What I Do for the Portland Streetcar . . . a self-interview

As friends are well aware from tales and photos that appear periodically on my Facebook page, I work part-time as a customer service representative for Portland Streetcar. Over time, I’ve collected and re-posted some of my most memorable experiences and observations aboard the streetcar in 2014, 2015, 2016, and last year. (Check ’em out, if you haven’t seen them already; they’re highly entertaining!)

Here’s a self-interview about the job, in which I answered questions that one of my supervisors devised for me.

1. How long have you been working for the Streetcar?

Four years. I was hired May 28, 2014, started training in late June, and was working steadily by the first week of July.

2. What drew you to the job?

I liked the streetcar from the very beginning. I’d attended college in Boston, so I had spent a lot of time on that city’s century-old subway rail lines and Green Line street trolleys back in the late Seventies and early Eighties.

When Portland Streetcar started up in 2001, my wife and I were living at NW 19th and Hoyt, not far off the alignment. It was only a few years later that I reserved a train to do an entire Northwest Portland-to-PSU-and-back circuit for Carole’s birthday.

A crowd of her friends and family sneaked onto the train at the maintenance shop so they were all on board to surprise her when I arranged to have the two of us standing at the NW 18th and Northrup platform as the train pulled up. Then we all partied on our private trolley ride through downtown and back to NW for dinner. Streetcars are so busy now, I don’t think you can do that anymore.

We also gave up owning a car during that era, maybe 15 years ago, and soon moved to an apartment between SW 10th and 11th at Jefferson that was just a three-block walk to my full-time job at the time. That put us between the north- and southbound legs of the downtown streetcar lines, so we took advantage of that. Fareless square was still in force then.

By the time this position opened in the spring of 2014, I was working freelance as an online editor and proofreader, and doing commercial acting and modeling on a piecework basis as well as guiding Portland Walking Tours, so I was hoping to retain control of my schedule and stay flexible enough to continue to go to auditions and video shoots on weekdays with fairly short notice. When I learned I could mostly set my own hours working part-time for the streetcar, I jumped at the job.

3. What are some of your favorite things about the job?

Being able to help people out: for example, give them directions to their destination, identify where to catch the TriMet bus and MAX lines to other parts of the city, help them work the pesky fare machines, and occasionally return belongings people have left on the train. I can hand them a valid ticket if the machine eats their money. Most riders love the streetcar to begin with, so they’re happy to see me, and they’re grateful for the assistance.

I enjoy welcoming visitors to Portland: people visiting their kids in local colleges, people in town for a convention, people here to taste Portland microbrews, people newly settled (coming to attend a local school or in pursuit of their grandchildren), or scouting the city because they think they might like to move here.

I also enjoy chatting with some of the operators, who come from a variety of backgrounds and have interesting life stories. One has been a baseball card and comic books dealer; another was a limousine driver in Beverly Hills and has stories of chauffeuring George Harrison, Don Rickles, Marvin Hamlisch, and many other celebs. Last year I started going on karaoke outings with one of them after he gets off work!

What I did not anticipate were the charming, funny, startling, and sometimes unsettling experiences and observations I’ve been able to write about on my Facebook page, and then collect on my blog. Quite a few friends have told me how much they enjoy these streetcar tales.

4. What are the more challenging aspects?

There are occasional fare evaders, of course. Most of them step off the train quietly, but a rare one will be belligerent and combative. There’s nothing I can do about that personally, although occasionally an operator will insist the person gets off the train before it will proceed.

It’s not pleasant to encounter a libertarian who refuses to buy a ticket and wants to debate the concept of citizens sharing the cost of mass transit (I’ve had two of those), or an abusive drunk (just as rare), but I’ve never had a situation where I had to call our enforcement officers or TriMet transit police because of an escalating clash. I’ve called officers a few times about people or incidents I’ve witnessed outside the train -- on one of the platforms, for instance.

I have to remind some people to keep their feet off the chairs, or to surrender a seat to an elderly or disabled rider. People are leaving a lot more trash (newspapers, candy wrappers, food containers with or without food in them, even cigarette butts sometimes) on the seats and the floor than when I started four years ago.

Gray areas can be a challenge, like eating from an open food container on the train, and dogs. Most people (and dogs) are well behaved, and most other riders like or at least tolerate the animals, but official policy still says all pets that are not service animals have to be in a carrier, or they are not allowed on the streetcar. We have to overlook that one, to some extent; it’s difficult to enforce and most other riders don’t expect us to, unless the animal is clearly out of control.

I’ve faced occasional medical situations (a bloody nose, a person having fallen down on the train, etc.) that can be tricky, too.

5. What do you want people to know about Portland Streetcar?

You should always push the yellow strip or door button as the train approaches your intended stop. Streetcar operators don’t always stop and open the doors at every station, if no one’s waiting on the platform and nobody on board has indicated the desire to get off -- especially if the train’s running behind schedule. As a rider, I’ve missed my own stop a few times because I assumed the train was going to halt without my pushing the signal.

Delays in service are rarely due to a problem with the trains themselves. Most can be blamed on poor judgment by drivers of private vehicles and incorrect parking: typically, a car or truck has stopped in a way that blocks all or part of the rail line, or there’s been a collision that may or may not have involved a streetcar trolley. Trains on the east side loops tend to get behind schedule during afternoon rush hour -- say, between 3:30 p.m. and 6 p.m. -- because they get caught in the jams of cars trying to get onto I-5 and the Banfield.

Portland Streetcar does not own or operate the fare machines, which are all supplied by an outside contractor. We wish they worked better, too.

Please take your own garbage off the train with you, whether it’s food containers or newspapers, instead of leaving it on the floor and the seats. Would you do that in your own or anyone else’s home? Streetcars are shared public spaces, but they’re more like office waiting areas than fields or sidewalks. (And why would you litter on those, anyway?)

There are trash receptacles at nearly every single streetcar platform, just outside the doors, and though I don’t think it’s in my job description, I’ve picked up a lot of refuse on the trains in recent months.

Finally, despite what you may be tempted to think, the vast majority of the riders around you have proper fare. (See below.)

6. What’s the biggest misconception that people have about the Streetcar?

The biggest one is that we’re part of Trimet, which is fairly harmless. Portland Streetcar is a separate organization. I can’t answer all the questions people have about the Trimet mobile app, or their ticket policies, etc., let alone pass along complaints.

Less harmless is the widespread perception that many of the people around you are riding without having paid their fare. I’ve had resentful riders insist to my face that “most” or “half” the people riding on the streetcar haven’t paid. I know this is wildly inaccurate, because I’ve conducted fare surveys in which I asked to see proof of fare from every person on a train, throughout my years of employment.

One woman even complained about our fare checks and surveys being so random; she wanted everyone checked, on every train, all the time! I told her Portland Streetcar simply can’t afford that kind of manpower. And you’d be surprised how many scummy-looking people actually have proper fare, whether they’ve date-stamped a blank Trimet ticket handed out by their probation officer or methadone clinic, or they have a thriving operation begging handouts outside one of the local supermarkets and can buy a ticket with cash when they board.

Off the top of my head, from my personal experience doing surveys, I would have guessed no more than four to six percent of riders do not have proper fare. Officially, our statistics show it’s less than three percent. That may vary at different times of the day and different parts of the city, but in the main, between one in 35 and fewer than one in 50 do not have fare. It’s not unusual for a moderately crowded streetcar to be carrying not a single rider who lacks fare.

But the myth is puzzlingly persistent.

7. What would you like people to know about your job?

I’m happy to answer people’s questions! More than half the time I have to step forward and volunteer assistance to people I can tell are puzzling over a map or clearly overwhelmed by the city. Unless I’m obviously counting the riders who are boarding and getting off at each platform (to verify the accuracy of the Automatic Passenger Count sensors), please don’t hesitate to come up to me and chat!