Portland, day 5

Today was transit day 2, in which I finished up riding all the rail transit lines in the area. There's a little bit of retail content in here, but still not very much. That will change tomorrow, I promise!

First up, here are a couple pictures of the Washington Park Station itself, which I missed getting yesterday. I'm probably going to have more pictures from here in a couple days when I go to the park itself.

I also got an interior picture of one of the original Type 1 trains. They're much simpler inside without any accommodations for wheelchairs, bikes, etc.

My first goal for the day was riding the Blue Line out and back. It's the oldest and longest of the five MAX lines. The west end is mostly along a former rail line through generic suburbia, but there are some random bits of very rural looking areas (greenbelts, probably) and other pockets of decent transit-oriented developments around a few of the stations.

One of the nice sights along the westside segments of the Red and Blue Lines is the Vista Park Bridge. Unfortunately, due to its location just east of the tunnel and the speed the trains are traveling in this area, it's really hard to get good pictures of the bridge.

Another feature that slows MAX service considerably is the very tight turns along many segments of the network, especially through downtown. Trains can barely go walking pace through some of these sections. Note also the scooter-share riders -- these electric scooters are all over the place in Portland, and seem very popular -- even if I've repeatedly seen people nearly crash on them!

In retail-related stuff seen from transit, I've passed by this standalone Fred Meyer gas station many times now, as it's near the Banfield segment that three of the four lines use. I've seen off-site Fred Meyer gas stations before, but normally they're pretty close to the actual store, while this one is half a mile away and across a freeway! Certainly a bit strange to see, especially since it was built just a couple years ago.

The eastside portion of the Blue Line (from downtown east) is the original bit. The furthest east part, past where the Red and Green Lines split off, is the portion that appears to have had the most influence on other light rail systems, with its "boulevard" design in which the tracks run in a separated area in the center of the street. Many if not most other American light rail systems, even Seattle's largely grade-separated network, have at least some portions that look a lot like this.

Now for a brief retail intermission. I stopped by the Lloyd Center mall, just across the river from downtown, to get some pictures that I promised to Retail Retell (and which I won't spoil here!). It's a very nice 3-level mall, and the owners have clearly been pumping quite a bit of money into making it look nice, but it's hard to ignore the fact that three of the five anchor tenant spaces are vacant (one of them since 2015) and many of the inline spaces are also vacant (and of the ones that aren't many are occupied by non-traditional uses, including nearly the entire top floor being converted to office space).

After that, my next order of business was to ride the three Portland Streetcar lines.

One really cool thing about the streetcars in Portland (and Seattle as well) is that you can see through the driver's compartment door and out the front window. Unfortunately, the tinting film that they've placed over the door glass makes it quite difficult to take pictures through the front.

However, some drivers, like on my second trip, leave their door open! I was quite happy with how this picture, featuring the Tilikum Crossing, turned out.

The side windows also have annoying tinting film. The sky was definitely not this threatening in real life!

The other bridge that the streetcar uses to cross the Willamette is the much older Broadway Bridge, which lies between the Fremont and Steel bridges. I wasn't able to get any decent pictures of the bridge itself, but here are some nice ones of the view in each direction off of it.

Dinner tonight was at the downtown Old Spaghetti Factory, which is actually a bit south of downtown at the end of one of the streetcar lines. It's a very nice (and very large) place, but was quite busy even at a bit after 8 in the evening. I had a bit of a weird experience there, but I won't let that get in the way of my enjoyment of the food or this place!

Anyways, that's it for tonight. Sorry for another extremely late post; I'll try to do better at staying on schedule tomorrow!