Ridin’ the (Downtown) Rails

For the past 20 months I’ve had a part-time job as a customer service representative on the Portland Streetcar. I regard it as my second “ambassador of the city” position alongside Portland Walking Tours, for which I’ve been a guide more than four years.

On the streetcar, I answer riders’ questions, help them purchase fares and figure out where they’re going, perform fare and transit surveys, do ridership counts, and just generally present a friendly face for the streetcar organization as well as the city as a whole.

My new year’s resolution last year was to do more writing, which would necessitate cutting back on my pleasure reading. The biggest project was working on a book -- a sort of bio-memoir about my grandmother, which grew to a first draft of about 140 pages last month -- although I did a few good pieces for this blog as well, particularly the series about my wife’s unfortunate collision with a cyclist in Tilikum Crossing in October.

But it occurred on me recently that I’ve been doing a lot of creative writing on my Facebook page as well. I collected up my best puns and wordplay from that venue for this blog last month; now I present some of the best stories from my work shifts on the streetcar. Some are just observations of other people and events; others relate incidents in which I took some initiative, or illustrate the wit and good humor that help me get through a day, and (I hope) make the ride a little more pleasurable for the riders.

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Jan. 2: My fare checking on the Portland Streetcar this afternoon turned up a woman who had forgotten to pay her fare. She was nonplused by the gold-colored presidential dollar coins she received from the on-board fare machine in change for her five-dollar bill (she said she had never seen them before), but concluded: “Thank you for keeping me an honest woman.” I replied, “I'm afraid I can't take entire credit for that!”

Jan. 23: When the woman held up her mobile to show me the Trimet app, I could see the background was not colored or in motion, which meant her electronic ticket had expired. She realized this at the same time, and declared:

“You know, I think I have to get another one; I’m gonna do it digitally.”

I responded, “You mean with your fingers?”

March 12: This afternoon I did APC counts on the CL line of the Portland Streetcar. At 1:39 p.m. I had the doors opened at the SW Grand and Mill platform so I could throw a ladybug off the train. It did not have valid proof of fare.

March 25: At N. Weidler and Ross, the operator had to shut down and restart all the systems, so it went very dark and silent on board for a few seconds. “Reboot!” I called out to the passengers. After the familiar humming of the train came on, several seconds after the lights, I added, “Now maybe we’ll be able to play Candy Crush.”

April 26: Since Carole had an errand to run in Northwest while I was working on the streetcar yesterday afternoon, I prevailed on her to take some photos of me on the job. After I got off the train she was on, she overheard the following conversation between two other passengers, when one tried to buy a ticket with her credit card from the on-board machines, which take only bills and coins:

-- Well, I don’t have cash.

-- You’re in luck, because the fare inspector just got off.

-- How do you know they’re a fare inspector?

-- They wear a bright yellow vest, and they carry a clipboard, and they’re very nice, ’cause this is Oregon.

April 25: Elegant older woman on the streetcar after customer service rep whom many riders mistake for a fare inspector asked her to show him proof of valid fare: “I’m so glad you’re doing this, ’cause I’m such a good girl.”

Customer service rep who shall remain nameless: “I’ll be the judge of that.”

May 27: I was doing passenger counts on the CL line this morning when a man who was obviously headed for the airport (he had several pieces of luggage and asked for the transfer point for the MAX light rail) got off and left a duffel bag. Just south of the 7th and Holladay station is the construction site for the 660-unit apartment complex Hassalo on Eighth, as well as the MAX tracks, so there was no way the streetcar operator could open the doors safely, let alone legally, now that the man was trying to hail us from the street for his missing luggage.

I decided to abort my survey and got off with the duffel at the next stop (NE Grand and Oregon), and jogged the three blocks back toward the MAX lines. One block from the platform, I noticed an eastbound Red Line train pulling into the station, so I picked up my pace and saw the guy heading for the open doors. I called, “Hey! Ya want yer bag?” and he said “Yeah,” and turned to come toward me. But then he would have missed the train, so I ran past him, saying, “Let’s see if we can get you on this one.” I tossed his bag inside the doors that were starting to close, and held them so he could drag his suitcase on wheels after it (no doubt earning the curses of the MAX operator at the far end).

I heard the bag’s owner saying thank you behind me as I walked away, feeling a mixture of pride and disgust. My superhero save for the week.

June 11: As I watched from the 11th and Jefferson streetcar platform, a woman stepped out of a white Ford Expedition parked across the street, and a bag of garbage fell out and landed on the street beneath her. She gave it a few kicks to move it over to the gutter, strewing a couple of juice bottles and food-encrusted wrappers out and across the asphalt, and left.

I could have gone over, picked it up, and put it in the trash barrel just down the streetcar platform from me, I guess. Instead, I kicked the contents back into the bag, and placed all of it on the windshield of the Expedition.

June 20: We had pulled into the NW 10th and Everett platform, and the disabled ramp beeped and began to roll out. I wondered why, since we had no wheelchairs or carts on board and I could see none on the platform. Several passengers got on and off, and we were ready to go. Then the disabled ramp beeped and went out AGAIN.

At this point the train operator at the front of the vehicle opened his door and called down the car to ask what was going on, and I quickly spotted a toddler in a stroller parked next to the ramp request button, happily pressing it over and over to watch it light up while his young father sat next to him, face buried in his smartphone.

That's how “connected” he was to his son and the world around him.

July 3: I’ve started working nights on the streetcar. Last night on my final run out of Lowell/Bond about 10:30pm, at the southern terminus of the NS line, a young woman boarded our empty train wiping a tear from her eye. I decided to give her some time before approaching her.

Several minutes later, as the train got underway, I went over and asked to see her proof of fare. Her eyes were still full of tears, but she readily went digging in her voluminous purse and started pulling out stacks of cards, expired Trimet tickets, etc., and laying them on the seat beside her. Seeing she was not making any progress and remained distraught, I drifted away again.

Shortly after, she had reloaded her purse and gotten up to stand near a door. I have no idea whether she had originally intended to get off there to fetch a parked car or decided she shouldn’t ride because she couldn't find her proof of fare, but I went over to her, touched her lightly on the shoulder, and said, “Don’t worry about it; it looks like you have much bigger things on your mind.” She said, as much to herself as to me, “I’m such a mess. . . .”

July 3: An eventful shift on the Portland Streetcar tonight:

-- A pair of young women boarded and were immediately wrapped around each other. “’Scuse me,” I said, “Proof of valid fare?” They readily parted and showed me their Trimet tickets. I gave them my warmest, gentle grin and said “Carry on.”

-- A tall handsome guy in a cowboy hat said he was “flat broke, new in town” and didn’t have fare … although, as I observed aloud, he was toting a 12-pack of Rainier beer. A couple who had gotten on at the same stop (and probably had visited with him there) handed him a buck for his fare. I later heard him say he was a Southerner and newly arrived from Meridian, Mississippi.

-- Late in the evening I encountered an apparent libertarian who told me he had no fare and no intention of paying, ever, because “I don’t believe in the economics” of mass transit. I observed he was letting everyone else pay his way, and running a big risk if he ran into our enforcement officer. He replied sarcastically that he was “real scared” and would fight it all the way to the Supreme Court; he wanted to discuss “compound interest,” among other things, but I walked away so as not to waste my time with him. A while later he flipped me off, which I commented was not a particularly articulate statement and rather uncivil of him. After he got off the train, another passenger said, “I wanna congratulate you on keeping your cool. He was a dumbass.”

Oct. 8: An A Loop train was cresting the Tilikum Crossing bridge early this afternoon when I stepped up to a woman who was obviously sipping the clear liquid of a lemon-lime carbonated drink, and I said to her:

“That’s not vodka in there, is it, ma’am?”

After she giggled and said no, I continued, “Otherwise you’d have to share it with everybody.”

Dec. 6: I was coming off a morning shift on the Portland Streetcar and waiting for a train home at SW Moody & Meade around 12:30 when I looked down and saw a ladybug crawling along the stones of the platform. A ladybug! On a cold and wet December day!

Its characteristic orange carapace was pretty greyed out and it didn’t have any spots to speak of, but it was definitely a ladybug and scuttling handily along. If it tried to walk all the way to the nearest foliage, it would have to cross a good 20 feet or more of busy bicycle path and pedestrian walkway, so I stooped down to pick it up.

Couldn’t get it to climb onto my fingers, and I was getting anxious because the last time I’d looked at the readerboard, my train was due in 2 minutes, so I pulled a sheet of paper out of my encloseable plastic clipboard and got the insect to climb aboard that. Then I strode across the bike and ped paths and dropped the little bug in the bushes before running back to the platform to catch my train home.