I should preface this entry by stating that Portland’s Tri-Met transit system is still among the finest public transportation networks in the country. That is, if I can trust the comments I hear from bus-traveling visitors to our fair, soggy city, and I suspect I can. Your average grumpy commuter from out of town isn’t likely to lie about something like that if his home-town transit system is actually superior to ours. That said, I take great exception to how they handled this particular holiday.

Let’s run through the timeline of my morning:

7:55am: Leave the house with plenty of time to catch the 8:12am #9 downtown on the holiday schedule.

8:22am: Board the #9. Grumble under breath.

8:29am: After a surprisingly brief trek downtown, get off the #9 just in time to see the #35 leave the stop on the next block.

8:30am: Confirm that the transit mall screen schedule and the schedule on my Treo agree that the #35 leaves that stop at quarter ’til the hour, once an hour.

9:00am: Board the #35. The bus driver informs me that, yes, Tri-Met is on holiday schedule today except for the #35, which is running on its normal weekday schedule.

Excuse me, what? Has somebody gone utterly mad? How in the name of the seven lower hells is anyone expected to plan their commute if we’re just picking and choosing which lines to run on which schedule? It should not have taken me the better part of ninety minutes to get to work this morning, not when I was out the door well in advance of the time I needed to be. This is nonsense.

Shame on you, Tri-Met.