PDX<>NPO<>SFC and 1x daily PDX<>EUG<>RPT<>SFC. The latter was known as "The Redwood" as it was timed for daylight in the most remote area. The PDX<>SFC fare for the beautiful and lengthy run was the same as the other three PDX<>SFC routes. (I rode it on Spring Break 1967.)


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## Willbridge (May 27, 2022)

Matthew H Fish said:


> This is another trip that was very multimodal:
> ............
> 
> Second is that while transit inside Eugene is good, the network of buses that goes to the exurban locations around the city (Cottage Grove, Veneta, Junction City) only runs three or four runs per day currently, so they aren't feasible for normal commuting. And they are especially not feasible for someone who is coming in by train.
> ...


When Lane Transit District was set up, their taxation and service boundary was set at the new Urban Growth Boundary. The point was to not dilute service by spreading it thin and not fight -- as Portland's Tri-Met and Denver's RTD did -- with rural and small-town interests about paying taxes but getting little or no service. Also, some of those points had Greyhound or Trailways service (see photo - often scheduled for interstate connections, not local travel).

So, when the 1972-75 Energy Crisis hit, many of the rural towns went into the reverse mode, attacking snobby Eugene for not providing them service. Once it became clear that paying taxes was involved the interest narrowed down to providing the service that is described here. It is a compromise that has lasted since the first second-hand Baltimore suburbans were rushed into service in Eugene's hinterlands.


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## Matthew H Fish (May 27, 2022)

Willbridge said:


> So, when the 1972-75 Energy Crisis hit, many of the rural towns went into the reverse mode, attacking snobby Eugene for not providing them service. Once it became clear that paying taxes was involved the interest narrowed down to providing the service that is described here. It is a compromise that has lasted since the first second-hand Baltimore suburbans were rushed into service in Eugene's hinterlands.



If I would guess, I would say the service is just intensive enough to be costly, but not intensive enough to be useful for most people in the town---the Junction City bus had about eight riders, which is not that few. In exurbs or rural towns, buses are usually viewed as a social service---basically, they might be expensive, but they are a lot cheaper than ambulances. 
What is unusual for me about this is that, after living in Montana, when I came back to Oregon, I still view things as being densely populated. Junction City has a population of about 6300 people, which is small for Oregon---but would make it the fifteenth largest city in Montana. 
So to me there is a difference between the objective difference in transit (6000+ people a dozen miles away from a city of 240,000 people (Eugene+Springfield)) is not that large in absolute terms, but subjectively, once you go just a few miles from a central area, transit becomes a last option. Someone in Junction City or even the outer reaches of Eugene is not going to think of the train to Portland as a realistic option because they would have to take an infrequent and slow bus to the train station first. (Or drive there and leave their car parked there). People who aren't in the habit of using transit also have many unfounded fears and prejudices about it. 
So I guess my overall point is that objectively, Junction City is part of an urban area, and has a high enough population to make it cost effective, but there is cultural reasons against it. As opposed to somewhere like the Oregon Coast, where the terrain barriers do present real problems.


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## Matthew H Fish (May 29, 2022)

Apparently, Albany-Newport is now an Amtrak cross-ticketed route, again.


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## Matthew H Fish (Jun 18, 2022)

(I shared this video in another thread, but it also fits here)



This was a trip up to Vancouver, Washington to visit my father. So basically a commuting trip. I don't talk about it in the video, but I used a Flixbus to get from Corvallis to Portland. Only my Flixbus was an hour late and so we were waiting in the rain for an hour. I use Flixbus instead of Amtrak because Amtrak leaves from Albany, not Corvallis, and that adds time to get to Albany. The delay on this trip might make me rethink Flixbus. 
Once I get to Portland, I take the MAX Yellow Line to Delta Park, and then a C-Train shuttle to Vancouver. Depending on how the connections go, and how long the bus takes to go through Jantzen Beach, the trip from Portland to Vancouver can take almost as long as the trip from Corvallis to Portland. The Max Yellow Line itself is quick, it is the connections after that can take time. 
The video doesn't really talk about that, the video is about historic areas in Vancouver, and also why Vancouver looks the way it does. I also talk about it from a personal viewpoint, that as much as I am a transit advocate and use transit, I actually grew up in Clark County, which is a suburban area. So to me, even though roads like this are not the best suited for transit, I still personally like them. 
On the way back, my Flixbus was delayed for 2 hours going south---so I took a chance to walk around Northwest Portland (and also rode the Streetcar). Being in Portland reminded me of a lot of good memories from when I was younger. It also made me realize how thin the threshold for urbanism and transit is: Portland is not that much more populous or dense than Vancouver, but it has gone over a tipping point where it is a lot more active in the streets, and also where there are many more options for transit.


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## Northwestern (Jun 18, 2022)

Matthew H Fish said:


> I hope this one doesn't break the rules:
> 
> 
> This is me visiting Depoe Bay, Oregon, which involves taking a bus to the Oregon Coast. At one time, this bus was an Amtrak Route, and contacted the Amtrak station in Albany with Corvallis and Newport. It still starts and stops from the Albany Amtrak station, but is now operated by Benton (Corvallis) and Lincoln (Newport) counties. After travelling to Newport, I then take another bus a dozen miles northwards to Depoe Bay, a town of about 1,000 people. Most of this video is just me walking around Depoe Bay.
> ...


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## Northwestern (Jun 18, 2022)

I did enjoy the video on Depoe Bay. I always like a visit in any small town or harbor town, especially in Oregon. This summer I'm planning a 2 day stay in Sisters, Oregon.

I subscribe to a magazine entitled "Northwest Travel and Life". They always have articles on small towns and interesting places to visit throughout Oregon, Washington, and the Northwest. Has anyone ever stopped in Winchester Bay, along the Oregon coast? Looks like a great place if you like crabbing and fishing or for just walking around a small, quaint village.









Discover Winchester Bay, Oregon - Northwest Travel Magazine


by Allen Cox The Oregon Coast has long welcomed visitors from its northern point in Astoria south to the California border. Travelers to the coast find everything from beach hotels and casino resorts to outlet malls and artist enclaves. But only a handful of towns along the 363-mile stretch of...




is.gd


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## Matthew H Fish (Jun 19, 2022)

Northwestern said:


> I did enjoy the video on Depoe Bay. I always like a visit in any small town or harbor town, especially in Oregon. This summer I'm planning a 2 day stay in Sisters, Oregon.
> 
> I subscribe to a magazine entitled "Northwest Travel and Life". They always have articles on small towns and interesting places to visit throughout Oregon, Washington, and the Northwest. Has anyone ever stopped in Winchester Bay, along the Oregon coast? Looks like a great place if you like crabbing and fishing or for just walking around a small, quaint village.
> 
> ...



I have been through Winchester Bay several times. It is actually an unincorporated area right outside Reedsport, which is a city, and large enough to have a supermarket, which means by Oregon Coast standards, it is pretty big. Much like what I said about Depoe Bay, but more so, Reedport and Winchester Bay are nice to visit, but can be hard to live in. They are also hard to travel to and from.


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## Northwestern (Jun 19, 2022)

The Northwest article mentioned that it is difficult to get to Winchester Bay. The Unpqua River lighthouse looks interesting (established 1857, the oldest lighthouse on the Oregon coast).

Another place I would like to visit is Garibaldi. A friend of mine says it has several really good restaurants. If I ever get there, I would like to take the "Oregon Coast Scenic Railroad", Garibaldi to Rockaway Beach. Is that one worthwhile?









Oregon Coast Scenic Railroad | Steam Train Rides in Oregon


Oregon Coast Scenic Railroad (OCSR) is a unique heritage railroading museum and also provides interpreted train rides along the coast. Book a ticket online!




is.gd


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## Matthew H Fish (Jun 19, 2022)

Northwestern said:


> The Northwest article mentioned that it is difficult to get to Winchester Bay. The Unpqua River lighthouse looks interesting (established 1857, the oldest lighthouse on the Oregon coast).
> 
> Another place I would like to visit is Garibaldi. A friend of mine says it has several really good restaurants. If I ever get there, I would like to take the "Oregon Coast Scenic Railroad", Garibaldi to Rockaway Beach. Is that one worthwhile?
> 
> ...


With a little bit of exaggeration, once you get to the northern Oregon coast (everything between Newport and Astoria), you don't really have to think in terms of individual cities, because it is just a ribbon of tourist-oriented businesses. There are lots of good restaurants on the Oregon coast, but I didn't know that Garibaldi was specifically known for that. I also didn't know there was a heritage railroad between Garibaldi and Rockaway Beach---but I don't think it is something I would go out of my way for, since it is 5 miles between the towns, and to me that sounds more like a carnival ride than a train trip.


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## Hepcat66 (Jun 19, 2022)

Matthew H Fish said:


> With a little bit of exaggeration, once you get to the northern Oregon coast (everything between Newport and Astoria), you don't really have to think in terms of individual cities, because it is just a ribbon of tourist-oriented businesses. There are lots of good restaurants on the Oregon coast, but I didn't know that Garibaldi was specifically known for that. I also didn't know there was a heritage railroad between Garibaldi and Rockaway Beach---but I don't think it is something I would go out of my way for, since it is 5 miles between the towns, and to me that sounds more like a carnival ride than a train trip.


Not to be too harsh with you, but I can guarantee that the volunteers who keep that train running (Oregon Coast Scenic Railway), don't consider it a "carnival ride". They have a large maintenance building at Rockaway Beach where you can go in and see which project they're working on. This railway was part of the Port of Tillamook Bar Railroad which ran all the way to Portland. See attached link (I hope).


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## Hepcat66 (Jun 19, 2022)

Salmonberry Trail.


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## Matthew H Fish (Jun 19, 2022)

Hepcat66 said:


> Not to be too harsh with you, but I can guarantee that the volunteers who keep that train running (Oregon Coast Scenic Railway), don't consider it a "carnival ride". They have a large maintenance building at Rockaway Beach where you can go in and see which project they're working on. This railway was part of the Port of Tillamook Bar Railroad which ran all the way to Portland. See attached link (I hope).



I didn't mean to be derogatory. I guess my point was, if I was going to visit the Oregon Coast from outside of the Pacific Northwest, nothing in Garibaldi or Rockaway Beach would strike me as specifically a tourist draw. Both for history or natural interest, there are other places on the coast I would go to first. Probably Astoria (which is also a place that has an Amtrak Thruway bus of sorts to it) would be the most obvious location.
Of course, a lot of this is just my prejudices based on my own experiences. The last time I was in Rockaway Beach was as a teen in the 1990s, drinking store brand pop with my teenage friends. So maybe I didn't appreciate the area as much as I could have.


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## Matthew H Fish (Jun 25, 2022)

This is from a trip back in April, to Blodgett, Oregon. 


As of a month or so ago, Blodgett is now a location on the Amtrak network, and the bus I took is now an Amtrak route! This is a flag stop, and apparently on the Amtrak website, this stop doesn't exist, so you would have to get a ticket for Toledo and just ask to be let out here. Also, if departing from this station, or two other stops between Philomath and Toledo, you have to ask in advance. 
In a lot of places where I travel, the population densities are high enough that some type of transit (including rail) would be feasible, but it is a chicken and egg problem to get it started. But here, we have a stretch of highway 38 miles long where the largest community might be between 300 and 500 people---over a diffuse area. The area that I cross in this video is actually towards the "populated" side of this road. And this highway is itself over the Coast Range, which is much more densely populated than the Cascade Range. 
Even with that, as I show in this video, there are actually rail lines here---with trains on them. So the problem here isn't the engineering problem of putting a rail line through the hills---it is the problem of having enough of a population base for passenger rail.


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## Matthew H Fish (Jun 25, 2022)

This is Waldport, Oregon, about a month ago. To get here, I followed much the same process as getting to Depoe Bay: I take the bus to Newport, and then take a bus southwards. Waldport itself also has a road going to Corvallis, but its twistier than the Corvallis-Newport one. Almost all of what I said about Depoe Bay applies to Waldport: its a really nice town to look at, and nice to visit, but its a town based around tourism and retirement, and it is hard to get to anywhere from there. 
Also, the bus I took from Newport to Waldport goes on to Yachats. In Yachats, there is a bus to Florence. In Florence, you can get a ticketed bus (cross-ticketed to Amtrak), that goes from Eugene to Coos Bay. Once in Coos Bay, you can get a "City Bus", 100 miles south to Brookings, where you used to be able to get the Amtrak thruway bus to Klamath Falls. I haven't added it all up, but I think it would take like 3 days to get from Newport to Arcata, California---something that used to be a Greyhound bus trip down Highway 101. 
And, as mentioned, some of this is an engineering problem, some of this is a population density problem, but a lot of it is a jurisdiction and coordination problem.


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## Matthew H Fish (Jun 25, 2022)

And this is from today:


This is from a bus that departs from the Albany Station, and goes eastward through Lebanon and Sweet Home to the Foster Dam. At which points there is about 70 miles without settlements with services. Unlike the Albany-> Newport bus, which is cross-ticketed as an Amtrak route, this is strictly a "city bus", although the distance it travels (30 miles) is obviously more like an intermediate-range service. It only costs a dollar, and as is often the case, is run more for social service purposes than to move substantial amounts of people. Due to the schedule, there is also no marketing it as a tourist or sight-seeing service. If you wanted to see the Foster Dam recreational area, and you wanted to ride Amtrak to Albany and then take a bus to do so, you could, but it would not be an easy task. 
So to reiterate a point I said above, while the Amtrak Cascades service is really good if you want to just move between cities directly served, once you want to do lateral movement off that service, things get tricky. Eugene to Albany is 40 minutes, Lebanon to Veneta is probably more like 4 hours.


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## Willbridge (Jun 26, 2022)

Matthew H Fish said:


> I didn't mean to be derogatory. I guess my point was, if I was going to visit the Oregon Coast from outside of the Pacific Northwest, nothing in Garibaldi or Rockaway Beach would strike me as specifically a tourist draw. Both for history or natural interest, there are other places on the coast I would go to first. Probably Astoria (which is also a place that has an Amtrak Thruway bus of sorts to it) would be the most obvious location....


PDX<>ART has five Thruway buses a day and the US26 -- Sunset Highway -- trips have comfortable buses. (I haven't ridden the US30 -- Lower Columbia -- trips.) It's possible to make a circle trip. I'm planning on riding the US26 route again in August.

Seaside is on the US 26 route. There also is local transit service between Seaside and Astoria.



A Portland<>Seaside<>Astoria bus at Portland Union Station.




In the maritime museum in Astoria.




Astoria - a good place to enjoy fresh seafood.


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## Northwestern (Jun 26, 2022)

I visited Astoria, a few years ago, during a Columbia Gorge boat cruise from Clarkston, WA to Hayden Island, OR. The Astoria stop was interesting, especially the Astoria Column.

Sometime in the future, I've been thinking about a trip from Klamath Falls, OR to Ashland, OR by means of a POINT bus, travelling along their southwest run:






SouthWest (Klamath Falls-Brookings) - POINT


SouthWest POINT Route




is.gd





To start, a departure from Martinez, CA with an early morning arrival at Klamath Falls. Then a POINT bus from Klamath Falls to Ashland, OR for an overnight. The next day, renting a car for a drive to a favorite spot, McCloud, CA. McCloud is an old company lumber town with 3 great waterfalls in the area. If time, a drive over to Dunsmuir, CA with an overnight at the Railroad Village. Then back to the historic town of Jacksonville, OR to spend the night. After dropping off the rental car at the Medford, OR airport, a POINT bus for the return to Klamath Falls. Then, a late evening boarding of the southbound Coast Starlight for the return to Martinez. 

Has anyone ever taken POINT bus along their southwest route? Your impressions. It looks like a scenic trip from Medford to Klamath. However, about a 2.5 hour wait at the Amtrak Klamath Falls station , assuming the southbound Starlight will be on time.


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## Matthew H Fish (Jun 26, 2022)

Northwestern said:


> Has anyone ever taken POINT bus along their southwest route? Your impressions. It looks like a scenic trip from Medford to Klamath. However, about a 2.5 hour wait at the Amtrak Klamath Falls station , assuming the southbound Starlight will be on time.


I have taken the POINT bus between Medford, Oregon and Brookings, Oregon, when I lived in Brookings. I've never taken it east of Medford. As I understand it now, the bus west of Grants Pass changes to being a string of local buses. Which would make it very unwieldy for a tourist with luggage. 
But from what I can remember of the buses physically, they were small (like an E450?) but well maintained and a smooth, easy ride. 
Depending on how much luggage you have, being stuck for two and a half hours in Klamath Falls doesn't sound like a terrible thing. Although, if I remember correctly, it will probably be at night?


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## Northwestern (Jun 26, 2022)

Yes, the POINT bus gets into Klamath around 7:30 PM. The CS gets to Klamath at 10:00 PM.


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## Matthew H Fish (Jul 2, 2022)

Another Friday, another adventure! In this case, to Eugene. I spent this trip in the core area of Eugene, which on my previous trips (shown above), I only passed through. 


I will be cross-posting this video to another thread, because one of the reasons I took it is to address what I see as very exaggerated negative attitudes towards Eugene, (and other Pacific Northwest cities). This video shows Eugene how I know it: as a vibrant area with lots of attractions where people are having fun. And not, as some would have it, as a blighted urban warzone. 
But also, let me say something about the corridor service between Portland and Eugene: right now, it is convenient enough for overnight trips, but not really to the point where you can take a daytrip along the I-5 corridor. I say in this video that you could go from Portland to Eugene, have a beer in an outdoor tavern, then ride back home. And while you could, it would be a lot of work for not much time. Especially if the train is delayed (like it was on this day), even slightly. This is especially true for me, who is off the corridor. They changed the schedule for the northgoing Thruway bus by 15 minutes which meant it got into the Albany transit center just as the Corvallis bus was pulling out. So then I waited for an hour. 
So even though it is fun for adventures or for fun, the Amtrak Cascades is not really convenient for day trips, especially if you are even a little off the corridor.


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## Matthew H Fish (Jul 9, 2022)

I've been doing a lot of trips lately! I might take a break after this one! 
This was a long and somewhat improbable trip that I took mostly to prove that I could. I had to stitch together many forms of transit (from three transit agencies, Flixbus, and Amtrak), to visit seven Willamette Valley counties in one day. I went to Portland and then went to McMinnville, to the southwest of Portland, and then to Salem. 
The most important thing about this is how quickly transit drops off outside of cities. Yamhill County has about 100,000 people, which is not small, but there, like in many suburban/exurban counties, transit is treated like a social service, not like a part of transportation infrastructure. It is possible to use the bus routes to travel, but not in a way that most people could use it as part of normal commuting. 
What this also means is that there are about 100,000 people who wouldn't get much practical advantage out of rail service. In most of Washington County, in places like Beaverton or Tigard, it really is easy to hop on a bus at any time, go to Union Station, and go to Seattle or Eugene. From the outer fringes of Washington County, and from Yamhill County, and Polk County, it would involve a lot of patience and juggling schedules. 
That translates into a smaller customer base, and also a smaller political base: for many people in areas like this, a train they can't use probably seems like an indulgence. My own opinion is that Amtrak should at least think about getting shuttle buses that directly serve areas like this.


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## Willbridge (Jul 10, 2022)

Matthew H Fish said:


> My own opinion is that Amtrak should at least think about getting shuttle buses that directly serve areas like this.


The primary responsibility is with the state government. Amtrak will work with them, but ODOT is supposed to take the lead on it. Give them a call and ask if you can sit down with someone who works on this issue. (I recall that they have an intern working on Amtrak service.)

In the case of Yamhill County, it was orphaned when Tri-Met took over in the 1970's. The law setting up transit districts did not allow for operation outside of their Standard Metropolitan Statistical Areas, so the Portland<>Newberg<>McMinnville route which was a direct descendant of the Red Electric was cut back to Rex Hill and then Sherwood. This left them with Greyhound on the PDX<>SFO run and Hamman Stage Lines running SLM<>McMinnville. As these crumbled away, Yamhill County eventually took on starting a transit system from scratch. That makes a four-decade gap with feeble efforts. Right now they are struggling with the driver shortage.


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## Matthew H Fish (Jul 13, 2022)

Willbridge said:


> The primary responsibility is with the state government. Amtrak will work with them, but ODOT is supposed to take the lead on it. Give them a call and ask if you can sit down with someone who works on this issue. (I recall that they have an intern working on Amtrak service.)
> 
> In the case of Yamhill County, it was orphaned when Tri-Met took over in the 1970's. The law setting up transit districts did not allow for operation outside of their Standard Metropolitan Statistical Areas, so the Portland<>Newberg<>McMinnville route which was a direct descendant of the Red Electric was cut back to Rex Hill and then Sherwood. This left them with Greyhound on the PDX<>SFO run and Hamman Stage Lines running SLM<>McMinnville. As these crumbled away, Yamhill County eventually took on starting a transit system from scratch. That makes a four-decade gap with feeble efforts. Right now they are struggling with the driver shortage.


That is some interesting history, and puts things in perspective. It is also interesting that 40 or 50 years ago, when the region was much less populated, and wasn't a tourist center, that it had more options than it has today. 
I think a big part of it is that a lot of suburban areas are in denial that they are now suburbs. Many small towns around the Willamette Valley have real estate ads calling them "little farming towns". When a few people move to a "little farming town" it doesn't matter, but when 5,000 people do, it is no longer a country town, it is a suburb. There are probably 10s of thousands of commuters, from McMinnville through Sherwood, all being funneled down Highway 99W. But because people there think they are in a rural area, they don't think they need a bus system.


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## Matthew H Fish (Jul 30, 2022)

This is Yachats, Oregon. This is in many ways the "last town" on the Northern Oregon Coast, before a 20 mile stretch of rocky, almost uninhabited coastline before Florence. This is also the last town in Lincoln County, Oregon, which parallels most of the Willamette Valley. I got here by taking the Albany->Newport bus, which is a cross-ticketed Amtrak route, and functions like one, and then by taking the south Lincoln County bus, which functions more as a social service bus, making frequent stops for locals who might not have a lot of mobility. It takes an hour to get from Newport to Yachats, and there are only four trips a day. The bus actually does coordinate with another bus that goes to Florence, but it is quite a number of trips.
The Oregon Coast is a really nice region to visit, and it is possible to visit it only on transit (incidentally, it would probably be possible, if not plausible, to get to this region coming from the south on the Coast Starlight, getting off in Eugene, going through Florence, and then rejoining the Amtrak Cascades in Albany...but not very possible), but it is also really isolated, and the discontinuation of long-distance transit service along the coast has made these communities more fragmented.


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## tomfuller (Jul 30, 2022)

Matthew H Fish said:


> This is Yachats, Oregon. This is in many ways the "last town" on the Northern Oregon Coast, before a 20 mile stretch of rocky, almost uninhabited coastline before Florence. This is also the last town in Lincoln County, Oregon, which parallels most of the Willamette Valley. I got here by taking the Albany->Newport bus, which is a cross-ticketed Amtrak route, and functions like one, and then by taking the south Lincoln County bus, which functions more as a social service bus, making frequent stops for locals who might not have a lot of mobility. It takes an hour to get from Newport to Yachats, and there are only four trips a day. The bus actually does coordinate with another bus that goes to Florence, but it is quite a number of trips.
> The Oregon Coast is a really nice region to visit, and it is possible to visit it only on transit (incidentally, it would probably be possible, if not plausible, to get to this region coming from the south on the Coast Starlight, getting off in Eugene, going through Florence, and then rejoining the Amtrak Cascades in Albany...but not very possible), but it is also really isolated, and the discontinuation of long-distance transit service along the coast has made these communities more fragmented.



For those who may not know the proper pronunciation of Yachats it is ya-HOTS. My favorite town on the northern Oregon coast is Seaside. Just off the "prom" in Seaside is a memorial where members of the "Corps of Discovery" boiled seawater to make 3 bushels of salt to preserve their elk meat for the trip back to St. Louis.


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## Matthew H Fish (Jul 30, 2022)

I haven't been to the northernmost coast this year, but I probably should go.
For travellers, the buses to the northcoast are more integrated with the Amtrak system, and more geared towards tourists. So the bus from Union Station to Astoria has all the luggage handling of any Amtrak thruway route. There is also going to be a lot more tourist friendly options once you get to the station---so if someone is taking the Coast Starlight and wants to see the Oregon Coast, going to Astoria/Cannon Beach/Seaside is probably the best option.


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## Matthew H Fish (Aug 14, 2022)

Yesterday, I went to Eugene again---the Amtrak Cascades runs frequently enough that I can make semi-convenient daytrips down to Eugene. I can leave Albany at noon, stay there for a few hours, then come back on a Thruway bus. As I have commented, the Amtrak Cascades is easy enough for someone who just wants to go somewhere to see it---but is not quite there for someone who has a specific appointment. 
Most of this video is not centered around transit, instead talking about natural features, but I do ask one really important transit-related question:
Eugene is pretty famous in Oregon, and maybe elsewhere, for being an environmentally-friendly and transit focused city. It helps that it is a college town. According to a figure on the Lane Transit District website, it has 27,000 boardings daily and 10 million boardings a year (not sure how they calculate boardings versus riders), which compares well to many bigger cities--- apparently, Cincinnati, Columbus and Milwaukee, all major cities, have around 15-30 million riders a year. (But they might have more boardings---again, I don't know how it is calculated.) Eugene has a BRT system, the Emerald Express, that runs about every 10-15 minutes, 18 hours a day. In places, the BRT has its own right of way. In other places, it is an articulated bus trying to navigate city streets. 
Eugene is really walkable and transit-oriented downtown, but like most cities, it also has an area that is not as pleasant for pedestrians. There are miles to the west of the city that are six lane highways with big box stores. The BRT line actually goes along this stretch, and in this video, I take it to the end of the line and see this side of town. One of the biggest questions I had for this is, what happens when you have a good transit system going into a transit-unfriendly region? My own observation was that the BRT system was very well utilized in the downtown area, but that it was still fairly busy up until the end of the line, when there was still a half-dozen people riding. 
Maybe someone who is more familiar with Eugene can tell me their experiences? From a transit standpoint, how does the Eugene part of Eugene relate to the "stereotypical American suburb" part of Eugene?


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## Matthew H Fish (Aug 21, 2022)

I took a trip to Portland the other day (I made a video, which I will put in my thread for the Portland MAX), and I took an Amtrak Thruway bus to get there. The Amtrak Cascades goes up the East side of the valley, while the Thruway goes up I-5. It stops in Woodburn and at the Tualatin Park and Ride. 
The Tualatin Park and Ride is about 15 miles south of downtown Portland, so an outer-ring exurb. The Park and Ride is right off the freeway, so it seems easy enough to exit, pickup/dropoff, and then get right back on the freeway. But this is interchange land, so there was a lot of waiting for left turn signals just for that simple trip. I actually timed it: between exiting and entering, it was 10 minutes. And I think it was one or two passengers. 
I think this can be a problem with a lot of train routes, that "just one stop" seems like an easy enough thing to add, but then when you add more and more, it can be "death by a thousand cuts", making the entire experience less viable for everyone. It also shows how much better trains are: the process of getting a bus into a transit center is much harder than stopping a train at a major station.


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## Willbridge (Aug 22, 2022)

Matthew H Fish said:


> I took a trip to Portland the other day (I made a video, which I will put in my thread for the Portland MAX), and I took an Amtrak Thruway bus to get there. The Amtrak Cascades goes up the East side of the valley, while the Thruway goes up I-5. It stops in Woodburn and at the Tualatin Park and Ride.
> The Tualatin Park and Ride is about 15 miles south of downtown Portland, so an outer-ring exurb. The Park and Ride is right off the freeway, so it seems easy enough to exit, pickup/dropoff, and then get right back on the freeway. But this is interchange land, so there was a lot of waiting for left turn signals just for that simple trip. I actually timed it: between exiting and entering, it was 10 minutes. And I think it was one or two passengers.
> I think this can be a problem with a lot of train routes, that "just one stop" seems like an easy enough thing to add, but then when you add more and more, it can be "death by a thousand cuts", making the entire experience less viable for everyone. It also shows how much better trains are: the process of getting a bus into a transit center is much harder than stopping a train at a major station.


The time lost getting on or off of a limited access highway was one of the issues that led instead to the development of the _Cascades. _Modest improvements can provide a service as fast between major cities as a non-stop bus, while providing stops in smaller cities.


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## Matthew H Fish (Aug 22, 2022)

I can't remember when exactly the Tualatin Stop got on the Amtrak Cascades schedule. I imagine it has some good reasons, and bad reasons for being there. The good reasons are, it is quite a ways from Portland, and even though it is theoretically possible to get back to the Tualatin area from Portland by local buses, it probably takes more than an hour to do so. So I can see how it could be very convenient for travelers who are heading there, or to anywhere in the southwest part of the Portland area. I imagine that since the area also is pretty affluent and has a lot of tech businesses, I imagine that there might have been some lobbying to get a stop there. Also, it might be related to negative propaganda about Portland itself---there may be people who don't want to get off at Union station because of perceptions about that area being unsafe.


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## Matthew H Fish (Sep 10, 2022)

Yesterday, I went to Eugene again:


This is actually the only "round trip" I can do by train from where I am, and would give me 2.5 hours in Eugene. But today, the train was late, and instead I only had 90 minutes there. And also, on that day, forest fire smoke started to fill the city. So all in all, it wasn't quite the trip I expected. 
Two things: this was the day I was actually planning on having a Train Party, which I hope I can still do in the future. Many people expressed interest in this, but when I set the date, no one could come. This brings me to a major point about the Amtrak Cascades (at least south of Portland): right now it is a "Good Idea". The idea of taking a train trip through the Willamette Valley, enjoying the scenery, and then visiting Eugene, was something a lot of people thought would be a fun idea...and indeed it is, but also the schedules weren't practical for many people. I think this is true of a lot of transit outside of big cities and corridors: they are still "Good Ideas" but not really something that people can use practically. 
Secondly, I will have to admit something that, as an Oregonian, I shouldn't admit: Oregon is the junior partner of Washington in many things, and this includes transit. I usually think about the Amtrak Cascades in terms of using it in the Willamette Valley, but the reality is, the second largest county in Washington State on the line (Pierce, home of Tacoma), has more people than the 3 Willamette Valley Counties (Marion, Salem; Linn, Albany; Lane, Eugene) that have Amtrak Cascades stops. (And almost as many if you add in Polk and Benton).


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## Matthew H Fish (Oct 22, 2022)

Yesterday, I took an Amtrak Cascades bus to Woodburn, Oregon. This is about the least epic trip imaginable, since it is just two bus hops up the I-5 corridor, from Albany, to Salem, to Woodburn (a small town/exurb about 15 miles between the Salem and Portland areas). I was the only person getting off/getting on at the transit center (even though the Amtrak Cascades bus was packed).
Woodburn actually has two transit centers: one along the freeway, and one in downtown. This has to do with the history of the city, where it was originally built around railroad tracks in the 19th century, and then different parts of the town developed when Highway 99E and Interstate 5 were built later. So I don't know what the intended clientele for the I-5 stop was, or whether it was made at the request of a state legislator. 
On the way back, I rode a regional transit bus, between Woodburn and Salem, and then used another Amtrak Cascades bus between Salem and Albany. My bus was an hour late, and I spent some time worrying whether I could make my final bus connection back between Albany and Corvallis. 
As is often the case with these trips, even though I could do it as a hobbyist, the entire thing was held together by chewing gum and bailing wire, and it would be hard to use these transit methods for someone who had to get somewhere in a hurry.


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## Willbridge (Oct 25, 2022)

Matthew H Fish said:


> Yesterday, I took an Amtrak Cascades bus to Woodburn, Oregon. This is about the least epic trip imaginable, since it is just two bus hops up the I-5 corridor, from Albany, to Salem, to Woodburn (a small town/exurb about 15 miles between the Salem and Portland areas). I was the only person getting off/getting on at the transit center (even though the Amtrak Cascades bus was packed).
> Woodburn actually has two transit centers: one along the freeway, and one in downtown. This has to do with the history of the city, where it was originally built around railroad tracks in the 19th century, and then different parts of the town developed when Highway 99E and Interstate 5 were built later. So I don't know what the intended clientele for the I-5 stop was, or whether it was made at the request of a state legislator.
> On the way back, I rode a regional transit bus, between Woodburn and Salem, and then used another Amtrak Cascades bus between Salem and Albany. My bus was an hour late, and I spent some time worrying whether I could make my final bus connection back between Albany and Corvallis.
> As is often the case with these trips, even though I could do it as a hobbyist, the entire thing was held together by chewing gum and bailing wire, and it would be hard to use these transit methods for someone who had to get somewhere in a hurry.



The I-5 stop is closer to Woodburn Senior Estates and originally bore that name. Greyhound started it in response to complaints in the days when many seniors did not drive. Local Greyhound trips on US99E were a long way from the I-5 stop.

Eventually, Greyhound discontinued the US99E locals and ran some I-5 trips via Tigard and Woodburn. They showed an agent at "Woodburn" -- but I don't know if it was by the freeway or downtown or at US99E.

Poor Woodburn! Before WWI the Oregon Electric Railway bypassed it even further west than the much later alignment of I-5. The OE built a branch from West Woodburn to Woodburn and ran a one-car train into downtown. That disappeared pretty early. My dad can remember riding the OE, but not that little feeder line.


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## Matthew H Fish (Oct 25, 2022)

Willbridge said:


> The I-5 stop is closer to Woodburn Senior Estates and originally bore that name. Greyhound started it in response to complaints in the days when many seniors did not drive. Local Greyhound trips on US99E were a long way from the I-5 stop.
> 
> Eventually, Greyhound discontinued the US99E locals and ran some I-5 trips via Tigard and Woodburn. They showed an agent at "Woodburn" -- but I don't know if it was by the freeway or downtown or at US99E.
> 
> Poor Woodburn! Before WWI the Oregon Electric Railway bypassed it even further west than the much later alignment of I-5. The OE built a branch from West Woodburn to Woodburn and ran a one-car train into downtown. That disappeared pretty early. My dad can remember riding the OE, but not that little feeder line.



I remember when Greyhound stopped in Tigard---which seemed silly to me, because Trimet took trips between downtown Portland and Tigard every 15 minutes. I can understand how it would be helpful for one or two people, but it didn't make sense to have such a detour. But a lot of that comes from Portland's suburbs and exurbs having dual transit service, one local, one intermediate distance. 
I didn't exactly know the history of Woodburn---I knew that the part near the freeway was new, but didn't realize that it was part of a single development for seniors, and didn't realize how discongruent with the rest of the city. I didn't realize until my walk that there was just a big blank space between the old part and new part of the city.


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## Willbridge (Oct 28, 2022)

One other note: Gervais in Oregon is pronounced as if it is spelled 'Jervis'. Mr. Gervais was a pioneer settler who probably knew the French pronunciation as 'Jervae'. Some readers here will recognize that as a kind of cheese. Others who ride Train 14 will recognize it as the siding where their on-time train will ease to a spot in the middle of a field. Later, it will leave, now behind schedule.

My ex is French-Canadian and when we lived in Salem there were a lot of French names that were given local pronunciations that gave her the "fingernails on a blackboard" feeling.

Gervais is pretty obscure. Being only three rail miles from Woodburn it was over-shadowed by the stop there and by the stop at Chemawa south of it. Both those were served by the _Klamath. _ Gervais lost rail passenger service in August 1955 when the SP _Rogue River_ was discontinued.


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## Willbridge (Oct 28, 2022)

Matthew H Fish said:


> I remember when Greyhound stopped in Tigard---which seemed silly to me, because Trimet took trips between downtown Portland and Tigard every 15 minutes. I can understand how it would be helpful for one or two people, but it didn't make sense to have such a detour. But a lot of that comes from Portland's suburbs and exurbs having dual transit service, one local, one intermediate distance.


For many years Tigard was served by three Greyhound trips between Portland and Coos Bay. Two of those went on to San Francisco via US101. Tigard had an agent and had built up package express business after Tualatin Valley Stages was replaced by Tri-Met. When Greyhound began to fade away, they wanted to retain that package business, so deviated a couple of trips into Tigard off of I-5.


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## Matthew H Fish (Oct 28, 2022)

Willbridge said:


> One other note: Gervais in Oregon is pronounced as if it is spelled 'Jervis'. Mr. Gervais was a pioneer settler who probably knew the French pronunciation as 'Jervae'. Some readers here will recognize that as a kind of cheese. Others who ride Train 14 will recognize it as the siding where their on-time train will ease to a spot in the middle of a field. Later, it will leave, now behind schedule.
> 
> My ex is French-Canadian and when we lived in Salem there were a lot of French names that were given local pronunciations that gave her the "fingernails on a blackboard" feeling.
> 
> Gervais is pretty obscure. Being only three rail miles from Woodburn it was over-shadowed by the stop there and by the stop at Chemawa south of it. Both those were served by the _Klamath. _ Gervais lost rail passenger service in August 1955 when the SP _Rogue River_ was discontinued.


I actually just checked, and Gervais is apparently bigger than I thought it would be: it is 3000 people, and I thought it was closer to 500 people. That might not seem like a lot, but Gervais is more populated than 8 of Oregon's 36 county seats. 
The 99E corridor of towns, Canby, Aurora, Hubbard, Woodburn, Gervais, Brooks, into Salem, are in a weird zone where they aren't big enough to sustain transit---but also, it doesn't make sense that they don't have transit. There actually could theoretically be some type of local train along the route, but its a chicken and egg problem where the towns would have to show interest first, but its too far out of the experience of people there to show interest.


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## Matthew H Fish (Nov 13, 2022)

First off, I have talked about the Amtrak Cascades before---but here is my introduction to the service in Spanish! I wasn't feeling good that day, so there are times when I make some grammar mistakes. 
So, that day, I wanted to get to Eugene earlier, so I bought an outgoing ticket on the Greyhound from Corvallis to Eugene, and then I got a ticket going back on Amtrak. When I showed up at the Greyhound stop in Corvallis, I waited for a while but my bus didn't come...so I checked my ticket, that I had gotten at online checkin that day...and found that it was 20 minutes earlier than when I had ordered it. And even though I was a little early, it had already left. I went home, e-Mailed Greyhound's customer support (they eventually refunded my money), and then figured, I already had an Amtrak return ticket---so I just bought a ticket to go back to Eugene. Of course, this meant I had to leave later, and would only be there for two hours. But I was determined to go! (Despite being sick.  ) 
So, I guess I will just reiterate a point I've made before, and will continue to make every time it happens: it is hard to travel in the Willamette Valley outside of the main corridor cities. Especially when a transit company like Greyhound treats schedules as mild suggestions.


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## Willbridge (Nov 13, 2022)

That one trip had a schedule change effective October 25th.

They are disorganized in their own Greyhound way and sometimes make changes without even circulating a schedule bulletin, one of the negatives of deregulation.

Here's their internal site with schedules, archived schedules, bulletins:



Greyhound Lines Inc. - Revenue Support Department



Some browsers warn that this is a dangerous site, probably because they've never upgraded it to https.

More GL strangeness:

EFFECTIVE: November 2, 2022
TABLE 600
Schedules 1446, 1436, 1449, 1431 – Salem, OR has been discontinued. Will stop at Woodburn, OR. The only time changes will be at Woodburn, OR.


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## Matthew H Fish (Nov 14, 2022)

Willbridge said:


> That one trip had a schedule change effective October 25th.
> 
> They are disorganized in their own Greyhound way and sometimes make changes without even circulating a schedule bulletin, one of the negatives of deregulation.
> 
> ...



That is certainly a curious decision, and it shows just how fragmented travel around the Willamette Valley, even around the larger cities, is. 
I guess people in Salem can still take the Cascades or the POINT bus to Eugene, and then transfer on to a bus going to Medford? That seems like a lot of epicycles. And I guess that people going to Redding or Sacramento can also do that on the Coast Starlight. But using that logic, they can all of the stops on I-5, and just do a Eugene->Redding trip.


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## Northwestern (Nov 14, 2022)

Matthew H Fish said:


> That is certainly a curious decision, and it shows just how fragmented travel around the Willamette Valley, even around the larger cities, is.
> I guess people in Salem can still take the Cascades or the POINT bus to Eugene, and then transfer on to a bus going to Medford? That seems like a lot of epicycles. And I guess that people going to Redding or Sacramento can also do that on the Coast Starlight. But using that logic, they can all of the stops on I-5, and just do a Eugene->Redding trip.


I always wondered if it would have been possible for the Coast Starlight to follow Highway 5, south from Eugene, to Medford. Then take a route along either the present day highway 140 or 62 from Medford to Klamath Falls. It would make possible stops at Roseburg, Grants Pass, as well as Medford. Is the reason due to a lack of track or the steep grades that the train would probably encounter?


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## Matthew H Fish (Nov 14, 2022)

Northwestern said:


> I always wondered if it would have been possible for the Coast Starlight to follow Highway 5, south from Eugene, to Medford. Then take a route along either the present day highway 140 or 62 from Medford to Klamath Falls. It would make possible stops at Roseburg, Grants Pass, as well as Medford. Is the reason due to a lack of track or the steep grades that the train would probably encounter?


I forgot where we talked about this, but I do remember a thread talking about it. Counterintuitively, crossing the Cascades twice is actually easier than all the little ups and downs along I-5.
You can also see that by road---if you check Google maps, it is actually shorter, from the junction around Redding, to take Highway 97 and then cross the Cascades, than to go along I-5.

Yep, it looks like it was me who posted about it:





Why does the Coast Starlight go east of the Cascades?


This is a question that has been puzzling me for a while: North of Redding, the Coast Starlight goes east over the Cascades through northern California, through Klamath Falls and Chemult, before heading back west to Eugene. To me, the route following the I-5 corridor seems to make more sense...




www.amtraktrains.com


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## Northwestern (Nov 14, 2022)

Matthew H Fish said:


> I forgot where we talked about this, but I do remember a thread talking about it. Counterintuitively, crossing the Cascades twice is actually easier than all the little ups and downs along I-5.
> You can also see that by road---if you check Google maps, it is actually shorter, from the junction around Redding, to take Highway 97 and then cross the Cascades, than to go along I-5.
> 
> Yep, it looks like it was me who posted about it:
> ...


Thanks for posting the thread. Interesting. However, on the down side, it would eliminate my favorite segment of the Coast Starlight route, from Klamath through the lower Cascades to Eugene. Traveling in the early morning northbound and around sunset southbound.


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## Matthew H Fish (Nov 15, 2022)

Northwestern said:


> Thanks for posting the thread. Interesting. However, on the down side, it would eliminate my favorite segment of the Coast Starlight route, from Klamath through the lower Cascades to Eugene. Traveling in the early morning northbound and around sunset southbound.



Well, I think that even if it does happen, it is going to be quite a few years before Amtrak changes their route through here. I mean, if Amtrak is going to make any service changes in Oregon, it is going to be the low-hanging fruit of more trains and station improvements before they undertake a gigantic engineering project.


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## Willbridge (Nov 16, 2022)

Matthew H Fish said:


> Well, I think that even if it does happen, it is going to be quite a few years before Amtrak changes their route through here. I mean, if Amtrak is going to make any service changes in Oregon, it is going to be the low-hanging fruit of more trains and station improvements before they undertake a gigantic engineering project.


I've written about it before, but in brief, when I worked at ODOT I had access to the SP engineering diagrams and operating timetables and a _Coast Starlight _equivalent would have been five hours slower on the 19th Century Siskiyou Line than on the 20th Century Cascade Line.


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## Matthew H Fish (Nov 20, 2022)

This is kind of stretching the purpose of this thread, because this is more about the history of rail and transit in a city, but it still "involves rail transit" in that I show the train station, and how it relates to the surrounding community. 
This is about Albany, Oregon, which is the smallest city in Oregon on the Cascades corridor. While most cities in the Willamette Valley switched to services or high-tech economies, Albany is still based around old industry---timber and metals. It also have major freight yards. 
Before World War II, it seems the train track (and the Amtrak station) would have been at the eastern end of the city. After World War II, the city sprawled out to the east, creating two disconnected towns: an old downtown, full of brick buildings, and small city blocks to the west of the tracks, and then a sprawl of highways and big box retail to the east. 
As far as train travel goes, this makes Albany a bit difficult, especially if the Cascades tries to become a more regular commuter service. In Eugene, you can hop off of the Amtrak Cascades and be immediately surrounded by dining, entertainment, and also offices. As well as local transit routes that work regularly. But if you hop off of the Amtrak Cascades in Albany, you have freight yards to one side and a highway to the other.


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## Northwestern (Nov 20, 2022)

Matthew H Fish said:


> This is kind of stretching the purpose of this thread, because this is more about the history of rail and transit in a city, but it still "involves rail transit" in that I show the train station, and how it relates to the surrounding community.
> This is about Albany, Oregon, which is the smallest city in Oregon on the Cascades corridor. While most cities in the Willamette Valley switched to services or high-tech economies, Albany is still based around old industry---timber and metals. It also have major freight yards.
> Before World War II, it seems the train track (and the Amtrak station) would have been at the eastern end of the city. After World War II, the city sprawled out to the east, creating two disconnected towns: an old downtown, full of brick buildings, and small city blocks to the west of the tracks, and then a sprawl of highways and big box retail to the east.
> As far as train travel goes, this makes Albany a bit difficult, especially if the Cascades tries to become a more regular commuter service. In Eugene, you can hop off of the Amtrak Cascades and be immediately surrounded by dining, entertainment, and also offices. As well as local transit routes that work regularly. But if you hop off of the Amtrak Cascades in Albany, you have freight yards to one side and a highway to the oth






Matthew H Fish said:


> This is kind of stretching the purpose of this thread, because this is more about the history of rail and transit in a city, but it still "involves rail transit" in that I show the train station, and how it relates to the surrounding community.
> This is about Albany, Oregon, which is the smallest city in Oregon on the Cascades corridor. While most cities in the Willamette Valley switched to services or high-tech economies, Albany is still based around old industry---timber and metals. It also have major freight yards.
> Before World War II, it seems the train track (and the Amtrak station) would have been at the eastern end of the city. After World War II, the city sprawled out to the east, creating two disconnected towns: an old downtown, full of brick buildings, and small city blocks to the west of the tracks, and then a sprawl of highways and big box retail to the east.
> As far as train travel goes, this makes Albany a bit difficult, especially if the Cascades tries to become a more regular commuter service. In Eugene, you can hop off of the Amtrak Cascades and be immediately surrounded by dining, entertainment, and also offices. As well as local transit routes that work regularly. But if you hop off of the Amtrak Cascades in Albany, you have freight yards to one side and a highway to the other.



I enjoyed the video. I get a magazine called "Northwest Travel and Life" which covers popular travel destinations in the Northwest. A few years ago the magazine had an article on Albany. OR:









Albany, Oregon: Historically Delicious - Northwest Travel Magazine


On your first visit to Albany, Oregon, you might discover that beneath the small-town veneer it is actually a blend of urban sophistication and countryside manners. From craft beer and truffle season to blueberry fields and artfully brewed cappuccinos,




is.gd





It looks like a fun town to visit. Especially for sampling food from local farms; fruits and veggies.


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## Willbridge (Nov 22, 2022)

I checked a streetcar map for Albany and almost the entire town in that era was between the SP tracks and the Willamette River. River traffic was likely a consideration. The streetcar ran from the SP Depot via Lyon Street to First Avenue, a block from the river and was controlled by the SP. However, the OE was still able to get into Albany in 1912. In 1918 the streetcar was shut down and a decade after the OE reached Albany its passenger service was doomed by completion of the Pacific Highway (US99E).


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## Matthew H Fish (Dec 5, 2022)

Usually I take the Amtrak Cascades or just a bus, but this weekend, for a multiple-day trip, I took the Coast Starlight. Unfortunately, in December, and being two hours late, what I saw of the Willamette Valley between Albany and Vancouver was mostly shadowy. Also, a lot of the places that the railroad tracks pass through are the type of places that railroad tracks pass through---lots of warehouses and sheds and autoyards, etc, which can be a disappointment after all the scenery between Redding and Eugene. 
In this video, I say that while I can usually find some sort of point or conclusion, in this case, I just took the train and reached my destination. Maybe it is getting too late in the year to be smart?


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## Willbridge (Dec 6, 2022)

An added note about the Salem and Woodburn service: since you launched this series, Greyhound Lines has discontinued service to Salem, abandoning the charming station built for them by ODOT. Now all I-5 trips stop in Woodburn.

Flixbus runs only PDX<>SLM<>CVI<>EUG once a day, so Amtrak at SLM with three daily trains each way and five daily Thruway buses each way is the major carrier in the capital city.


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## Matthew H Fish (Dec 6, 2022)

Willbridge said:


> An added note about the Salem and Woodburn service: since you launched this series, Greyhound Lines has discontinued service to Salem, abandoning the charming station built for them by ODOT. Now all I-5 trips stop in Woodburn.
> 
> Flixbus runs only PDX<>SLM<>CVI<>EUG once a day, so Amtrak at SLM with three daily trains each way and five daily Thruway buses each way is the major carrier in the capital city.


Yep, we talked about that on the last page. Without really finding out a reason why.


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## Willbridge (Dec 6, 2022)

Matthew H Fish said:


> I haven't been to the northernmost coast this year, but I probably should go.
> For travellers, the buses to the northcoast are more integrated with the Amtrak system, and more geared towards tourists. So the bus from Union Station to Astoria has all the luggage handling of any Amtrak thruway route. There is also going to be a lot more tourist friendly options once you get to the station---so if someone is taking the Coast Starlight and wants to see the Oregon Coast, going to Astoria/Cannon Beach/Seaside is probably the best option.


The _Oregonian _website has a positive article about a family trip by transit and intercity bus from Portland to Cannon Beach.









Take a cozy, car-free family mini-vacation to Cannon Beach


You don't need to be a TikTok travel influencer to take transit to a beautiful location.




www.oregonlive.com


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## Willbridge (Dec 6, 2022)

Matthew H Fish said:


> Yep, we talked about that on the last page. Without really finding out a reason why.


Sometimes they've temporarily discontinued service while changing agents or stop locations, which is why I re-checked their information. It's been going on for long enough to seem "permanent".


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## Matthew H Fish (Dec 7, 2022)

Willbridge said:


> Sometimes they've temporarily discontinued service while changing agents or stop locations, which is why I re-checked their information. It's been going on for long enough to seem "permanent".


Ah, okay. Sorry for doubting that you were on the ball!  
The reasons for such a decision still seem pretty mysterious to me, although I imagine it might be either about the time required to get off of/onto the freeway, or it might have been about security maintenance at the station.


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## Matthew H Fish (Dec 7, 2022)

I posted this one in the Portland MAX thread, talking about its impact on local transportation, but here it is to talk about the Amtrak Cascades:


Vancouver, Washington Amtrak is the most difficult train station for travellers. It is in a railroad wye, with three railroads tracks to cross to get out of it. Immediately outside of that is a warehouse district, and then after crossing through a governmental complex, you would be in downtown. 
This is a great contrast to Eugene, for example, where you literally have 100 feet between the doors of the Amtrak station and a bar, and where you are basically right in the entertainment district. 
What this means for travellers is that if you are getting off or getting on, or if your train unfortunately has a delay and is stuck at a station---in a city like Eugene, you can actually go out and do something fun. In Vancouver, if you had to wait...you would be waiting in the middle of a warehouse district. 
Here is a list, from my experience, of how easy it is to access things from the Amtrak Station:

1. Eugene -- super easy and fun
2. Albany -- a short walk to downtown, one difficult underpass to cross
3. Salem -- pretty close to the state capital and downtown
4. Portland -- right next to light rail, close to some restaurants, can be a bit of a sketchy neighborhood at times
5. Vancouver -- as seen, pretty bad
6. Kelso/Longview -- I've never gotten off here, it seems pretty medium
7. Centralia -- Right in the middle of a downtown area with dining
8. Oympia -- Not actually in Olympia, like 10 miles from downtown Olympia
9. Tacoma -- In a railroad district, but there is some stuff around
10. Seattle -- In downtown Seattle, but kind of on the edge of town


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## Northwestern (Dec 7, 2022)

I have some plans, next summer, for a trip to Whitefish, MT. My plan is to fly to Portland then pick up the Empire Builder for the trip to Whitefish. However, because of the "sketchy neighborhood", as you put it, with panhandlers and homeless about, I was thinking of leaving from Vancouver, WA instead.
I have discovered, however, that Vancouver, WA is a flag stop for the Empire Builder, and that Vancouver doesn't take checked baggage if you depart on the Builder. Is this so? Maybe it would be easier to leave from Union Station, in Portland, and hope I don't get hit up for money by the local street folk and the neighborhood around the station isn't as bad as some reports say it is.

Something I don't understand. Why is a large city like Vancouver, WA a flag stop for the Empire Builder? I also made an inquiry and found that the Vancouver station, indeed, doesn't take checked baggage if you are taking the Empire Builder. I believe Vancouver isn't a flag stop and will let you check baggage if you are taking the Coast Starlight.

I am also wondering, as the EB doesn't have a dining car, if the boxed meal is palatable or if it would be better to take along a sandwich.


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## Willbridge (Dec 9, 2022)

Boarding in Vancouver you'll miss crossing the Willamette River and the Columbia River. On the other hand, it's pretty mellow. Portland is busy at the time for Train 28. Just allow for a delay in case you have to wait for a freight on the non-passenger side of the wye.

When I was a kid, the SP&S Rwy. guys used to let me behind the ticket counter and into the telegraph office. There is no longer a telegraph office, but I have the impression that the Amtrak agents are still less stressed than in PDX.


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## Northwestern (Dec 10, 2022)

Must have been fun to see the telegraph office. I have spoken, in the past, with at least one ham operator who used to work as a railroad telegraph operator He said it took some time to lean to copy from those old sound boxes ("railroad code") as he called it. I am trying to think; there might have been a display of an old telegraph desk at the railroad depots at Lake Louise, AB and at Glenwood Springs, CO. but I'm not sure.





G

Going back to the question of why is the Vancouver station a regular stop for the Coast Starlight and only a flag stop for the Empire Builder. I wonder if the reason has something to do with the fact that Coast Starlight and Cascades passengers board from the Northwest side of the station while Empire Builder passengers board from the Southeast side of the station? Viewing Mr. Fish's video, the Vancouver station doesn't seem to be user friendly.


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## Willbridge (Dec 11, 2022)

Northwestern said:


> Must have been fun to see the telegraph office. I have spoken, in the past, with at least one ham operator who used to work as a railroad telegraph operator He said it took some time to lean to copy from those old sound boxes ("railroad code") as he called it. I am trying to think; there might have been a display of an old telegraph desk at the railroad depots at Lake Louise, AB and at Glenwood Springs, CO. but I'm not sure.
> 
> 
> 
> Going back to the question of why is the Vancouver station a regular stop for the Coast Starlight and only a flag stop for the Empire Builder. I wonder if the reason has something to do with the fact that Coast Starlight and Cascades passengers board from the Northwest side of the station while Empire Builder passengers board from the Southeast side of the station? Viewing Mr. Fish's video, the Vancouver station doesn't seem to be user friendly.


Yes, I started back then to learn Morse code, but got so interested in photography that I never followed up. There was a telegrapher's club in Portland that met in the Mallory Hotel and would set up a circuit and chit chat in code. The Vancouver station was a busy place due to the junction, but also because trains on the Tacoma line were under the NP dispatcher in that city, so new train orders had to be issued in each direction. (The line between Vancouver and Portland was the SP&S.) I also spent time at Willbridge, where I could watch the CTC board from outside of the station.

In a 2016 PRINTED timetable, the only flag stop on the Builder was at Essex. And Vancouver was shown as having checked baggage service.


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## Matthew H Fish (Dec 16, 2022)

Northwestern said:


> I have some plans, next summer, for a trip to Whitefish, MT. My plan is to fly to Portland then pick up the Empire Builder for the trip to Whitefish. However, because of the "sketchy neighborhood", as you put it, with panhandlers and homeless about, I was thinking of leaving from Vancouver, WA instead.
> I have discovered, however, that Vancouver, WA is a flag stop for the Empire Builder, and that Vancouver doesn't take checked baggage if you depart on the Builder. Is this so? Maybe it would be easier to leave from Union Station, in Portland, and hope I don't get hit up for money by the local street folk and the neighborhood around the station isn't as bad as some reports say it is.
> 
> Something I don't understand. Why is a large city like Vancouver, WA a flag stop for the Empire Builder? I also made an inquiry and found that the Vancouver station, indeed, doesn't take checked baggage if you are taking the Empire Builder. I believe Vancouver isn't a flag stop and will let you check baggage if you are taking the Coast Starlight.
> ...


I was on vacation (many videos coming soon!) so I didn't have access to a computer and couldn't answer this.
A picture is worth a thousand words, so a video is worth thousands of words, and here is a video of The Fields Park in Portland, about four or five blocks from Union Station:

Right in the sketchiest part of downtown Portland, we have families and people of all ages having fun and walking their dogs seemingly without a care.
But of course, a traveller who might be tired and encumbered by baggage might be a lot more vulnerable than people familiar with the neighborhood.
But personally, it seems like a lot more effort to go to Vancouver to avoid sketchiness...when Union Station itself, if you stay inside, is very safe and comfortable, and when the Vancouver station is not exactly the most charming and safe location either.


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## Northwestern (Dec 17, 2022)

Matthew H Fish said:


> I was on vacation (many videos coming soon!) so I didn't have access to a computer and couldn't answer this.
> A picture is worth a thousand words, so a video is worth thousands of words, and here is a video of The Fields Park in Portland, about four or five blocks from Union Station:
> 
> Right in the sketchiest part of downtown Portland, we have families and people of all ages having fun and walking their dogs seemingly without a care.
> ...



Thanks for the information. Portland has vowed to clean up its homeless camps. Hopefully they will.









Union Station (Portland) - All You Need to Know BEFORE You Go







is.gd





A suggestion, in the above link, for taking Uber or Lyft to and from the station. Is that a good idea? Is there an absence of taxi's in front of the station?

The nice thing about Portland's Union station is the Metropolitan Lounge. If my Alaska flight gets in at around 2:00 PM, which is the current arrival time, I will have at least a 2 hr wait at the train station. The Metropolitan Lounge will make that wait a lot more pleasant.


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## Matthew H Fish (Jan 2, 2023)

On New Year's Day, I went on a bicycle ride, because I wanted to start the year out right!
I went about 14 miles north of my home, to the "town" of Suver, or rather the townsite of Suver. The first six minutes of the video is me bicycling, but I set the time stamp to be Suver itself.
Suver was built as a railroad depot town in the 1880s, and persisted as such for decades. After the rise of automobiles and the construction of 99W, the town's services gradually faded away. There is currently the railroad depot and some agricultural warehouses there, but no other services. Suver Junction, a mile away on 99W, has what looks to be a discontinued gas station/store.
According to a historical picture I found, the depot shown here was built in the 1880s---I am somewhat curious about that, since the construction of the building does not look to be 140 years old.
One of the most striking things for me around the Willamette Valley is how many towns with their own character and history there used to be. There are relics of towns every 5-10 miles, because at one point that was as far as you could easily go in a day, and so you needed a store and a school and post office every half dozen miles. Now, many of those towns are just a few houses at a crossroads, sometimes with a church or a fire station, but often with nothing else. And at this point, those places have been non-towns longer than they have been towns--- many of them only existed for two or three generations, from probably the 1870s through the 1940s, and now it has been close to 80 years since they turned into relics.


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## Matthew H Fish (Jan 2, 2023)

Oh, and those railroad tracks are actually, more or less, the ones that start at the WES station in Beaverton, and end abruptly in the middle of Monroe, Oregon. 
And also slightly ironic that 120 years ago someone could get passenger service by train down the west side of the Willamette Valley, and now there isn't even bus service. (I presume that there was passenger service, and not just freight service, on those tracks)


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## Matthew H Fish (Jan 5, 2023)

Northwestern said:


> Thanks for the information. Portland has vowed to clean up its homeless camps. Hopefully they will.


This is obviously a very difficult topic, but I will say a few things about it from an urban development/transit position. 
The visible problem with homelessness is just the tip of the iceberg of housing prices. Even if we accept that many homeless are there because of antisocial behavior, and if the outward signs of that behavior can be removed--- there are many people in the area, some with really good jobs, who are really feeling pressured on rent. This is a systemic problem, and the economic link is pretty clear --- if average rents go up by x%, homelessness will go up by y%
But also, to put that in context, a lot of it has to do with how fast Oregon, and the Portland area, have grown in the past 50 years. 50 years ago, Oregon had less people than Iowa, Kansas, Oklahoma, Mississippi and Connecticut, and now it has surpassed them. And 50 years ago, the Portland metropolitan area had less people than the metro areas of Kansas City, Milwaukee, Indianapolis, Cincinnati, Columbus, Cleveland, Buffalo and Providence. Now it is larger than all of them. In the past 50 years, Portland, which was once an obscure little resource town on the edge of the continent, has grown to be larger than the "big cities" of 50 years ago. Some of those metro areas have actually shrunk in population. In 1970, the Portland Metro area had 1.1 million people and Buffalo NY had 1.3 million people--- now, those numbers are 2.5 million and 1.2 million people. So over the last 50 years, the Portland metro area grew by the population of Buffalo...which itself shrank!
So a lot of what is going on in Portland and the West Coast right now is the effect of systemic changes in the economy, where Portland becoming a big tech city has priced out many people. Also, the decision of Portland to limit land use and focus on density and transit might be partly responsible for that---not because it has restricted supply, but because it has increased demand. Portland and Oregon have been success stories---until they were so successful that it started causing problems.


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## Metra Electric Rider (Jan 5, 2023)

Matthew H Fish said:


> So a lot of what is going on in Portland and the West Coast right now is the effect of systemic changes in the economy, where Portland becoming a big tech city has priced out many people. Also, the decision of Portland to limit land use and focus on density and transit might be partly responsible for that---not because it has restricted supply, but because it has increased demand. Portland and Oregon have been success stories---until they were so successful that it started causing problems.


I've heard, don't know if this is accurate, that some of the surrounding Oregon counties aren't in the 'self-limiting' growth pact which has led to them growing and sprawling. It's also led to Vancouver being a housing destination for cheaper housing since it's in another state the regulations haven't affected it as much - obviously everywhere has had massive ramp ups in prices lately. 

This reminds me, as part of a crazy aside, that somebody when talking about one of the Portlands, was using the City population rather than the metro for a point of reference and making a nonsensical argument (it wasn't you Matthew).


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## Matthew H Fish (Jan 5, 2023)

Metra Electric Rider said:


> I've heard, don't know if this is accurate, that some of the surrounding Oregon counties aren't in the 'self-limiting' growth pact which has led to them growing and sprawling. It's also led to Vancouver being a housing destination for cheaper housing since it's in another state the regulations haven't affected it as much - obviously everywhere has had massive ramp ups in prices lately.



I have heard that a lot, and I was curious, so I actually made a pie chart:
Washington, Multnomah and Clackamas counties are the three counties that make up the Portland area, and over the past 50 years, they have also made up most of the population growth of Oregon. Of course, to a large extent that was also the population center before then. But also, on the other hand, they are physically pretty small. Washington County (Portland's western suburbs), which previous to 1970 was mostly a sleepy agricultural area, gained about 450,000 people. So on that graph, we can compare Washington County, 726 square miles, to Linn County, 2300 square miles, and see how many more people have fit in a relatively small area, because it had a lot of density and transit. So one of the arguments against opening up land is that, if people wanted to do that---the land is still there. Other cities in the state also have Urban Growth Boundaries, but in many case they do have a lot of unused land. But people have continued to choose to mostly live in the Portland area.



Metra Electric Rider said:


> This reminds me, as part of a crazy aside, that somebody when talking about one of the Portlands, was using the City population rather than the metro for a point of reference and making a nonsensical argument (it wasn't you Matthew).


It can get to be very confusing, because statistical areas aren't equal, and sometimes they are misleading. Especially in a case like Portland, where the metro or CSA might cross a state boundary. So a lot of comparisons are apples-to-oranges. It mostly only becomes a problem when someone is using them in bad faith. I try to use mine in good faith, and also (to use another produce-centric analogy) to not cherry pick data.


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## Willbridge (Saturday at 2:19 AM)

Matthew H Fish said:


> Oh, and those railroad tracks are actually, more or less, the ones that start at the WES station in Beaverton, and end abruptly in the middle of Monroe, Oregon.
> And also slightly ironic that 120 years ago someone could get passenger service by train down the west side of the Willamette Valley, and now there isn't even bus service. (I presume that there was passenger service, and not just freight service, on those tracks)


The SP Red Electric ran from Portland to Corvallis via Lake Oswego, Newberg and Independence. A second line ran from Portland via Forest Grove and McMinnville to a junction with the Lake Oswego line. Their intention was to extend the wire to Eugene, but in the "meantime" ran a steam powered train daily and a second steam train tri-weekly south of Corvallis. Suver had three electrics daily to and from Portland and Corvallis. See Table 9 in the attached USRRA schedule.

The scheme was to bracket the centrally located Oregon Electric Railway (Hill lines) by electrification of SP branch lines (Harriman lines) on both sides of the Willamette Valley. World War I stopped this work and highway improvements quickly brought an end to the Red Electric. Until 1967, a Pacific Motor Trucking Highway Post Office ran on US99W with the numbers of the last Red Electric trains. Tri-Met Rte 57 is a direct corporate descendant of the Red Electric.

My dad never rode the Red Electric, but he can remember their modern looking steel cars on SW 4th Avenue in Downtown Portland and on Track One in Union Station.


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## Willbridge (Saturday at 2:44 AM)

One clarification: while Portland supported the idea of an urban growth boundary, as did Eugene, it was done by state law.

One amusing aside: Tri-Met's taxing and service area originally was the three Oregon metro counties (Clark County in Washington was the fourth in the then SMSA). They were stormed by outraged rural and exurban businesses for including areas unlikely to get immediate service and so the boundaries were shrunk. In the same early 70's, Lane Transit District adopted that region's urban growth boundaries as their district for taxation and service. They were stormed by outraged rural and exurban residents for not being interested in serving them.

One add-on regarding Washington County: Tri-Met's west side line to Hillsboro runs on the former Oregon Electric Railway Forest Grove branch rather than on the then more populated SP Red Electric Forest Grove / Tillamook line. The reason was to encourage the development that was foreseen into areas which could be built as Transit Oriented Development. The SP line runs through old-style sprawl along the state highway.


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## Matthew H Fish (Saturday at 3:53 AM)

Willbridge said:


> Tri-Met Rte 57 is a direct corporate descendant of the Red Electric.


Among all that other great information, I am curious about this, because back in the 1990s, Route 57 was somehow the Trimet bus with the most hours of service, running from something like 5 AM to 2 AM in all. Was this a legacy of that being the schedule of what was essentially an intercity bus/train line when Forest Grove was a clearly different city than Portland?


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## Matthew H Fish (Saturday at 3:22 PM)

Metra Electric Rider said:


> I've heard, don't know if this is accurate, that some of the surrounding Oregon counties aren't in the 'self-limiting' growth pact which has led to them growing and sprawling. It's also led to Vancouver being a housing destination for cheaper housing since it's in another state the regulations haven't affected it as much - obviously everywhere has had massive ramp ups in prices lately.


 It is also hard to calculate just how much cities have "sprawled", because sometimes larger cities will have certain features (like airports and regional parks) that bring down their average density. Just looking at people per square mile isn't always a good way to tell if a city is dense or not. 
But many of the cities in the Willamette Valley outside of Portland do have a lot of sprawl, but because they have sprawl, it doesn't mean they are adding housing. To illustrate the point, I am going to do some totally unfair cherry-picking:


This is the interchange between I-5 and 99E in Albany, Oregon, which is the city in the Willamette Valley that is generally the furthest away from being transit/pedestrian friendly
And here is Orenco Station, a high density neighborhood planned around transit access in Hillsboro, Oregon:


(These pictures are to the same scale). 
It is kind of an unfair comparison: the Albany picture also includes part of an airport, as well as industrial sites. But in general, when it comes to housing, even the suburbs that are sprawling are offering relatively little housing compared to high-density areas like this. But people's casual perceptions of where people live might not always catch that. It is similar to something that happens when people look at trains: an "almost empty" train might actually carry as many people as a packed bus, and a packed bus might equate to 50 cars stuck at an intersection. 
And as further evidence of that, Orenco Station itself has more housing than three entire Oregon counties (separately).


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## Willbridge (Saturday at 6:38 PM)

Matthew H Fish said:


> Among all that other great information, I am curious about this, because back in the 1990s, Route 57 was somehow the Trimet bus with the most hours of service, running from something like 5 AM to 2 AM in all. Was this a legacy of that being the schedule of what was essentially an intercity bus/train line when Forest Grove was a clearly different city than Portland?


Rte 57 inherited a market that carried over from the two interurban electric railways. When Tri-Met took over Tualatin Valley Stages there was still ridership from the previous professional operations of SP subsidiaries Oregon Motor Stages and Pacific Greyhound Lines. They didn't run the broken down LAMTA GM's that other suburbs got. In 1968 when drivers cranked rollsigns on their GM Suburbans, you'd see places like Antioch, Concord, Redwood City, San Rafael, San Francisco Ferry Building, etc. Unlike some other lines that had disappeared, there was continuity.

The span of service that Tri-Met inherited was a little shorter than it later provided. I think the last trip on Tualatin Valley Stages from the Portland Greyhound station was 12:35 a.m. or a bit later, to mesh with the last Rose City Transit Co. systemwide meet at 12:32 a.m. a few blocks away. With Pacific University in Forest Grove, and with package express coming in from connecting Greyhound buses, there was business enough.

Tualatin Valley Stages, in intercity style, parked some buses for the night in Forest Grove. Tri-Met inherited Rosy's scheduling department and union agreement, so the last bus to Forest Grove deadheaded back to Center Street. The first bus in the morning deadheaded out to Forest Grove to start there. I was with ODOT when this was going on and suggested to Tri-Met that they run those buses in service, making the Owl bus connections in downtown Portland. This led to the span of service that you are recollecting, with only a few minutes of incremental cost. It worked out well, but eventually when there was a west side garage the economics changed, and with the decision to axe the Owls, Rte 57 went back to what it is now.

Dashcard found on a Portland > Forest Grove bus. When those buses belonged to Greyhound, they sometimes were used as back-ups for intrastate highway runs.


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## Matthew H Fish (Saturday at 7:15 PM)

Willbridge said:


> Dashcard found on a Portland > Forest Grove bus. When those buses belonged to Greyhound, they sometimes were used as back-ups for intrastate highway runs.
> 
> View attachment 30976



One thing for me, is that I view most of the communities along the West Coast as a continuum, I see connections between them. This is kind of my personal view, not shared by most of the people I know in Portland. For most people in Portland, the outer ring Portland suburbs like West Linn are places they never go. But for me, the Willamette Valley and even the coast are all on a continuum. Part of it is that I have walked everywhere from Portland to Monroe (not all at once, but over the years, I have walked on foot between most Willamette Valley towns). So for me, there is a kind of logic that Forest Grove and Willits are all the same place. But I know in objective terms, that doesn't make sense to everyone: the distance between them is equal to the distance between New York City and South Carolina. 
A bit of personal history behind this thread: when I was 8 years old, my family moved from Battle Ground, Washington to near Turner, Oregon...a distance of about 80 miles, which isn't that far, but was a long distance when I was 8. And even at that age, I would think about the connection between the city I left behind and the city I moved to, and I would have persistent dreams of being somewhere between the two of them, often waiting for a bus or a train in some tiny, usually non-existent town. But because these were dreams, sometimes I would take the wrong bus and end up in Nevada---which again, is why the idea of Forest Grove and Willits being next to each other makes perfect sense to me.


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## Willbridge (Sunday at 1:11 AM)

Matthew H Fish said:


> One thing for me, is that I view most of the communities along the West Coast as a continuum, I see connections between them. This is kind of my personal view, not shared by most of the people I know in Portland. For most people in Portland, the outer ring Portland suburbs like West Linn are places they never go. But for me, the Willamette Valley and even the coast are all on a continuum. Part of it is that I have walked everywhere from Portland to Monroe (not all at once, but over the years, I have walked on foot between most Willamette Valley towns). So for me, there is a kind of logic that Forest Grove and Willits are all the same place. But I know in objective terms, that doesn't make sense to everyone: the distance between them is equal to the distance between New York City and South Carolina.
> A bit of personal history behind this thread: when I was 8 years old, my family moved from Battle Ground, Washington to near Turner, Oregon...a distance of about 80 miles, which isn't that far, but was a long distance when I was 8. And even at that age, I would think about the connection between the city I left behind and the city I moved to, and I would have persistent dreams of being somewhere between the two of them, often waiting for a bus or a train in some tiny, usually non-existent town. But because these were dreams, sometimes I would take the wrong bus and end up in Nevada---which again, is why the idea of Forest Grove and Willits being next to each other makes perfect sense to me.


You're right about the links between places. When you look at Turner in Table 5 of that 1919 SP timetable you can see how the railway tried to deal with that in lightly populated areas -- all stop locals. That was quickly done in by even the most awful highway travel.


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## Matthew H Fish (Wednesday at 5:40 PM)

Flights by summer? Salem council approves $2.4M to ready airport for commercial service


The effort to revive commercial air service at Salem Airport just got $2.4 million closer to becoming a reality.



www.statesmanjournal.com




Since it is too cold and rainy for me to make any real trips, I wanted to include this news item--- scheduled, commercial air service might be returning to Salem, Oregon. Salem is one of only three or four state capitals that don't have airports with regular service. It has before, but it never appears to take off (excuse the bad pun). Salem is close enough to the Portland area and Portland airport (about 60 miles) that in most cases, it is cheaper and easier just to fly into PDX and then take a shuttle to somewhere in the valley. 
I don't know who the market for this airport would be, since its two routes seem to be LAX and Las Vegas, so either...people doing government business, or tourists going to Las Vegas? People who want to visit wine country that is 30 minutes closer by car from Salem than from Portland?
To me, this seems more like local boosterism, and not part of a transportation strategy that is meant to solve a problem. 
The money spent for this also plays into discussion about priorities and how transportation is subsidized...because the money needed to bring the airport up to standard (2.4 million dollars) is equal to the money needed to do many other transportation projects.


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## Northwestern (Wednesday at 7:17 PM)

I am amazed by all the stops (mostly flag stops) along the Rogue River route. Back in 1955.






The Rogue River - April, 1955 - Streamliner Schedules


April 1955 timetable for the Rogue River passenger train at Streamliner Schedules.



is.gd


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## Matthew H Fish (Wednesday at 7:52 PM)

Northwestern said:


> I am amazed by all the stops (mostly flag stops) along the Rogue River route. Back in 1955.
> 
> 
> 
> ...


For me, I have been to the first 16 towns downward on the schedule, mostly on foot.
It is also weird for me that the days of passenger rail in these towns seem so long ago, but when my family moved to Turner, Oregon in 1988, that was actually closer to 1955 then it was to the present day. And when I moved there in the late 1980s (as an eight year old), I still remember there being local markets every few miles, driving down a country road with my mother and sometimes stopping at these little stores. Most of them were just in the process of closing down: big box stores seemed to really come to Oregon in the 1990s. And even today, (like in the Suver video), I will be passing through a little cross-roads and will see a building that was at once time a gas station or a store, only it has obviously been closed for years or decades. And don't get me wrong---those old stores were kind of depressing places, overpriced items and maybe some old bruised fruit lying on the shelf. But I also wonder what those places were like when they were really communities.
An example of a community that managed to hang on is Marion, Oregon. It is on that time table, and if you have ever been on the Cascades or Coast Starlight, it is easy to see it between Albany and Salem. It is a T-intersection that has a market/deli, a fire station, and some churches. In the 1990s, there was a post office there, but it looks like it is closed now. I remember in the 1990s, sometimes someone would try to open a hair salon, etc, in town, but it didn't seem to go anywhere. Another thing about these small towns is---there is usually no way to interface with the community. There is no community meeting point. The people there live there, but all of their interactions will be a dozen or more miles away, in the towns that have big box stores or services like a community college or library. So one of my biggest feelings when I am going through these locations is "What if these were actually communities, and not just a point on the map?"


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## Willbridge (Wednesday at 10:53 PM)

Matthew H Fish said:


> Flights by summer? Salem council approves $2.4M to ready airport for commercial service
> 
> 
> The effort to revive commercial air service at Salem Airport just got $2.4 million closer to becoming a reality.
> ...


When I was at ODOT United Airlines served Salem once a day each way with a 737 that flew San Francisco<>Salem<>Portland<>Pendleton. The weak point, of course, was flying Salem to Portland. Eventually I was sent to testify at an OPUC hearing in support of Hutmacher's van service between Salem and Portland International and they were successful in getting a permit.

Aviation boosters and fans have no shame in proposing air routes, but my favorite unrealized scheme in Oregon was a proposal to have turboprops hovering over the state, ready to be called in like an air strike when customers needed service.


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## Willbridge (Wednesday at 11:52 PM)

Matthew H Fish said:


> For me, I have been to the first 16 towns downward on the schedule, mostly on foot.
> It is also weird for me that the days of passenger rail in these towns seem so long ago, but when my family moved to Turner, Oregon in 1988, that was actually closer to 1955 then it was to the present day. And when I moved there in the late 1980s (as an eight year old), I still remember there being local markets every few miles, driving down a country road with my mother and sometimes stopping at these little stores. Most of them were just in the process of closing down: big box stores seemed to really come to Oregon in the 1990s. And even today, (like in the Suver video), I will be passing through a little cross-roads and will see a building that was at once time a gas station or a store, only it has obviously been closed for years or decades. And don't get me wrong---those old stores were kind of depressing places, overpriced items and maybe some old bruised fruit lying on the shelf. But I also wonder what those places were like when they were really communities.
> An example of a community that managed to hang on is Marion, Oregon. It is on that time table, and if you have ever been on the Cascades or Coast Starlight, it is easy to see it between Albany and Salem. It is a T-intersection that has a market/deli, a fire station, and some churches. In the 1990s, there was a post office there, but it looks like it is closed now. I remember in the 1990s, sometimes someone would try to open a hair salon, etc, in town, but it didn't seem to go anywhere. Another thing about these small towns is---there is usually no way to interface with the community. There is no community meeting point. The people there live there, but all of their interactions will be a dozen or more miles away, in the towns that have big box stores or services like a community college or library. So one of my biggest feelings when I am going through these locations is "What if these were actually communities, and not just a point on the map?"


My German immigrant great-grandfather knew how to politic and was appointed postmaster of Meridian, Oregon. It was halfway between Marquam and Mt. Angel. Mt. Angel had the closest rail service. There was a German community there and Teddy Roosevelt was big on getting the German immigrant vote. It looks as though the Lutheran Church is the remaining community focal point.

My maternal grandfather called on those grocery stores for the H. J. Heinz company, driving, of course, a black Buick. My dad called on those in resort areas and main highways for the _Seattle Times, _driving a Studebaker or riding trains and buses, and it was fun when they sat together at holiday gatherings and swapped stories about some of the more eccentric or tight-fisted merchants. An uncle worked as a CPA in the lumber industry, and when he was a bachelor, he was often sent to remote mills. We kids would watch from our front yard for the West Coast Airlines DC3 flying him to Coos Bay. That gives you an idea of the old Oregon economy. Life in Portland was closely tied to the small towns.

The demise of that economy began in the mid-1950's, marked by train-offs on the SP _Rogue River, _the Coos Bay<>Portland sleeper, the SP&S Astoria/Seaside train, the UP _Spokane,_ etc. All of these linked small towns with the Rose City. The chicken and egg question, of course, is whether the end of service due to low ridership helped then to contribute to the decline of some of these towns.

Here's the SP&S _Columbia River Express _westbound at Vancouver's curved platform_. _Nice name, but it made flag stops everywhere between Pasco and Portland.


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## Northwestern (Yesterday at 1:48 PM)

Mr. Willbridge, I took a tour of the Oregon State Capitol building, in Salem, a number of years ago. That was fun. The next time, in Salem. I would like to visit the AC Gilbert House museum in Salem. Gilbert's American Flyer train was a Christmas gift, for me, at a very young age. Gilbert was also the inventor of the Erector Set, as well. He obtained a medical degree from Yale and was a magician to help pay for his tuition. He also won a gold medal, in the pole vault, in the 1908 summer Olympics.

I noticed, looking at the schedule for the Rogue River, that the first 18 stops are not more than 12 miles apart.

Matthew, I may or may not have a different view of small towns. I grew up in a small town of around 5000 people in the late `40's and '50's. Most stores were "mom and pop" with the exception of a Rexall pharmacy and a Safeway supermarket. The proprietors were either friends of my family or, in many cases, neighbors. There was a real sense of community. My parents might drive over to the "big city" (Santa Rosa) to get a cheaper price on something or purchase an item they couldn't find in town. They did, however, like to do business in town and support the local businesses. It really created a strong sense of community. Now, as you mentioned, the small town today probably would have several big box or chain stores which wouldn't provide the same ambience. We also had one of the few towns with railroad tracks (SP) along the center of the downtown strip, where a penny in place could really be flattened. I can still hear, in my mind. the train horn sounding late at night.


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## Matthew H Fish (Yesterday at 3:38 PM)

Northwestern said:


> I grew up in a small town of around 5000 people in the late `40's and '50's.



This has been a persistent problem for me when I talk about communities, here, and elsewhere, because the words to describe populations are very vague. When I say "town", one person might hear 500 people and another person might hear 50000 people. For me, 5000 people is not a "small town", it is a medium town on the way to being a small city. 5000 people is large enough to have a choice of cafes/restaurants, a library, a movie theater, etc. Some of the crossroads towns I've been talking (and some of which are listed on that time table), are in the low three digits. Like Marion, Oregon, which I mentioned, has a current CDP population of 307 people. And at 300 people, it is harder to find a sense of community, because there aren't any services/businesses that would give an area a common meeting place. And since the town doesn't have any businesses, there are no common employers. The people in these little intersection towns are probably driving 20 miles in every direction to get to work.
Why this is even more important is that being "from the country" is often used as a moral position in American culture, and it has come to have almost no reference to how people actually live. People from exurbs of tens of thousands of people who go into those cities to work in office jobs will claim to be "just a simple country boy/girl", and it is used as a signifier of what lifestyle accessories they have, and sometimes their social and political views...but most of those people couldn't even wrap their head around what it would be like to live in a town of under 1000 people.


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