The Portland Bureau of Transportation is painting the town – or at least certain street lanes – red.

PBOT crews began to paint red bus lanes on Wednesday on Southwest Main Street between First and Second avenues.

The project aims to speed buses through traffic. The Federal Highway Administration has given permission for some U.S. cities, including Portland, to use red paint as a signal of bus prioritization.

The red lanes are transit priority routes where other modes are prohibited or limited. Cars, trucks, taxis and services such as Uber and Lyft are not allowed to use the lanes. Cyclists may use the lanes in certain locations, according to PBOT.

In addition to the downtown stretch of Main Street, red lanes will be coming to the intersections of Northeast Martin Luther King, Jr. and Lloyd boulevards, Northeast Grand Avenue and Burnside Street, and Northeast Grand Avenue and Couch Street.

“These new red lanes signal our commitment to doing everything we can to make transit an attractive option for more Portlanders and prioritizing tangible climate action in the face of looming climate catastrophe,” Commissioner Chloe Eudaly stated in a news release.

Experience in New York City and San Francisco has shown reduced collisions and lane violations after red lane treatments, according to PBOT.

Portland State University will collect data to evaluate the lanes’ performance. Metro and Portland Streetcar are also supporting the project.

More red lanes will be painted in downtown Portland in 2020, according to PBOT.

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Ridership on TriMet‘s MAX light-rail and Westside Express Services continued to grow in the month of January, but bus ridership continued to decline.

According to monthly statistics compiled by the agency, the number of rides on the MAX and WES increased by 4.8 and 12.2 percent per week, respectively, in January 2011, compared with the number of rides for January 2010.

The agency saw similar growth on the two lines in December 2010, with the number rides on MAX and WES up by 6.1 and 9.8 percent per week, respectively.

Bus ridership, which is the most-used travel option on TriMet, also followed December trends and continued to drop in January. Compared with January 2010, weekly bus trips dropped 4.5 percent in January 2011. In December, ridership had dropped 3.1 percent.

Trips using all three modes of transportation dropped 0.9 percent in January 2011, when compared with January 2010. In January 2011, there were 1.9 million weekly trips on those services for the month, including about 1.1 million weekly bus trips, 750,850 MAX trips, 21,500 MAX green line trips and 6,900 WES trips.

The January 2011 numbers are all higher than the December 2010 statistics. In December, ridership was about 1.74 million total trips per week. That includes about 1 million weekly bus trips, 711,400 MAX trips, 19,300 MAX green line trips and 5,900 WES trips.

TriMet has more information on ridership statistics online at .

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The agency that owns advertising space on TriMet‘s buses and bus shelters is looking into advertising of the green variety next year.

Lamar Advertising is in talks with TriMet, the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry and Solterra Systems to install living wall advertisements and eco-roofs at three major TriMet bus stops next year, according to Brad Kleiner, vice president and general manager of Lamar’s Northwest transit division. After seeing bus shelters in Washington, D.C., with eco-roofs, Kleiner wanted to explore planting foliage around some of its bus stop advertising space.

While it’s not a sure thing yet, Solterra Systems has been working with an old TriMet bus shelter to see what alterations are needed to make an eco-roof and living wall work there. Potential bus stops for the project include Rose Quarter Transit Center, PGE Park and a stop in Hillsboro.

“We have to build custom water tanks for a living wall and parapet walls around the roof of the bus shelter to hold dirt for the eco-roof,” said Brian Heather, president of Solterra Systems. “For the living wall advertisement, we’d take everything out of those glass enclosures and perforate the glass so air gets to the plants inside.”

Kleiner said his company will meet with TriMet, Solterra and OMSI in the coming weeks to solidify plans for the planted bus stops.

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Portland ranked first in five categories of .

The categories included environmental friendliness, microbrew beer, public parks and access, summer travel, and public transportation and pedestrian-friendliness.

That last one is interesting, considering this year also marks a , not including on Monday.

The Rose City fared worst in shopping at luxury stores, and for travel during winter, Christmas and New Years.

But who needs to shop when you’ve got great microbrew pubs?

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Portland ranked first in five categories of .

The categories included environmental friendliness, microbrew beer, public parks and access, summer travel, and public transportation and pedestrian-friendliness.

That last one is interesting, considering this year also marks a , not including on Monday.

The Rose City fared worst in shopping at luxury stores, and for travel during winter, Christmas and New Years.

But who needs to shop when you’ve got great microbrew pubs?

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Commuters on TriMet buses get to celebrate the end of daylight-saving time a week early this year, thanks to a software glitch on the digital displays inside all low-floor buses with Automatic Stop Announcements.

Times inside buses will appear to be an hour earlier than the actual time, although TriMet officials have assured the Daily Journal of Commerce that buses have not actually entered a time warp.

The problem will continue until the real daylight-saving time requires clocks to fall back on Nov. 7 at 2 a.m., said Bekki Witt, a TriMet spokeswoman.

“Reader boards are attached to an old dispatch system, which was programmed years ago to reflect when daylight-saving time used to begin the last weekend in October,” said Bekki Witt..

There is no software support for the older dispatch system, so TriMet can’t change the display times, she said.

The glitch only affects the displays and not bus travel or arrival times. still works fine, Witt added.

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Commuters on TriMet buses get to celebrate the end of daylight-saving time a week early this year, thanks to a software glitch on the digital displays inside all low-floor buses with Automatic Stop Announcements.

Times inside buses will appear to be an hour earlier than the actual time, although TriMet officials have assured the Daily Journal of Commerce that buses have not actually entered a time warp.

The problem will continue until the real daylight-saving time requires clocks to fall back on Nov. 7 at 2 a.m., said Bekki Witt, a TriMet spokeswoman.

“Reader boards are attached to an old dispatch system, which was programmed years ago to reflect when daylight-saving time used to begin the last weekend in October,” said Bekki Witt..

There is no software support for the older dispatch system, so TriMet can’t change the display times, she said.

The glitch only affects the displays and not bus travel or arrival times. still works fine, Witt added.

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TriMet buses will fill in for streetcar transportation in the Pearl District from Sept. 13 through Sept. 26.

Buses will replace streetcar service while construction crews work to connect the new eastside streetcar tracks to the existing line on the west side. The work on the streetcar intersections is being done as part of the $148 million Portland Streetcar Loop Project.

“The buses will run the same schedule as the streetcar with some modifications,” said Kay Dennen, community relations manager for the Portland Streetcar Loop Project.

Dennen said a complete list of changes to the schedule can be found , but buses will be making routine stops on the streetcar route every 15 minutes.

TriMet does not expect the added service, which will add eight buses to the area, to cause any delays to its existing service, said Mary Fetsch, spokeswoman for TriMet.

Additional construction will continue along Northwest Lovejoy Avenue through Nov. 4 as additional streetcar tracks are installed.

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In an attempt to close a $27 million budget gap in the 2011 fiscal year, transit agency TriMet will cut back bus and MAX light-rail service in September.

“This is the second year in a row we’ve had to cut service to make up for a budget shortfall due to the economy,” said Mary Fetsch, spokeswoman for TriMet. “We made a lot of internal cuts first. The last place we look to fill a budget shortfall is service cuts.”

The first change riders will notice is that as of Sept. 1, TriMet will increase the cost of fares on many routes by five cents to cover increasing operating costs.

The additional changes, which will reduce the frequency of MAX and bus trips throughout the day, will begin Sept. 5. The time in between buses and trains will vary from line to line with some buses or trains coming every 20 minutes instead of every 17. TriMet has complete details of changes to its schedule, which affect 50 bus routes and all MAX lines, on its website .

“It doesn’t seem like two to three minutes would make a big difference, but by the end of the day you might be able to send out one less bus, and so you send out one less operator and you save the costs involved in that bus,” Fetsch said. “We get 53 percent of our funding from employer payroll tax. Fewer people working means less funding and less people riding. We get 22 percent of our funding from fares. Those two things make up three quarters of our funding.”

In addition to these cuts, TriMet is eliminating the 27-Market/Main and 157-Happy Valley bus lines due to low ridership and the two lines having additional transportation alternatives nearby.

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When transit agency TriMet added two hybrid buses to its fleet in 2002, the transit agency was not impressed with their performance. But nearly a decade later, TriMet has decided to give hybrid buses, which are powered by electricity and diesel fuel, another test drive along one of its busiest routes.

TriMet last week announced a $2 million award from the Federal Transportation Administration to purchase four new hybrid buses for Line 72 – Killingsworth Street to 82nd Avenue. The line accounts for more than 16,500 trips each weekday.

But while TriMet’s hybrid buses save 8 percent more fuel than its other buses, they also cost 40 to 50 percent more than new diesel buses, according to Alan Lehto, the transit agency’s director of project planning. However, hybrid technology has improved significantly over the past few years, he said, leading more transit agencies to look again at the vehicles.

“Our older hybrids were not penciling in terms of cost, emissions benefits and fuel economy,” Lehto said. “But other transit systems are ordering hundreds of hybrids today because the technology has improved. With this grant, we have an opportunity to track the performance of the new technology.”

A hybrid bus, when traveling at low speeds, runs purely on electric power from a battery pack. At medium speeds, a hybrid bus uses a combination of electric and traditional mechanical power from a diesel engine. Because the electric power is used for a portion of the duties performed by the diesel engine, these vehicles are considered to have greater fuel economy and reduced emissions than diesel buses, Lehto said.

C-TRAN, the transit agency for Vancouver, Wash., in early 2008 purchased 12 Gillig Corp. hybrids after monitoring Seattle’s use of hybrid buses for many years. King County’s Metro Transit, which serves Seattle and its surrounding areas, operates 285 hybrid buses, according to Rochelle Ogershok, public affairs specialist with King County’s Department of Transportation. Those vehicles use 47 percent less diesel fuel and have lower maintenance costs than diesel buses, Ogershok said.

C-TRAN’s hybrid fleet uses 30 percent less fuel than its non-hybrid buses, said Scott Patterson, C-TRAN public affairs manager, which is why the transit agency later this year will purchase another six hybrid buses.

“You’re using the brakes less, so there are fewer brake repairs,” Patterson said. “It’s hard to quantify, but we are saving some money in maintenance as well as fuel costs.”

However, the greater fuel economy and reduced maintenance comes at a price. The cost of a hybrid bus for C-TRAN is approximately $650,000, compared to $450,000 for a new diesel bus. TriMet has not decided yet which manufacturer’s hybrids it will purchase, but Lehto said he expects them to cost more than new non-hybrid buses would.

“The cost of these vehicles is significant,” Lehto said. “But if the price of diesel goes up, the operating savings from the hybrids could outweigh the capital cost to purchase them.”

The new hybrids are expected to arrive within 20 months, said Lehto, who added that he didn’t know when the transit agency might purchase more.

“The hope is to be able to replace a portion of our fleet with hybrids every year or so,” Lehto said. “But we’ve had to defer some of that due to a reduced budget. Right now, the plan is to purchase the four new hybrids and go from there.”

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