Talk:South Metro Area Regional Transit

Comments
Two things: first of all, one only needs to price a trip on the Greyhound Web site (or call or see them) to confirm that Greyhound between Salem and Portland is indeed expensive compared to taking Cherriots/SMART and TriMet. Also, are we sure that they have 35+ buses? It seems a little high. Lastly, I want to give credit to User:SJ Morg for researching this and other like articles, especially since I enjoy reading about the details. But I am unable to find the 1990 "Bus system may grow into WART" Oregonian article in NewsBank (using Multnomah County Library's access; its supposed to go back to 1988). Jason McHuff (talk) 07:09, 16 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the credit. As to the article you mentioned, I physically cut it out of the newspaper at the time and saved it, and I still have in my files.  I am not familiar with NewsBank, but my best guess is that this particular article appeared only in certain regional editions of The Oregonian (probably West and South Metro editions), and therefore probably did not get saved on the editions put onto microfilm and acquired by Multnomah County Library.  I've often wondered about such articles; are they saved on microfilm anywhere?  Maybe at the newspaper's own offices, at least? (I hope so.) If there's a particular point from that Jan. 15, 1990 article for which you'd like to know exactly what the relevant sentences in the article were, let me know, and I can post the relevant excerpt here, verbatim (if short). SJ Morg (talk) 07:32, 16 June 2009 (UTC)
 * (edit conflict) With the numbers, no clue, with Greyhound, then citation with the prices should be easy to add. Of course, the bigger question is if it really is encyclopedic or more of a guide? With the citation, I added the page number, but I too cannot locate it via NewsBank, but I did find it via LexisNexis (for some reason I think I recall gaps via NewsBank before). FYI Oregonian archives start 9/1987 (or 8/1987) for most online versions, though there is also a 1861-1922 version NewsBank offers as part of their Historical Newspapers database that you might be able to access via your library too, possibly under genealogy resources. Aboutmovies (talk) 07:37, 16 June 2009 (UTC)
 * First of all, NewsBank is a database of newspaper articles that many libraries and other institutions subscribe to and give access to their patrons. In addition, the Central branch of the Multnomah County Library does have microfilm copies of (I'm pretty sure) the entire Oregonian archives as well as other newspapers.  I would think that they have the different (Portland, various suburban) versions but I'm not sure.  As for the Greyhound comparison, I'm pretty sure it was me who added that.  I think it could fall in the "guide" territory (and be outside Wikipedia's scope), but I do think that the service all the way to Salem is unusual and warrants being in the article, even if it just says that it "allows people a cheap way to travel between Salem and the Portland region".  Lastly, their Transit Master Plan is online if anyone is interested. Jason McHuff (talk) 22:26, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

Fleet size
I share Jmchuff's skepticism about the "35+" figure, although I note that it's given for "fleet", so it counts vans as well as buses. But it still seems a little high to me. Perhaps Aboutmovies, who added that data to the article (on June 1) can double-check it, and add a citation if it's reconfirmed, or delete it if not. I made a quick check of SMART's own website just now and found no data on fleet size. SJ Morg (talk) 08:11, 16 June 2009 (UTC)
 * I added the source. Aboutmovies (talk) 08:31, 16 June 2009 (UTC)