Behind the scenes of ‘Stop Requested,’ a 14-day journey by public transit

Editor’s note: This is a Q&A about “Stop Requested,” OPB’s multi-part series about a journey to the corners of Oregon by public transit. You can read the first, second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, and seventh installments of the series.

Lillian Karabaic spoke with Prakruti Bhatt on OPB’s “Weekend Edition.” This transcript of their conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Lillian Karabaic: Last week was the final installment of “Stop Requested,” our multi-part series documenting a 14-day journey by public transit. Over the course of a journey that started in The Dalles and ended in John Day, we rode 38 buses, three trains, and in the back of one patrol car traveling 2,060.2 miles around Oregon.

Today, I’m joined by OPB video producer Prakruti Bhatt, who — for some reason — agreed to come along with me for this trip. Bhatt is here to help me answer some of the great questions listeners asked about "Stop Requested."

Prakruti Bhatt: Lillian, the listeners want to know how the heck did you actually plan this? I assume you started very early.

Karabaic: I had a massive spreadsheet with four tabs where I tried to make the trip work, comparing Google Transit schedules against PDFs on the agency’s website, and then I plotted it all on a map. I actually had three different versions of maps. A lot of these agencies don’t update their schedules very often. Some are the same that they were in 2004, so I often called to confirm that the routes were still running, like, “Oh, is this PDF I found on the web? Is this still true?”

I left a voicemail for Lake County Transit in Lakeview. That probably sounded really strange. I was like, “Hey, I heard that your public transit to Lake County. Can you get me from Bly to Lakeview somehow?” And Linda Mickle, the transportation coordinator, called me back and after she ascertained that I wasn’t stranded in Bly and calling from a payphone, she helped us figure out how we could join along for the food bank pickup ride from Klamath Falls.

We did have a bit of a panic about two months before we were scheduled to leave when Grant County People Mover canceled the twice-a-month John Day-to-Baker City bus because they didn’t have enough drivers, and we actually had to reroute the entire second week of the trip.

We ended up starting in The Dalles and changed the direction. So we headed west from The Dalles. Originally, we were going to start in Portland and go clockwise.

Prakruti, you’re a music journalist when you’re not being dragged along on bus trips with me. What was your song or album on repeat during this trip?

Bhatt: I had a lot of cinematic music playing in the background. I mean, that’s what you do when you’re on a seven-hour-long bus ride in Oregon with such gorgeous landscapes. So I played a lot of music by Flawed Mangoes and I played the latest album by this Welsh musician named Novo Amor called Collapse List. Very, very apt for the situation and the multiple rides we took.

Kristin Bott asks: What do you and riders think would improve these transit services?

Karabaic: By far and away more frequency was the big ask by most riders. Whether that means running a bus twice a week instead of one day a week in Grant County or restoring bus services on Sundays in Tillamook County Transit District, riders really have to plan their lives around limited trips.

Bhatt: And then in some areas, folks were asking for service hours that are more accommodating of people who work regular jobs. So especially in very remote areas like Lake County and Wallowa County, often the agencies only run weekdays during the day, and that makes it hard to get anywhere if you have a 9-to-5 job. So, it’s pretty impractical to take the bus for errands or shopping trips unless you take the day off work, which means that most of the riders that we talk to were retired.

Karabaic: Prakruti, was there any destination you’ve been to on this trip that you’d like to go back to?

Bhatt: Baker City.

Karabaic: You loved Baker City. We had to drag you out in a police car.

Bhatt: Don’t say it in past tense. I love Baker City. That town was so quaint and so quirky. We had the Salt Lick auction that we covered, and you’re right, I never wanted to go. I kept asking you until we got into the bus to La Grande like, “do we got to go?”

Karabaic: So I loved Baker City, but I think it was a tie for me between Wallowa County and Lakeview. I loved meeting all the locals in Lakeview and we had such generous hosts, but I am trying to plot a trip to Wallowa County in the winter to go ice skating on one of their lakes that freezes over. It’s so beautiful.

Bhatt: Several people on Instagram asked, where do you wish was easier to get to by transit?

Karabaic: I wish it was easier to get to Sun Valley, Idaho. There’s this beautiful ice skating rink, but there’s no easy connection to Sun Valley. I’d love to take a train or bus there with my bike on board. I think that would just be great. I think I know where you want to go, Prakruti.

Bhatt: It’s Baker City! I’m hoping the Pioneer Line train that used to run from Portland to Baker City gets restored. So I can keep going back there as often and not rely on an all-state bus transportation story to get there.

Karabaic: westonruter asked what methods of payment were most commonly accepted? Mobile payments, cash, barter?

Bhatt: Actually, most of the rides in really rural areas were free. That’s because they’re supported by grants or mostly do medical transport, which is paid for via Oregon Health Plan or the Veterans Administration. A few buses were cash-only, much to the chagrin of the accounting team, but quite a few take mobile payments using apps like Token Transit.

Okay. dudeluna on Instagram asked, were the bus drivers all dudes?

Karabaic: I like to think of dude as a gender-neutral term, but I assume you mean were they all men?

And, no, I would say about a third of our drivers were women.

Okay. Mary Lynn Marden asks, were all the transportation methods accessible?

Bhatt: Yes. All the buses are considered public accommodations, so they are required to be accessible under the Americans with Disabilities Act. Every bus or van had a wheelchair lift or ramp for most of these agencies. A big percentage of regular riders use mobility devices or are visually impaired. So these are essential.

That’s actually related to the question that Ralph Goldstein asked, which legs of your journey will carry a bicycle and saddlebags?

Karabaic: OK. Almost all of these agencies are able to carry a bicycle. Some require you to reserve a spot on board ahead of time and let them know that you have a bicycle, but most have a bicycle rack on the front of the bus or we’ll let you strap it down in the wheelchair area. For most of these, you’ll need to pull your saddlebags off the bike and take them on board with you, but there usually aren’t restrictions on bags as long as you can carry them on board yourself.

Our driver on the route from Pendleton to John Day actually said that he gets bike riders often in the summer who will use the bus to get over the worst hills or just cut some hours off of riding.

The only leg of the journey where this would be tough was the FlixBus, which is what used to be Greyhound. We took between Ontario and Baker City. Not only is Baker City no longer in official stop, so you couldn’t get luggage out unless you sweet talked the driver. Plus on FlixBus, you have to pre-book your bike and you have to carry a bike cover bag or a box to put it on below board.

Bhatt: The last question is pretty specific, so it’s definitely for the transit nerd here. Rob McCallum asks: What I find interesting is the lack of public transportation where I live in southern Oregon. Greyhound no longer has a route between Eugene and California on the I-5 corridor. I enjoy Amtrak, but it bypasses Roseburg, Grants Pass, and Medford completely. The map that accompanied your series even shows a dead zone in southwestern Oregon. I’m lucky I have a car, but I feel for my neighbors who need to travel for doctor’s appointments and need to go to larger cities for shopping.

Karabaic: Southwestern Oregon is not served as well as it could be. The South Coast though has a fair number of buses, but we didn’t go down there on this trip because that’s actually Jefferson Public Radio’s territory, not OPB’s.

But the problems happen when you get further inland. There’s kind of a transit desert, so there was a wildland firefighter on our bus that we rode from John Day to Bend who was trying to get home to Grants Pass, and the problem was the route was dreadfully inefficient.

It required going from John Day to Bend on the three times a week Grant County People Mover route that we were on. Then catching the Pacific Crest Bus Line’s daily bus to Klamath Falls, then catching the daily Southwest POINT bus between Klamath Falls and Grants Pass, and then alternatively there’s a Rogue Valley commuter line that connects between Grants Pass and Klamath Falls.

It was really frustrating because all the services existed, but they didn’t connect efficiently and required either an overnight, or sometimes even two overnights — despite it being a drivable distance in a few hours. There is a possibility that someday ODOT extends the POINT Cascades Bus that runs from Portland to Eugene down further south along the I-5 corridor, but it’s definitely an area that really transit access could be increased.

Bhatt: Now that you’ve talked to so many of these agencies, what’s the biggest challenge they’re facing?

Karabaic: Driver shortages far and away in many of these places. There’s just not enough hours for drivers to do this as a full-time job. Most of the drivers in rural areas were doing it as a part-time job and they were already retired. That makes it very hard to recruit new drivers and then where there are enough hours for full-time drivers like Lincoln County Transit and Tillamook County Transit on the coast, the jobs don’t pay enough to recruit people to move out to towns with high housing costs.

And other jobs that require a commercial driver’s license pay better than bus driving, like trucking.

I really could keep talking about transit forever, but I guess we should wrap up. Thank you so much for riding along with me and Prakruti.

Hopefully we can get back to Baker City sometime soon.

Bhatt: Thank you for having me. I’ll always say yes to any crazy idea you have.

Karabaic: That was OPB’s Prakruti Bhatt, who joined me for our reporting trip by Bus, "Stop Requested."