[pdx] TriMet's Graphic Design Throwback T-Shirts

3365.

This in over the transom:


It will be recalled that, from the mid-70s,
for about three decades, TriMet made navigating its innumerable routes a bit easier by slicing the Portland area into seven color-and-symbol-coded service sectors: Red Fish (NW and N), Purple Raindrop (NE), Blue Snowflake (NE and E), Brown Beaver (E and SE), Green Leaf (SE and SW), Yellow Rose (SW) and Red Deer (NW and SW). The Brown Beaver can be seen below and to the left in larger size; the simple design of the icons meant that if you going to a certain part of town, all you had to do was find the right color/symbol to guide you to the right handful of routes. I loved this system. It had a flair and a certain Portlandesque panache that was hard to put into words.

Well, times change and so did TriMet; by the middle of the aughts, the system was beginning to evolve away from the hub-and-spoke rationale which made pie-sliced sectors a natural thing, and the multiplicity of rail lines moving through the Portland Transit Mall called for a re-think and a different approach, which works a bit better today if it's a rather characterless.

For those of you (such as me) who fondly remember the old system and don't agree that it was dated, there is a way to fondly remember to others: Throwback gear from TriMet. The seven classic sector symbols are available on t-shirts (such as the one pictured at right) and caps: shirts run in the $16.99 range an the caps run a bit less.

The address for the shirts is http://www.cafepress.com/trimet/10216648, then just select a symbol, shirt or cap, and proceed to check out.

The TriMet gear front page, which includes more than just throwback shirts, is at http://www.cafepress.com/trimet.

[liff] Salem's Courthouse Square Transit Station, Feb 2008

3210.

I was born, as I've said before, in Silverton, and some assembly was required there; in about 1976, my family moved to Salem, where a lot of the preliminary finishing happened.

The years in Salem were mostly happy, at least as far as those of a kid of no obvious talents except hangin' on could be. Found my first passions, my first group of permanent friends, did some healing at the same time some other wounds were being inflicted. Life is such a mixed bag, even tho' it beats the alternative.

I spent a great deal of time with my first real freedom other than my bicycle; Cherriots. I've mentioned Salem's bus system before, in other contexts; in this one, it was my car. They let you attend any high school in Salem you could haul yourself to, just as long as you showed up; my endless quest to move off Square One led me to Sprague High, and Sprague High is where I spent my secondary school career. I don't regret it.

Throughout my mid-late teenagehood in Salem, though, Cherriots was the way to go, as far as it went. Service was only hourly, coverage was pitiful when the money wasn't there to run it, and Salem, as long as I've been alive, has never had Sunday service (now, it has even less, but they appear to be working on that).  Also, the form of the facilities has changed over time. As long as anyone's known, the central transfer point for all radiating routes has been the corner of Court and High Streets. Before the early 80s, the buses lined up along the south side of Court Street between High and Liberty and the west side of High between State and Court. Following this, the transit center moved to an island comprising the entire block of High Street between Court and State, now in front of the Marion County Courthouse; a one-block (Salem's downtown blocks are verrrry long, to a Portlander) transit mall of sorts which occupied the eastern 2 lanes of High. North and west-bound buses departed from the east side of the island; south and east from the west.

They called that Cherriot Station.

In 2000, the downtown Salem transit station finally grew up. The buildings on the north side of Court between High and Church were pulled down … including the venerable old Senator Hotel … the block was cleared, and, bingo, there was Courthouse Square and the downtown Salem 'transit mall' … the south half of the block surrounded by Chemeketa, High, Court, and Church Streets was a new, brick-covered, five-story building, and the north half was now a four-lane transit center with spacious walkways, angled turnouts. Very polished, and very nice. Well, it was until 2010, when it was discovered that the construction wasn't as sound as it should have been, and it was declared a potentially dangerous place to be.

Now, in 2015, after a flurry of legal action and a monumental and commendable repair program, as of 2014, Courthouse Square is now safe and sound and in regular use as Salem's transit hub again. Good on them for getting the job done, and more power to them.

Cherriots is in what they'd call a rebuilding year; the agency is getting set to implement a major route realignment and increase service during the days it does run (Currently Monday through Friday only), and they're beginning to plow the PR field to cultivate the idea that Salem's voters should not only re-inaugurate Saturday service (cut a few years back because the voters said 'no') but also, finally, expand to Sunday service. I hope they make it happen; Salem isn't as easy to get across on ones own as it should be. So I sincerely wish them luck here.

But I digress a bit. Let's set the time machine back to February, 2008, more than five years ago. This is long enough ago that not only did Cherriots have different routes, evolved from the original routes of the 70s that I knew so well, they still have the classic names. Routes like South Commercial, State and Fairview, 12th and Sunnyside, and Lansing and Claxtar. They still have a certain ring, even today.

The following were taken in February, 2008, with a ViviCam 3705, the old plastic fantastic.

This green banner welcomes you with a promise of service in Fall, Winter, Spring and Summer.

The simplicity … and somewhat aggravating lack … of service at the time is aptly represented by this display on an informational kiosk. These are all departure times, on all routes, for all days of operation. Notice the red times? Those are the runs that only happened on Saturday. All times in black departed all five weekdays, Monday through Friday, but not on Saturday.

There was no Service.

A closeup of the schedule for Route 1 - Commercial Street, a major trunk route serving the commercial corridor extending south from downtown along Commerical St SE, with about 30 departures over the service day. Most AM runs didn't operate on Saturdays.

This photo is one of a diagram of the bus bays and where the routes dock. Very nice and ordered. I noted at the time that the font used in the bus symbols was pretty much the same as the old route-number-name font that Tri Met used at the time. I liked it. It gave it a big-city feel. As did the whole production.

This next diagram is the route network in effect as of February 2008. It's notable that Cherriots had grown from around 14 routes when I was in high school to nearly 25 routes by then. Interesting topology there, I always thought … the Salem street network is visually interesting, and the way the transit route net minimized it is a pattern I still find interesting today.

… all this on one of two informational kiosks, one at each end of the transit mall area, such as:

The 16-Four Corners bus held special nostalgia for me. When I moved into Salem from Silverton, it was the Four Corners neighborhood that I found myself in.

… and here is a long shot of the then 9-Kaiser Central bus. The color scheme of the Cherriots is simple and practical … hardworking yet unique in its way.

There were to be more pictures, but a sudden end to my photo safari, which was just to document this place for my own nostalgia and satisfaction and maybe artistic inspiration, but …

Well, it was interrupted. More on that at a later time, though.

See TriMet From The Other Side ...

1940.... with TriMet Confidential.

Dan Christensen writes a compelling story, yo.

He's one of my "Blogs of Note".

Technorati Tags: trimet, personal stories, personal blogs, transit, storytellers

This Guy Probably Worked for Lehman Brothers Not Too Long Ago

1938.An example of the kind of beggar we grow around here:

At work, a cow-orker of mine named Mary related the story of a clever bus-fare beggar.

"I got chiseled!" says she.

"Oh, you did," said I.

"Yeah. I was coming to work on TriMet and this guy came up to me and asked me for some change for the bus. He said he wanted a dollar. He was real thorough, and said he needed $1 because he had to get over to Northeast Rodney Avenue, and that he thought he had to take the 75, and go just a couple of miles."

"Okay."

"But I didn't have a dollar. So I said 'would you settle for a bus ticket', because that would solve his problem. And he said that would be fine, thanks. So I gave him the bus ticket. And you know what happened next?"

"What?"

"Well, you know thos MAX machines?"

"You mean the ticket machines?"

"Yeah. Anyway, he sees this lady going to buy a ticket from it and ... well within my hearing ... says 'Hey, lady, you know those tickets are two dollars. I can let you have this ticket of mine for $1'. And you know what? He sold the ticket to her."

"Wow!"

"Yeah, I was so chiseled."

I laughed out loud. "That's amazing! He got the ticket from you and sold it to someone else at a discount, and still walked away with the legal tender!"

"That seems wrong though."

"Well, yeah, it kind of is, but that is one clever homeless person, isn't it?"

You see, he assesed the situation and was able to exploit it to make himself a cash profit. Sadly, his ambition only went out to about a dollar's worth, but that's some entrepreneurial spirit there, no mistake about that! And Mary gave birth to a little microeconomy there.

And a little cosmic humor besides.

Oregon: things do indeed look different here!

Technorati Tags: Portland, TriMet, beggars, modern times. liff in PDX, liff in Oregon

Yamhill County Transportation Area: A Logo Expressing Service

1913.Yamhill County (a place whose name has nothing to do with either yams or hills) is a charming place; small towns, wide agricultural spaces, the legendary bottleneck/speed trap at Dundee, and capital of the State of Pinot Noir.

But it's growing up. Population estimates put the number of inhabitants near 100,000; the county seat, McMinnville, has recently notched a population of 30,000.

Yamhill County, though, no matter where you go in it (it fairly sprawls for a small county; from the Grande Ronde area of the Coast Range to the right bank of the Willamette) seems one community. So it stands to reason that the most effective way to serve it in many ways is on the country level, and it's that level from which the transit system has sprung.

You might be surprised to learn that Yamhill County has fixed-route regular daily city bus service. Actually, it's had it for a while, courtesy of Yamhill Community Action Partnership and senior service organizations, first as Dial-a-Ride service, then as minimal fixed-route service (anyone with knowledge is welcome to correct me on this; I'm working on recollection here). But latterly it's expanded to three regular routes in McMinnville proper, with link routes connecting the outlying communities to not only McMinnville but also to TriMet and Salem's Cherriots. The city service in McMinnville is Monday-Friday on the half-hour from 6:30 am to 8:30 pm, which is no mean feat for a small town like "Mac". Newberg is served by what is called the "Town Flyer" route which connects to the 99W Link route.

Anyway, this is about the graphic look, and with the growing up of the transit service In Yamhill County comes a more polished, accomplished graphical appearance. And they have it.

The logo of the Yamhill County Transportation Area (YCTA) is deft in execution and meaning. The letter Y is incorprated into a symbol that appears to be highways merging, in an ever-appropriate green, but the totality of the symbol expresses a hand supporting a tray, in the manner of a butler or waiter/waitress.

How may we be of service to you, Yamhill County? A very effective use of symbolism, a deft execution.

The understated-yet-effective look continues into signage and tickets/passes (as pictured)

Whoever created the look knew what they were doing, had a firm grasp of the message they were trying to communicate, and knew their audience: a rural county where everyone's your neighbor. They keep it friendly and approachable.

(graphics nicked from the YCTA website, which is a well-designed bit of work. I encourage a visit; you can find it here: http://yctransitarea.org).

Technorati Tags: transit, yamhill county, yamhill county transit, transit graphic design, logo design, transt logo design

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