Understand Metro shut down their Portland office last week.
So, are the traffic reports now coming from Phoenix or LA or????
Something just doesn't sound right to have Portland traffic reports coming from someplace far away.

Like those weather reports from someone back east telling us how nice it is and our current weather status. Telling us how the sun is shining when I go out and don't see a break in the clouds.

I am constantly told by acquaintances not in the biz about hearing a traffic report say that traffic is at a standstill on the Glenn Jackson Bridge as they are driving across it at full speed.

Even live and local is no longer "live" and, apparently, "local".

Traffic is not often accurate. There used to 2 or more planes in the sky but thats long gone. The few folks doing traffic use ODOT cameras which only give you so much information and can be difficult to read. The quality of traffic is poor at best. Metro traffic is coming out of the LA office now with the exception of a few employees who now work out of the stations studios to honor contracts to do traffic. Times are tough and will get tougher. The positive is when we are all out of work we wont need traffic reports. (sigh) The good news is a very small group of people got very rich while they destroyed radio much like many other industries. Wait, thats not good news.

The average commuter really only cares to hear if theres a major wreck on a major freeway so cover that and should be ok. Lets see how they do.

My impersonation of a typical traffic report you hear on the radio any more, typed as it as heard.

OnI5wehadawreckafewminutesagoatmacadamthe banfieldismovinslowinboundi84iscralwingasyouleavethecityandthesunsetseeingabitof breaklightsasyouapproachthezoo.

This traffic report is brought to you by Joes car repair. Serving the area for more than 50 years, Joes auto repair specializes in both foreign and domestics, and provided honest, fast service with free quotes and diagnostics. And if you come in within the next three months, you’ll receive a free oil change with any service or repair over $50.00. If you mention this ad, receive 10% off a radiator flush, or 5% off a transmission flush. Call now, 503-222-joes. That’s 503-222-joes. Once again, that’s 503-222-joes. Joes auto repair, on Burnside, next to the goodwill, across the street from the highschool, right in back of Brian’s Bakery. Joes auto repair, bringing you quality service for over 50 years. That’s Joes auto repair. J-o-e-s auto repair. Check them out online- at www.joesautorepair.com, that's www.joesautorepair.com. Joe's auto repair.

I’m Pete with your super accurate traffic on K---

More or less, it’s a 10 second report read at the speed of an auctioneer, followed by a 50 second commercial.

As some of you who have read my posts know, I have been a transportation planner in the Portland-Vancouver area since the early 1990's. I don't bother listening to radio traffic reports . I have a GPS with the MSNDirect service and it gives my dynamic routing information while I am on the road. I find it is better than the "look at the ODOT" camera reports since it is getting real time lane detector info. It is particularly handy when you don't know the local jargon for the roadways; it just pleasantly tells you where to go.

(Okay, I left the straight line there in honor of Tim's return to the air... )

I'm one of those who is doing the long distance traffic reporting from LA. If it makes you feel any better, I did live and commute in Portland for 20 years. I talk to current PDXers all day and they are also helping me with the information. Not all of it comes from ODOT cameras. In fact, just some of the slow spots come from that. I am also listening to dispatch scanners for the police and fire and make calls to the proper authorities for information. The last thing I want is to give incorrect information or to tell you everything is fine as you head into the backup of a 5 car pileup.

GPS is a great tool and I did purchase one before moving to LA. It gets me around for the most part but sometimes we have to be more clever than the device. Tom Tom has done me wrong on more than one occasion telling me to go forward (into the tree?) when my only option was to turn right.

It's an imperfect world and this business has changed a lot over the last 20 years. Those of us still in it are doing our best to bring quality to our content no matter what.

Short reply: Between webcams, TMC PIOs and GPS, there's no need to actually have someone in a city to accurately report traffic conditions there.

" I am also listening to dispatch scanners for the police and fire".

And how are you doing this if you are in LA?

I can remember when Don Burden, at his peak, had two mobile units on the ground roving and a plane in the air every traffic period. Contrast that with what they're doing now, and then wondering why the industry is tanking.

Ya,
pretty soon all we will be doing is commuting back and forth to the Unemployment office, the AMPM mini mart and the welfare office.

On foot..........

>>" I am also listening to dispatch scanners for the police and fire".

And how are you doing this if you are in LA?<<

That's easy: http://www.oregonlive.com/policescanner/

You can find scanners around the country at http://www.police-scanner.info/live-police-scanners.htm

You've made my point 1lossir... "that's easy"..

How does it make me feel that a PDX traffic reporter is in LA, regardless of how long he may have lived in PDX, or how many people he talks to in PDX on a daily basis? Not good. Not good at all. Are we all supposed to get up and hold a parade in this guy's honor? Uh....no. The fact of the matter is, he's in LA and some guy in PDX is out of work.

You can stop patting yourself on the back now, 'cause I'm not buying.

>>How does it make me feel that a PDX traffic reporter is in LA, regardless of how long he may have lived in PDX, or how many people he talks to in PDX on a daily basis? Not good. Not good at all.<<

This is nothing new in radio. Thanks to syndication, remote voice tracking, etc., there's been people on the air in one city that are geographically nowhere near the area for over a decade now.

The only difference is that this out-of-market on-air position is one done in real time, not timeshifted or syndicated.

So go ahead and bemoan the loss of another local position - but understand that, for better or worse this IS reality in our industry.

I know that person in L.A. and I can double-dog-promise that he/she will do everything that it takes to 'do' Portland right.

I have always been a fan of 'live and local'. However, there are good people that can get the job done....even if they're are NOT sitting in a studio in P-Town.

I understand that this is the direction our industry is heading, for better or worse(Often worse). And if some of you say this person in LA is doing the best they can, that's good enough for me. In that respect.

But, it's still not live, it's still not local and there's still PDX-based people out of work.

Regardless of how hard someone in another area works, I still would have more confidence in someone I know is actually in my market, than one I know is not.

do we know for fact that ALL traffic from Metro is being doen from out of market? I coulda sworn i heard Cyn Bolsta on KUIK yesterday...

So the ONLY Air Traffic helicopter reports happening LIVE and direct FROM the helicopter are in little ol' Salem-Keizer, Oregon?
Wow.

>>i heard Cyn Bolsta
Yeah Cyn...give us an update...probably the sole local traffic person in PDX.

Wrong, Broadway.

Michael Convery
Lynn Masterson
Dana Jeffries
Scott Tom
Mark Workhoven
Steve Lindsley

...all doing traffic live and local

Since I started this thread, I don't want to be another DJFresh and start something and go away.
I have read what all have written and agree with some.
First, I did not intend it to mean "ALL" traffic reports were moving away, only those done from Metro. And it wasn't meant to say they did a good job. Quite frankly, many traffic reports I have heard on the radio tend to be not very informative...particularly on small stations or ones that are strong on music. They are not thorough and those generally seemed to be from Metro. It was as if the station did it so they could say they have a traffic report. You could hear the same report on different stations by the same person with just a different tag. Note..this does not mean those that do the report for two stations in their cluster, such as KEX & KPOJ.
Yes, there are some that give a more complete traffic report that is more thorough and generally those are on stations that are more news and information than those playing music.
The list by Chaplain, above is a good recap of those that seem to do a good job with reports about every 10 minutes at most, sometimes at smaller intervals.

and Edust1958, with all due respect, I still maintain my attitude about traffic planners, particularly those programming the lights, that we discussed in another thread. I constantly find new examples that prove my belief that they don't plan to keep traffic moving. Just today on E.Burnside east of Kaiser and the Max train stop, there was a lot of traffic on Burnside and their light changed red. No Max in sight. No cars on the side street. But the side street went green. Over 30 seconds until one car came up and turned left to go westbound on Burnside. Another 20 seconds went by before the light changed back to green for Burnside traffic. That was at about 1PM today. As long as that kind of nonsense continues, traffic planners rate low on my scale.

I have also used the traffic function on my GPS. It is basically only good for major roads..Interstates and a few others. Even those are not as good as local traffic reports. I see those telling you that traffic is moving normal with normal speeds as you come to a spot where they shut down two lanes and back up traffic because they are sweeping the guardrails or replacing an overhead light. They also don't tell you what is happening at 39th and Powell or 22nd and Broadway or Jenne Rd. and Foster, etc.
Neither does someone sitting in LA looking at ODOT cameras. Granted, most reading this may not care about those intersections but many do and I am sure you care about other intersections or roads. Unless you don't care anyway.
Nothing is better than local, and live where they let listeners also call in and tell what they are also seeing, IMHO.
Plus, I think traffic reports on television on the evening news are worthless. Anyone needing that info is not watching television.

Dennis Nordin, where are you?

I agree on the light timing.
Especially West Burnside where you constantly have green lights that feed into red lights.
Probably to avoid red light runners.
stupid though.
just have them all green at the same time in like some big cities do apparently for Burnside. Then change at the same time for the cross streets.

I was driving a Radio Cab a few years ago so I came to know this very well.
There was something in the paper about the subject and the traffic people of the city said they thought there was nothing wrong the the lights.

Coincidently at the same period of time I wrote into the Tribune about the Made In Oregon sign not being on 24hrs, was turned off at like 10pm or something.
And the high rise cranes not having lights on them year round but only for christmas.
Same for Big Pink as well.

I feel kinda responsible for that change in our cities nightlife. patmyselfontheback.

I don't feel good at all about a PDXer losing their job. I don't feel good that the other market I was working in completely shut down as well and I had to move to LA in order to keep a job. I do feel very fortunate that I DO still have a job though and will do my best to make sure that I do it as professionally and accurately as possible.

In addition to ODOT cameras and scanners through the internet I also get daily construction reports and do the old fashioned "beat check" calling PIO desks and asking for updates. If a listener calls a station with information I have missed, I make the appropriate calls to get the details and include that.

It's not easy to have your head in several different cities trying to make sure all of the information is correct. Just know that I DO care about your local radio and that you get the correct information.

Thanks for the warm welcome home.

Lander, I owe you a beer at The Buffalo Gap.

With all due respect, Jimbo and Jay_bozich, there may be quite a few reasons that the signals are not behaving in a way that makes sense to you as a driver. While I am a professional transportation planner, I am not a traffic signal engineer but I know enough to know that it is a far more complex and challenging problem in engineering than most drivers realize. Even expert traffic signal engineers can't make the system produce perfect results for all drivers... the best that we can hope for is some level of progression. I am sure that it is not helped by the Oregon statute that makes speed regulation a judgement call rather than a measurement. The variation in driver behavior especially in speed control is a difficult factor in setting up timing plans for a corridor much less a grid.

I know that you feel that the system could be tuned better. I suspect that you may be right but when the funding cupboard is bare, making the changes in the control equipment to provide for corridor optimization tends to get a lower priority than filling the potholes. Besides, when unemployment is rather high the value of travel time saved drops (because the relative value of employment measured by wages tends to drop) and the typical argument for saving three or four minutes of travel time for each and every driver in the peak direction of the corridor (minus the increased travel time for drivers in the off-peak or conflicting directions like cross-streets) doesn't pencil to pay for the $50 to 100K it costs to develop a timing plan for a system of signals.

By the way, I have been told that upgrading an older signal to more modern control is running over $200,000 per signal these days.

I apologize for the off-topic ramble....

I was under the impression that the Basic Speed Law only came into practice when there was no posted speed OR conditions demanded slowing down regardless of the posted speed, not that you could ever speed up.

Edust1958,
With all due respect for your professionalism, but I am not buying it. This tri-county area seems to be the worst. I know they program for different times of the day. I am ok with that as long as it makes sense, and it doesn't many places. There was an article in the paper a while back, perhaps the same one mentioned by jay_bozich that stated they have one guy(?) in Portland programming them and patting himself on the back. If that is the best he can do, they should be patting his back out the door and getting somebody that can put some sense into it. I am not buying the cost. It is not just me. Talk to taxi drivers, shuttle drivers, those that move around the city a lot and you will get the same complaint all over town. Take the 42nd off ramp from I-84 westbound and see how long you sit at that light waiting while there is no traffic moving the other direction. You have the sensors in the ground.....use them better. There are some signals in this town that do work sensibly. But there are too many that don't. Particularly in evening and late hours. I complained once to a Lake Oswego council person once about the lights on State Street at A and B. They seem to be a bottleneck at times. The lights on A seem to be efficient. He said L.O. controls those on A but ODOT(?) controls those on HWY 43. He said they don't like the way they are set but they have no control over it.
Sorry to go off topic my own thread.

To Former PDXer.
I am not criticizing you and understand and appreciate that you are lucky to have a job. I also believe that you may be a professional and will do as good as you can under the circumstances you are in. I am sure the others in the same boat will, also.
It still isn't live and local no matter how much you try to make it so, even with your connections and ties. However, it is what it is. I am sure some will get used to it.

Jimbo,
I think that we are going to have to agree-to-disagree on the issue of traffic signal timing. I suspect there are cases where you are experiencing sub-optimal timing at a signal and the reason for that is not apparent. I believe there is a valid reason for that condition and you do not. In many of those cases I suspect that the sub-optimal condition can be corrected but there is either a shortage of funding or a jurisdictional issue which is in the way.

>>Michael Convery
Lynn Masterson
Dana Jeffries
Scott Tom
Mark Workhoven
Steve Lindsley

Are not all these CC,KEX,KPOJ employees? So there are no Metro Traffic employees in PDX anymore?

Hey... if we're going to split hairs make sure they are dyed blonde like mine!

........Author: Broadway
Wednesday, March 18, 2009 - 7:57 am

So there are no Metro Traffic employees in PDX anymore?........

Isn't that what this thread was about?

Stay with us now Val! :-)

>>coulda sworn i heard Cyn Bolsta on KUIK yesterday...
>>So there are no Metro Traffic employees in PDX anymore

So Cyn is working for KUIK?

Cyn is still with Metro. So is Jeff Mitchell at KPAM. We miss our fallen comrades, but are working with our new colleagues in LA to make this transition as seamless as possible.

Portland radio gets their traffic reports from reporters in Los Angeles.

Wow what a great expose story for local TV news or The Oregonian!

Uhhh,
Local TV gets their traffic reports from LA, also.

Hey Humble, would that be all of the Portland TV stations? Which one(s)?