The inside of these 42-foot Gillig-built vehicles is bathed in light:

This will be because the windows are bigger, especially in the back, where they stretch almost from seat to ceiling. The lights are LEDs, not flickering fluorescents. The window frames are silver, not black. The seats are bright blue vinyl, not dark blue fabric. And the back wall and the inside of the doors are white, too:

Though I’ve no doubt this pristine look will eventually be customized by local pens, markers and pocketknives, I don’t think this’ll happen for a while. A sparkling new bus commands respect.

There are also some subtler upgrades coming in these buses, which TriMet is calling its “3000 series”. Check out the rows of LED lights along the back steps:

And, just to the right of the steps as you face the back of the bus, there’s a new floor heater that’ll push warm air forward underneath all the seats along the left side of the bus. Until now, TriMet’s low-floor buses have only had one floor heater, directly in front of the rear door on the right side of the bus.

Out in front of the bus is a feature intended to prevent crashes as buses turn, which is when a bus is at its deadliest. It’s a lamp that automatically rotates with the steering wheel to shine a beam of light at a diagonal, directly where the bus is about to move. In this shot, the lamp in question is in the upper left:

I didn’t get a shot of the new buses’ access ramps, but they’re much less steep: their base slope has improved from 4:1 to 6:1, according to TriMet. Because these new buses will allow TriMet to phase out 55 of its 260 high-floor buses, the agency’s standard service bus lines will have many fewer chair lifts – which means fewer delays for all riders, especially people with disabilities.

The ride is noticeably quieter and smoother, too, thanks to a single reduction axle that will raise the rear seating section slightly but allows the 3000 series to use taller tires and fewer gears than previous low-floor models.

Here’s a feature of the new buses that some transit riders may not appreciate. The vertical handrails beside the doors include prominent red markings intended to capture the height of people involved in illegal activity:

On our Facebook page last month, reader Matt Cleinman described these as “7-Eleven style height markers” and noted that “the illusion of unsafe transit might outweigh the benefits” of including these.

I asked TriMet officials to respond to Matt’s point Thursday. The last two or three rounds of TriMet bus orders have actually included height markers of some sort, they said.

Allen Morgan, TriMet’s head safety trainer, said the markings will mostly be used by people reviewing security camera footage after an incident.

“Look at all the cameras on this bus,” Morgan said. (The new ones have eight.) “It’s the way of the world.”

TriMet spokeswoman Kellie Randall also said she didn’t think the markings make passengers feel unsafe. “Do you feel unsafe in a convenience store?” she asked. “Just about any fast food joint has them.”

From curbside, the new buses don’t look radically different:

Unless, that is, you’re looking at them from the front:

From here, it’s easy to see how these new models make the bus operator and forward passengers part of the streetscape. Riding through downtown Portland in the prototype, I did something I’ve never done before—while standing in the aisle inside the bus, I smiled and made eye contact with a friend who happened to be walking on the sidewalk across the street.

TriMet is still road-testing this prototype, and doesn’t yet have a firm date when these will start hitting Powell Garage, except to say that it’ll be “before the fall.” Once TriMet gives the green light to begin production, the agency said, one new Gillig bus will be coming off the assembly line and heading to Portland every day.

It hasn’t even launched yet, but it’s clear (from our traffic logs, for one thing) that Portland already loves BoltBus.

The insanely cheap express bus service, which tomorrow starts running six times daily between Portland and Seattle with fares that start at $7 and top out at $25, is already adding direct service to Vancouver, BC, too.

Service starts May 31. Most fares to British Columbia will probably hover around $35, BoltBus General Manager David Hall said Wednesday – though earlybird fares to Vancouver seem to start at $15 and, like the Seattle service, one randomly selected seat on each bus will sell for $1.

Tickets to BC are available now – check it out. And yes, the wi-fi will still be free.

At BoltBus’s launch event in Pioneer Courthouse Square Wednesday, Hall shared some more details of this exciting new travel option.

1) BoltBus might expand to Eugene and Corvallis next.

It’ll depend on the Greyhound-owned company’s performance in the Portland-Vancouver corridor. “We don’t have enough buses right now.” Hall said. “We’re going to try this out and see how it goes.”

2) BoltBus is cheap because it sells mostly online.

Parking at the curb and letting passengers handle their own baggage saves some money, Hall said. But most of BoltBus’s advantage comes from its sales force, which consists almost entirely of computers.

“The Internet is an amazing sales tool,” Hall said. “It doesn’t get sick. It doesn’t call out. It’s never rude to a customer – 24/7/365, it just sells.”

3) Be on time, or else.

The buses only park at their curbside location – 6th Avenue and Salmon in Portland, 5th Avenue and S. King in Seattle, 1150 Station Street in Vancouver – for 15 minutes. Even if you’ve booked a ticket in advance, show up by the departure time or BoltBus may sell your seat to someone who shows up to pay cash on standby.

Only about 2% to 3% of customers are no-shows, Hall said. The most common no-shows? That’d be the people who bought their seats for $1. (Which comes out to a pretty good deal for BoltBus, actually.)

4) Holiday fares will be higher.

Like, maybe $30 to Seattle on Thanksgiving and Christmas, Hall said.

Because BoltBus’s variable price structure aims for 75% to 85% of capacity on every bus, fares will usually be much lower midday and midweek, with Friday nights often the most expensive. Currently, though, SEA-PDX fares top out at $25 for a walk-on cash purchase.

5) BoltBus is trying to add a bike rack in front.

Immediately after announcing their expansion into the Northwest, Hall said, “It became apparent to us that bikes are a big deal.”

The company says bikes can ride free beneath the bus in place of baggage, just as they do on BoltBus’s existing routes in the Northeast. But Northwesterners’ interest in bikes has the company worried about capacity – so they’re in talks with Oregon, Washington and British Columbia regulators for permission to add a bike rack, too.

Hall said that of tens of thousands of bikes hauled on the East Coast, he knew of only one that had ever been turned away because of space. That passenger got his bike on the next bus, he said.

Before he was a come-from-behind mayoral candidate in last night’s primary, Jefferson Smith was one of the first politicians whose staff started returning Portland Afoot’s calls.

Our 10-minute newsmagazine was barely six months old, with a few hundred subscribers, when the state representative took half an hour to talk to contributor Rebecca Robinson for her March 2011 “Street Talk” feature. In celebration of Smith’s openness to an odd little journalism startup (and our charitable desire to share Smith’s tip about East Portland’s best donut joint), here’s the short piece, in full.

Pick your punchline: “Mozart mellows muggers.” “Scofflaws Bach off.” State Rep. Jefferson Smith (D-East Portland) says TriMet should curb crime by broadcasting classical music at the worst MAX stops. We caught Smith between a visit with President Obama and a MAX Action meeting to dig into his kooky, creative concept.

Why only play classical music at the high-crime stations?
We could do it at all of them.

Any other cheap-and-easy ideas for MAX?
Community bulletin boards at MAX stations as part of an ‘adopt-a-stop’ program. Also a once-a-month "ride free day" to boost ridership. More ridership engenders a greater sense of safety, and greater actual safety. The MAX line was built as a way to get through East Portland; it wasn’t as well-designed with an eye toward how it could it be a community asset.

What’s your favorite piece of instrumental music?
The guitar solo in “Yellow Ledbetter” by Pearl Jam. I’m not a big classical music fan.

Should MAX be free everywhere?
I love the idea of a free MAX. On the other hand, data demonstrate you can increase the use of something by charging for it. People value it more. The sweet spot is paying something, but not a bunch.

What’s your favorite Portland secret?
If you go to Heavenly Donuts at 102nd and Glisan at around 9 p.m. and ask for "anything that’s warm," there are good odds that they’ll have donuts right out of the oven. They’re waaaaay good.

Qs & As conducted by Rebecca Robinson and edited for brevity. The most dangerous lines last year: http://pdx.be/MAXcrime. One study of Smith’s music idea suggests it might actually work: http://pdx.be/MusicTest.

Portland’s flashy new carsharing service is having technical difficulties in northwest Portland.

A cell tower disruption in the Pearl District last week has knocked out much of Car2go’s service in the area surrounding its own office, roughly between Lovejoy and Burnside, Interstate 405 and the Willamette River, spokeswoman Katie Stafford said Tuesday.

If Car2go members try to start or finish a trip in the area, they may find themselves unable to open the car – or unable to end their trip, for which they’re paying 35 cents a minute. This is because, unlike Zipcar, Car2go vehicles must communicate with their central network at each end of every trip.

See below the jump for how to avoid paying for a bad connection, plus details about Portland Afoot’s new unofficial email alert for future Car2go disruptions.

Stafford said any Car2go users struggling to end a trip should turn their car off and on again, then park in a slightly different space. If that doesn’t work, she said, call the company’s 24/7 call center at 877-488-4224 and ask for the car to be turned off remotely. (This process uses a separate, backup network.) She also said the company would reimburse any minutes wasted due to a bad connection, and had also been offering extra free minutes as an apology.

Stafford said she didn’t have or couldn’t release information about the number of complaints received. Because the company doesn’t have a software system for tracking spikes in phone complaints from a certain area, it’s not clear whether Car2go has identified all its local trouble spots.

But Portland’s 8-person team and Car2go’s Iowa-based call center are focused on finding and resolving any connectivity problems they detect, Stafford said.

“It’s a topic that we talk about every single day that it’s happening,” she said. “We’re going to get this fixed.”

Stafford attributed the problem to a combination of routine cell tower trouble and the company’s still-limited knowledge of the local cell network.

“Most people who are the early adopters do understand that these things happen,” Stafford added, saying that the company thinks its benefits outweigh its occasional problems. “The same way you have problems with your cell phone. … These cars are, like, little apps on wheels.”

Portland Afoot’s wiki page about Car2go (which has been one of our top Google traffic drivers since the service launched in late March) now has a brief guide to Car2go service disruptions – as well as a link to an unofficial alert system I threw together that will send you an email every time Car2go Portland’s Twitter feed makes a general announcement about “disruption” or “maintenance.” (There’s an RSS, too.)

If you want to increase the chance that you’re aware of any future Car2go outages, sign up – it’s free.

Portland, you can now catch a bus to Seattle for $7 to $9. Including wi-fi. And if you can squeeze necessities into a carry-on, your bike rides free.

Too good to be true? Nope. You can already buy tickets on the BoltBus website. Service starts May 17.

BoltBus, which is actually owned and operated by Greyhound, has been providing ultra-low-cost express bus service around the Northeast U.S. for several years. They’ve chosen the Pacific Northwest as their first corridor outside the East Coast.

BoltBus even randomly picks one of its early ticket-buyers to receive a mind-boggling $1 fare. Full details on our wiki’s new page about BoltBus.

You might also enjoy our tips for getting a good seat on Amtrak Cascades.

Creative Commons BoltBus photo by Frank Gruber.

Unionized TriMet workers apparently voted Friday to, for the first time, accept health coverage that requires them to cover a share of their monthly insurance premiums.

The 607-336 mail vote was reported Friday on the union’s website. Below the jump, I’ve posted what I’m told is a copy of the union’s newly approved proposal.

The public fight between TriMet and Amalgamated Transit Union Local 757 is far from resolution – at an Occupy-affiliated event this month, the union called this month for the transit agency’s top executive to be fired – but the union’s willingness to cut its own medical benefits would be a symbolically important gesture.

From what I can tell, active TriMet workers would pay between $16 and $74 per month for full medical coverage, depending on the plan and number of family members covered. That’s less than 5% of the premiums’ full cost, which seems to range from about $500 to about $2500. Retirees would remain untouched, and the actual quality of the health coverage – no deductibles, $5 copays, retirement with medical benefits at 55 after 10 years’ service – would continue.

Three things a savvy transit rider should know about this proposal:

1. It’d make TriMet workers part of the health consumer market. For the first time, workers would have a small financial incentive to choose TriMet’s cheaper Kaiser Permanente plan over its more expensive Regence one.
2. Premiums wouldn’t be "FREE!" any more. Take it from a guy who sells magazines: It’s harder to raise a price from $0 to $1 than from $1 to $2. This is a psychologically important concession by the union. But for the same reason, it would deprive the union’s enemies of a familiar talking point.
3. It doesn’t touch TriMet’s biggest long-term problem. $74 a month from 2,000 transit workers wouldn’t prevent TriMet’s looming financial doomsday, because current worker premiums aren’t actually the core of TriMet’s problem. The real threat to the future of transit in Portland is TriMet’s ongoing failure to save enough money to pay the medical bills of future retirees. This proposal doesn’t seem to address that at all.

Note that the deal only affects compensation under the ATU’s 2003 contract, which expired in 2009 but remains in effect until a replacement is signed. However, this offer is certain to shape the debate over the unresolved 2009 contract and the upcoming 2012 contract.

Here are the files I’ve seen. Note that the tables on the first page apply only to retirees; tables for active full-time and part-time ("mini-run") workers are on page two.

It’s Friday, and we’ve saved the most interesting local race of the year for last.

The Portland mayoral primary May 15 looks like anybody’s game. All three leading candidates have an interest in transportation – two of them even said last month that they’d dismiss the city’s sitting transportation director – and all are clearly fans of low-car movement in general.

But they certainly don’t agree on everything that matters to transit riders. Some of their differences, lifted from our low-car voter guide to the mayor’s race:

• Hales would continue to be one of Streetcar’s biggest fans; Smith calls it a lower priority and Brady doesn’t see expansion “in the near future.” Portland Streetcar is Hales’s baby – he was given a lifetime Streetcar pass when he left the city council in 2002 – and Hales told us that after shoring up transit service he’d look forward to streetcar “possibilities all around the compass rose.” Smith ruled it out unless the feds pay the bill, and Brady is against Streetcar expansion, at least for now.
• Brady and Smith are enthusiastic about using tolling to fight congestion; Hales is comfortable with tolling only on new facilities. Congestion tolling matters to transit commuters because it would get them off the hook for the cost of highway expansions that are useful only to rush-hour auto commuters. Though all three candidates support it, Hales doesn’t think it’s a good idea unless it’s used to pay for a recently built project, while the other two suggest it could be useful on any crowded highway. (Also, don’t miss Hales’s interesting solution for funding the new Sellwood Bridge.)
• Brady and Hales get excited about expanding rural bike paths; Smith gets excited about redeveloping urban parking lots. We asked each candidate to name their favorite transit and active transportation facilities. Brady praised the Springwater Trail and called for its continued growth; Hales pitched his vision for a riverbank bike path to Astoria and added another passionate plug for the Streetcar; and Smith said his favorite transit facility is the Gateway Transit Center, for its “tremendous untapped opportunity.”

And that’s a wrap for our 2012 low-car voter’s guide. We plan to update it occasionally during the general election, adding links to other coverage when appropriate, but the project is mostly done. Check out our other summaries of each race:

• the Metro race for North, Northwest, downtown and inner Northeast Portland
• the Metro race for inner Southeast and Southwest Portland
• the city council race for Commissioner Position 1
• the city council race for Commissioner Position 4

…and don’t forget to vote by May 15.

Two neighborhood activists from lower-income parts of Portland – North and East – face uphill fights for city council against happy (and well-financed) Portland political warrior Steve Novick.

But though neither has the political background of Novick, who made a strong race for a U.S. Senate seat in 2008, White and Williams are legitimate campaigners – Williams is endorsed by former Mayor Tom Potter – and, as our voter’s guide to this May 15 primary race shows, each has a reasonable grasp of local policy.

And all three have interesting disagreements with each other on transit issues. A few:

• White and Williams oppose the Columbia River Crossing as proposed; Novick could accept it. Novick says he’d test tolling before making “final decisions” on the bridge, but expressed (in our interview and his questionnaire for Bike Walk Vote, which endorsed him) that he could support an I-5 expansion if it brought light rail, better freight access and improved bike/pedestrian facilities. White opposes tolling, a bigger highway and light rail unless it’s requested by Clark County; Williams is a longtime bridge skeptic on air-pollution grounds.
• Novick would prioritize YouthPass for poorer students, while White would prioritize it for East Portland. The free TriMet passes offered to Portland Public high schoolers, scheduled to disappear for most students after June, were once paid mostly by the state, which has long subsidized public school transportation in other districts. With state funding gone, all three candidates said they’d support tapping the city budget to continue the program, but Novick would restrict it to lower-income students who either don’t attend their neighborhood schools or live far from schools. (Other low-income students are already covered by PPS.) White, meanwhile, wants it expanded to East County school districts (if there’s money) and Williams seemed to be confusing the free YouthPasses with TriMet’s fare discount for youth.
• Novick wants to improve transit by making public health plans smarter; White wants to cut demand with more mixed-use neighborhoods; Williams supports higher fares for people with jobs. Alone of all the candidates we interviewed, Novick answered our question about transit efficiency with a suggestion for improving transit workers’ health: renegotiating union contracts to offer better preventative care for the most expensive workers. White thinks rising oil costs will require more mixed-use neighborhoods. Williams said it doesn’t make sense for her employer to subsidize her TriMet pass while unemployed people pay full price.

Anything missing from our guide? Add it yourself – just click “edit” on the right side of the page. And check out our introductions to other races from earlier this week:

• Metro race for North, Northwest, downtown and inner Northeast Portland
• Metro race for inner Southeast and Southwest Portland
• city council race for Commissioner Position 1

The Portland City Council race that’s looking tightest has split the active transportation community, too.

Incumbent Amanda Fritz, a Southwest Portland neighborhood activist turned politician, has been a loud voice for better sidewalks but more dubious of some bike projects. Mary Nolan, a former majority leader of the state House of Representatives, nabbed the endorsement of Bike Walk Vote on the strength of her own support for low-car travel and played a big role in funding the upcoming Orange MAX Line to southeast Portland.

Our new voter’s guide to this race in the May 15 primary shows clear, valid disagreements between a pair of politicians who think in different ways about low-car life:

• Fritz thinks Streetcar is mostly a way to encourage denser development; Nolan sees Streetcar as transportation for places that are already dense. If Streetcar expands further, Fritz would prioritize building a standalone Streetcar loop in Lents. Nolan would prioritize expansion into the Lloyd District.
• Fritz wants more local control of TriMet; Nolan thinks this would endanger state funding. Nolan, who worked hard to secure $250 million in state lottery revenue for the Orange Line, argues that localizing TriMet board appointments would make state lawmakers feel “off the hook financially.” Fritz, though, calls it “a problem” that TriMet’s board is appointed by the governor and confirmed by state senators.
• Nolan wants to encourage more transit-oriented housing; Fritz wants to concentrate transit-oriented housing in areas already served by transit. Nolan said she sees a limited role for the city in encouraging affordable housing near transit, but supports lighter regulatory processes for transit-oriented projects. Fritz has a different tack: she thinks the city can help affordability by removing subsidies and and zoning for big apartment buildings from areas that don’t already have good transit.

Anything missing from our guide? Add it yourself – just click “edit” on the right side of the page. And check out our introductions to the two Metro races from earlier this week:

• for North, Northwest, downtown and inner Northeast Portland
• for inner Southeast and Southwest Portland

If you want a candidate who’d try to improve bus service by hitting the breaks on TriMet’s light rail construction, it’s Jonathan Levine.

If you want a candidate whose sleep murmurs probably consist of detailed plans to improve land efficiency along major transit corridors, it’s Bob Stacey.

The two are vying to represent inner Southeast and Southwest Portland in our regional government as councilors from Metro District 6. Stacey has worked on staff for the state, the city, TriMet, Congress and the land-protection group 1000 Friends of Oregon, where he started as staff attorney and later spent seven years as executive director; Levine has been a project manager at the University of Western States chiropractic college and worked in educational travel, language education and writing.

Here are three ways they differ, some of the highlights of Portland Afoot’s guide to this Metro council race:

• Levine opposes MAX expansion. Levine says light rail “is nice technology now but is very expensive and is probably going to be outdated in 15 to 20 years.” Stacey isn’t a rail absolutist – he told us he’d be open to bus rapid transit as part of a compromise for a smaller Columbia River Crossing, a project supported by neither candidate – but Stacey’s prescription for making transit dollars go farther is to build a “more vigorous network of bus and rail service” that riders would be willing to pay more to use.
• Stacey’s bursting with detailed plans. For example, Stacey called in his interview to replace the gas tax with a three-pronged “utility” fee system modeled on the way we pay for electricity: a universal access fee paid by all residents; a fee per mile driven, to offset wear and tear; and an anti-congestion fee during peak hours that could be used to fund alternatives to auto transportation. Levine, for his part, refused to share his position on gas taxes.
• Levine wants to cut bike and pedestrian projects to increase spending on urban freight; Stacey says that money should come out of automobile projects. Both candidates agree that freight projects are important.

Anything missing from our guide? Add it yourself – just click “edit” on the right side of the page. And if you’re voting in North, Northeast or Northwest Portland, check out our introduction to the separate Metro race there.