SCUP-44: Monday evening

Just a couple of additions to previous information.

As regards Portland's public transit system (my experience of which will continue to expand as this thing goes on), it appears that in addition to a light rail line which runs basically east/west and a bus system which goes more or less wherever, there's also a trolley line which goes north/south through the restaurant/hotel/tourist/artsy district. Still, for all its multi-modality, my impression is that Portland's A-class office buildings (or what looks like A-class office space from a half-mile away) are away from most of the transit. Could it be that the regional merchant bankers and property developers are as addicted to BMW's here as anywhere else? (Sigh ...)

And (as hinted last week in the post on dinner meet-ups), Portland incents transit ridership in the city center by making it free. Kind of like some campuses do, but without requiring a university ID card. Combine free transit with an intentional shortage (I'm guessing here) of all-day parking spaces, and it might explain the observed light level of private car traffic. Something even more campuses might want to consider.

And one correction on the recycling containers at the convention center. What caught my eye was the label "landfill" for things not recycled. What I didn't notice is that what's separated out isn't paper, it's glass. Glass apparently goes into its own recycling stream, while everything else is single-streamed. Given that the city is trying to achieve a 75% recycling rate by 2015, maybe single-streaming is a way to make recycling easier.

And so to bed.