# All About the Portland MAX (and associated Transit)



## Matthew H Fish

Since I had some success with my post about the Santiago Metro, I decided I should also write about the mass transit/lightrail system I grew up with: The MAX (Metropolitan Area Express) in Portland. I can describe this in some detail, because I was there for most of it.

And although I know we aren't supposed to get too controversial on here, there are a lot of social and political issues that shape transit in Portland.

The idea for the MAX started in the 1970s, when the federal and state government was planning on building a west-east freeway through the residential neighborhoods of SE Portland. At a time when most of the country still wanted to build more freeways and highways, the people of Portland protested, and suggested instead that the money be spent on a light rail line. So starting in the early 1980s, they started building a line from downtown Portland to the eastern suburb of Gresham. It opened in September of 1986. It was an overhead, electrified line that used its own right-of-way in certain areas, but had to stop at interesections in other areas. A few years later, a westward extension was planned and built. Since this involved digging a three mile long tunnel under the west hills, this took a little bit longer to open, but by 1998, the MAX ran from the western suburb of Hillsboro, to the eastern suburb of Gresham, a distance of 32 miles.
On September 10th, 2001, an extension to the Portland Airport was opened (Yes, that is the absolute worst date an airport mass transit line could be opened)
In 2004, the Yellow Line to North Portland was opened, in 2009, the Green Line to far SE Portland was opened, and in 2015, the Orange Line to the southern suburb of Milwaukie was opened. Currently, no new lines are in construction, although there are long term plans for more lines.

Portland also has a trolley system around downtown, and a commuter rail between the Western suburb of Beaverton and the southern suburb of Wilsonville.

Since its beginning, the Light Rail system has always been 100% interticketed with TriMet buses. They use the exact same fares and passes. The MAX is based on an inspection system: it is quite possible to board the MAX without a ticket or pass...but of course, you never know when a fare inspector is going to be on.

Although people might debate the technicalities of this, one thing that is interesting to me is that while it uses the same trains along its routes, in places it is more of a "street car" type system, while in others it is almost a "commuter rail" system. The North Portland route, which goes through residential neighborhoods, doesn't have its own right-of-way, and has stations every quarter mile. The route to Hillsboro, on the other hand, has its own right-of-way, goes through empty fields in places, and some of the stations are more than a mile apart. So the system, which was originally designed for a certain section of Portland, has adapted itself as its gone to different parts of the city.

Another part of this is that because the trains are attractive and modern, and the stations are often fancy, commuting by mass transit is considered to be a normal thing in Portland. This is sometimes exaggerated: compared to a lot of world cities, transit usage is still pretty low, but it is high for a city of Portland's size. But in general, people in Portland don't think it is odd to not have a car, and to not use it. The MAX is the United State's fourth largest Light Rail system, in terms of both

But the attitude changes pretty quickly not far from Portland proper. There have many objections to expansion of the light rail system over the years, with many objections of "boondoggle!" as well as talks about "safety". Most communities have been happy once they do get service, but there has been some suspicion towards the idea of mass transit, some of which is warranted, some of which is driven by prejudice. In fact, one such story deserves its own post.

In the meantime, feel free to ask me any questions about the MAX, both technical or otherwise!


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## Matthew H Fish

As you might know, Portland is in the Northwestern corner of Oregon, right on the Columbia River. Across that river is Washington, and the city of Vancouver, in Clark County. 

Vancouver and Clark County are themselves not small places, and they grew rapidly in the 1980s. Vancouver has a population of 180,000 people, and Clark County has a population of 480,000 people. Clark County makes up about one quarter of the population of the Portland metropolitan area, and Vancouver is the single largest suburb of Portland. Although referring to it as such might get you in trouble: some people in Vancouver don't like the association, even though Vancouver functions as a bedroom community for Portland. 

As long as I can remember, the Clark County transit system (C-Tran) and Trimet have been cross-ticketed for bus fares. You can get on a bus in a far suburb of Clark County, ride to a transit center, transfer to a Portland based bus, and then get on the Portland Light Rail. 

So, it might be natural to think that this light rail system could be extended across the river to Vancouver. And this has come up twice, in the 1990s, and in 2010, when Clark County voters turned down a sales tax increase. It should be noted that the second time, it was a 56%-44% defeat, and that since Clark County extends outside of Vancouver, many of the people who lived in the zone that would have been served voted yes. 

There are two reasons why the service hasn't been extended across the Columbia River. 

The first is technical: the Columbia River is a wide river. There is an island in the middle of it, but in all, to pass both channels of the Columbia would require a 1.5 mile long bridge, which does present an engineering challenge. There are also jurisdictional challenges: the city of Portland, the city of Vancouver, Multnomah County, Clark County, the state of Oregon, the state of Washington, both transit districts, the US Coast Guard, and probably the EPA would all have opinions on how to build a light rail bridge (as well as replacing the existing and aging I-5 freeway bridge). So there are real engineering reasons. 

There are a lot of cultural reasons, to. And I am not reading between the lines too much here: this is what a Washington State senator said about the proposal: "Light rail provides another mode of transportation for crime and gang activity into Vancouver." Since Clark County and Vancouver are less ethnically diverse than Portland, there was a lot of dog whistle language during discussion of the project, as if Portland was brimming full of criminals who were just waiting for a train to come to Vancouver. (Vancouver is not exactly crime free as it is). So while there is technical reasons why the light rail doesn't go to Vancouver, a lot of it seems to be based on prejudice---prejudice against mass transit, and also against "the type of people" who use mass transit. 

I still hope to get mass transit to Vancouver some day, but even if they magically decided to build it tomorrow, it will take 5-10 years to probably complete it.


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## Willbridge

Matthew H Fish said:


> Since I had some success with my post about the Santiago Metro, I decided I should also write about the mass transit/lightrail system I grew up with: The MAX (Metropolitan Area Express) in Portland. I can describe this in some detail, because I was there for most of it.
> 
> And although I know we aren't supposed to get too controversial on here, there are a lot of social and political issues that shape transit in Portland.
> 
> The idea for the MAX started in the 1970s, when the federal and state government was planning on building a west-east freeway through the residential neighborhoods of SE Portland. At a time when most of the country still wanted to build more freeways and highways, the people of Portland protested, and suggested instead that the money be spent on a light rail line. So starting in the early 1980s, they started building a line from downtown Portland to the eastern suburb of Gresham. It opened in September of 1986. It was an overhead, electrified line that used its own right-of-way in certain areas, but had to stop at interesections in other areas. A few years later, a westward extension was planned and built. Since this involved digging a three mile long tunnel under the west hills, this took a little bit longer to open, but by 1998, the MAX ran from the western suburb of Hillsboro, to the eastern suburb of Gresham, a distance of 32 miles.
> On September 10th, 2001, an extension to the Portland Airport was opened (Yes, that is the absolute worst date an airport mass transit line could be opened)
> In 2004, the Yellow Line to North Portland was opened, in 2009, the Green Line to far SE Portland was opened, and in 2015, the Orange Line to the southern suburb of Milwaukie was opened. Currently, no new lines are in construction, although there are long term plans for more lines.
> 
> Portland also has a trolley system around downtown, and a commuter rail between the Western suburb of Beaverton and the southern suburb of Wilsonville.
> 
> Since its beginning, the Light Rail system has always been 100% interticketed with TriMet buses. They use the exact same fares and passes. The MAX is based on an inspection system: it is quite possible to board the MAX without a ticket or pass...but of course, you never know when a fare inspector is going to be on.
> 
> Although people might debate the technicalities of this, one thing that is interesting to me is that while it uses the same trains along its routes, in places it is more of a "street car" type system, while in others it is almost a "commuter rail" system. The North Portland route, which goes through residential neighborhoods, doesn't have its own right-of-way, and has stations every quarter mile. The route to Hillsboro, on the other hand, has its own right-of-way, goes through empty fields in places, and some of the stations are more than a mile apart. So the system, which was originally designed for a certain section of Portland, has adapted itself as its gone to different parts of the city.
> 
> Another part of this is that because the trains are attractive and modern, and the stations are often fancy, commuting by mass transit is considered to be a normal thing in Portland. This is sometimes exaggerated: compared to a lot of world cities, transit usage is still pretty low, but it is high for a city of Portland's size. But in general, people in Portland don't think it is odd to not have a car, and to not use it. The MAX is the United State's fourth largest Light Rail system, in terms of both
> 
> But the attitude changes pretty quickly not far from Portland proper. There have many objections to expansion of the light rail system over the years, with many objections of "boondoggle!" as well as talks about "safety". Most communities have been happy once they do get service, but there has been some suspicion towards the idea of mass transit, some of which is warranted, some of which is driven by prejudice. In fact, one such story deserves its own post.
> 
> In the meantime, feel free to ask me any questions about the MAX, both technical or otherwise!


A clarification for an otherwise well-summarized report. The very first pro-LRT study for the Portland area was completed in 1973. It was an end run around the official planning process which was fixated on implementing Robert Moses' sketch plan for a grid of expressways for the Rose City. Citizen groups had pushed for rail transit since the spectacular end of the Portland Traction interurban division in 1958, but what got things moving in 1973 was the Energy Crisis.

The mediocre response of the all-bus, unplanned Tri-Met system got decision makers to thinking about alternatives. Stymied by the "highways or highways" planners, Portland Mayor Neil Goldschmidt (D) and Multnomah County Commission chair Mel Gordon (R) requested that the Oregon Public Utilities Commissioner report on whether rail right-of-ways might be used for rail transit. Instead of just sending a one-pager, OPUC produced a detailed plan based on the Edmonton LRT studies, creating an uproar. This led to a "proper" 1974 study tied to the Mt. Hood Freeway alternatives study, where your account begins.

If your library has access to the academic paper linked below, there is a lot more to be read about the transformation of metro Portland politics that occurred back then.

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1538513206297457


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## bratkinson

Thank you Misters Fish and Willbridge for the detailed history of the Portland transit lines! Portland should be a model for all cities looking for 'revitalization and renewal' starting with carefully designed steel-wheeled transit despite political differences.

As a transit advocate, traction fan, and New Englander, it took me until 4 years ago to 'discover' the wonderful combination of street cars and light rail in Portland! I used to regularly and reliably change trains from #14 to #28 in the late 1970s to mid-'80s returning home from business trips to California. Never had a chance to spend any 'ground time' in Portland back then.

Fortunately, my annual vacation Amtrak joyride in 2015 had me spend an overnight layover in Portland to see and ride the trolleys I had only read about prior to then. I quickly discovered it was impossible to ride every line end to end in a single 24hr layover during daylight hours. So, I went back last year and again this year to finally finish riding all the lines in Portland, even the diesel LRV line to Wilsonville this year. Due to estimated time to get to the station before train time, I had to skip the aerial tram this year. Maybe next year.

In all, I've been completely amazed at the large number of passengers on the transit system during non-rush hour periods when I did most of my transit riding. At times, there were insufficient seats available necessitating some standing passengers. Evening rush hour trains were fully packed, even having to leave boarding passengers behind about 5PM! Passengers with bicycles were on and off with no difficulties. Also, the large number of businesses and food and drink establishments in the downtown area amazed me when I saw single women walking their dogs after the dinner hour. I was blown away when passengers brought their dogs on board the street cars and never witnessed any problems with them, even between dogs boarding at different stops. Apparently the dogs understood the need to lay down and be quiet on the street cars. Obviously, Portland has become a very pedestrian/transit friendly city, even after dark.

I consider Portland to be a transit-lovers 'dream town'. The streetcars are modern and comfortable even with only 1" of foam padding on the plastic seats. It would appear that the older cars (mostly on MAX) have steps to climb/descend, whereas newer equipment all has low-level boarding...a boon for not-so-agile passengers like myself. Accommodating wheelchairs is a simple push of a button on the inside or outside of the car to automatically extend a small ramp for boarding. In all, a very well thought out design of the cars as well as the curb-high platforms for passengers.

If there's any 'negative' to mass-transit in Portland, it's the 'honor' system of fare payment. I think it's a fantastic idea and has been used elsewhere in the USA, most notably in my experience, the NJ Transit light rail lines where I've been inspected 6-7 times out of perhaps 20 rides on their light rail in the past years.

How can that be a 'negative'? It's those that don't pay for their rides. Until this year, on all my rides in Portland, never once was my fare or anyone elses' I could see 'inspected'. This year, the ONLY inspections I encountered were on the Wilsonville line. So what? It's the homeless population that have made the light rail and street car lines their 'mobile homes'. In prior years, I didn't see any homeless on board, this year, maybe half the trains I rode had homeless passengers onboard. Ignoring their foul smell was easy enough, but the trash they leave and generally rude behavior is something else. On one MAX ride to Hatfield/Government Center, the entire rear portion of one of the 2-car trains was an 'avoid sitting there' section account one sleeping homeless person and another homeless person crudely eating 'breakfast' among the littered seats in that area of the car. The smell of urine was also quite noticeable. Both of them were oblivious to the discomfort to other passengers they were causing. Put simply, the homeless simply ride until the fare inspector catches them and forces them off the train. They simply catch the next train and start again.

I consider the apparent shortage of fare inspectors the biggest problem on the Portland transit system. Riding 8-10 hours per day, I would anticipate I should have had my ticket inspected 2-3 times, maybe more, each day. Only 2 times in 3 years of riding - each way the same inspector to/from Wilsonville - unfathomable! It would seem that Portland, in their efforts to minimize staffing costs, simply cut the number of inspectors to a minimum level. What that has done is encourage the growing homeless population to seek shelter/warmth/cooling at no cost simply by taking a free ride as long as they can. One has to wonder how many regular, fare-paying passengers will start taking advantage of this? From what I witnessed in Newark NJ, the NJ Transit 'fare police' on the street car platform at Penn Station Newark are quite strict and give out expensive tickets for not having ones' time-stamped fare card. They should do the same in Portland. But then, would a homeless person ever pay their fine?


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## Matthew H Fish

bratkinson said:


> I consider the apparent shortage of fare inspectors the biggest problem on the Portland transit system. Riding 8-10 hours per day, I would anticipate I should have had my ticket inspected 2-3 times, maybe more, each day. Only 2 times in 3 years of riding - each way the same inspector to/from Wilsonville - unfathomable! It would seem that Portland, in their efforts to minimize staffing costs, simply cut the number of inspectors to a minimum level. What that has done is encourage the growing homeless population to seek shelter/warmth/cooling at no cost simply by taking a free ride as long as they can. One has to wonder how many regular, fare-paying passengers will start taking advantage of this? From what I witnessed in Newark NJ, the NJ Transit 'fare police' on the street car platform at Penn Station Newark are quite strict and give out expensive tickets for not having ones' time-stamped fare card. They should do the same in Portland. But then, would a homeless person ever pay their fine?



Homelessness is a gigantic problem in Portland right now...that much everyone can agree on. 

Homelessness is a complicated economic and social phenomena that I have many opinions on that I don't think belong in a thread on transit policy. 

Besides where it is relevant: one of the bad things about the MAX and new urbanism is that it worked too well. Portlanders wanted to preserve their neighborhoods, avoid sprawl, and so they built a nice city that people could walk in and where you didn't need a car to drive 10 miles to Walmart to buy a box of Waffles. Young people started noticing. First the artists and nomads, but then the young professionals. Rents went up. People kept moving in. Pretty soon the artists and nomads couldn't afford the rents, but the app programmers and digital marketers could. People with normal jobs had to move to the suburbs. Traditional minority neighborhoods got gentrified and turned to condos. Some people couldn't afford rent. 

So, paradoxically, the thing that was meant to preserve Portland succeeded so hard that it failed. 

On a more prosaic level, there is probably another reason for the MAX not having many fare inspectors. I rode it daily for a decade or more, and I can probably count on one hand the amount of times I had my fare checked. But, especially in its first decade or so, the MAX was mostly a hub for bus lines. People weren't really riding from one station to another, they were using it to transfer between bus lines. And since you needed a fare to get on the bus, it didn't really help to not pay it for the MAX. 

That might not be true anymore, since the MAX works a lot more as a point-to-point system. But for a long time, it made sense as far as the system overall.


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## flitcraft

Seattle's light rail and streetcar systems are also plagued by riders who aren't paying. Ticket inspectors do show up reasonably often on the light rail line, but when they catch scofflaws, they just chuck them off at the next stop. My guess is they simply hop the next train. It's hard to know what to do about this, though. I suspect most of the free-riders don't have bank accounts, so marching them to an ATM to pay the fine won't work. Mailing a fine to folks who likely don't have permanent addresses (or who give a fake one) is useless. Worse yet, the fare machines for the streetcars are often out of order, making it impossible to pay. If I were a conspiracy theorist, I'd suspect that all of these issues were being intentionally baked into the system in order to prove that rail-type mass transit isn't viable. 

One big advantage with subway systems over street level transit is that it's easy to create turnstyle tap-in, tap-out access. 

I will say that I really value having our streetcar/light rail system, as limited as it is. It's made getting to the airport simpler, and eliminated the need to use off-site airport parking, which can really add up for trips of a week or two. It also has made it possible for me to quickly get from my office to the International District, home of some of the best Asian restaurants around--so lunch has gotten tastier since the streetcar went in!


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## Willbridge

flitcraft said:


> Seattle's light rail and streetcar systems are also plagued by riders who aren't paying. Ticket inspectors do show up reasonably often on the light rail line, but when they catch scofflaws, they just chuck them off at the next stop. My guess is they simply hop the next train. It's hard to know what to do about this, though. I suspect most of the free-riders don't have bank accounts, so marching them to an ATM to pay the fine won't work. Mailing a fine to folks who likely don't have permanent addresses (or who give a fake one) is useless. Worse yet, the fare machines for the streetcars are often out of order, making it impossible to pay. If I were a conspiracy theorist, I'd suspect that all of these issues were being intentionally baked into the system in order to prove that rail-type mass transit isn't viable.
> 
> One big advantage with subway systems over street level transit is that it's easy to create turnstyle tap-in, tap-out access.
> 
> I will say that I really value having our streetcar/light rail system, as limited as it is. It's made getting to the airport simpler, and eliminated the need to use off-site airport parking, which can really add up for trips of a week or two. It also has made it possible for me to quickly get from my office to the International District, home of some of the best Asian restaurants around--so lunch has gotten tastier since the streetcar went in!


The Proof of Payment (POP) fare system makes LRT and streetcar service labor and capital costs feasible in mid-sized cities. I was stationed in Germany while it was being developed to cope with their economic boom labor shortage and then worked in Edmonton to implement it in November 1980. Over and over since then it has been demonstrated that inspections and the probability of being fined have to occur an average of once a month to keep fare evasion down to the irreducible 1% or 2%. The low end includes people who just feel an absolute compulsion to steal -- on a barrier system they are leaping over or crawling under turnstiles and on a PAYE system they are trying to con or bully the bus or streetcar operator.


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## Metra Electric Rider

Didn't Vancouver do away with their POP system because of losses due to fare evasion? I've lived in places with POP but it takes an honest country to make it work. The other question would be making transit free but that's a whole other ballgame as they say.

Back to Portlandia, another factor is that Oregon has set development boundaries forcing higher density - but Washington hasn't, which had made Vancouver and other suburbs popular for cheaper housing and a car focused lifestyle (they also haven't iirc, bought into the transit district which they could as I understand it).


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## Eric S

Not sure what an "honest country" is. POP is frankly standard practice worldwide. And my understanding of the Vancouver situation is that it was more caving into the perception of fare evasion rather than actually having an unreasonably high rate of fare evasion.

(Fare gate/turnstiles are not free. And do not eliminate fare evasion.)


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## Matthew H Fish

Metra Electric Rider said:


> Back to Portlandia, another factor is that Oregon has set development boundaries forcing higher density - but Washington hasn't, which had made Vancouver and other suburbs popular for cheaper housing and a car focused lifestyle (they also haven't iirc, bought into the transit district which they could as I understand it).



Oregon also have an income tax and no sales tax, while Washington has a sales tax and no income tax. 
So people can live in Washington, work in Oregon, shop in Oregon, and use Oregon's services that they aren't paying for. And use Washington's services that they also aren't paying for. Needless to say, there is some consternation on both sides about this relationship. 

Also, Vancouver/Clark County, for its size, actually has pretty adequate transit service for a US city. There is 20 hour transit service on most arterial lines, and 14-16 hours service on the smaller lines, which is okay. Someone in Vancouver can still use the bus to commute, if they live on an artery. And at last culturally, people in Vancouver aren't that taken aback by the idea of bus transport. This is different from people in some US cities who I have met, who have never taken a bus and seem to think it is a weird idea.

But still, it is an interesting story of how there is a "tipping point" of mass transit use in terms of logistics and social acceptance. Portland was a small city at the time it opened its first transit line, and is still one of the US' smaller cities, but has enough population and density where it can support one of the country's busiest light rail and bus networks. Vancouver and Clark County together are not that much smaller in population, and Vancouver is not that much less dense than Portland, but it isn't quite big or dense enough where full scale usage of transit is a normal part of the city's culture.


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## Siegmund

I too have not yet seen an inspector on a MAX train, any of the half dozen or so times I've ridden it.

By contrast -- in one round trip riding the train from the Denver airport to downtown, I had my ticket checked TWICE on the same trip inbound, and once outbound. It hardly feels like a proof of payment system at all if you're going to have inspectors on every train.


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## Matthew H Fish

One thing that people are missing from the discussion of the light rail and its fare system, is that when Portland built the MAX, they weren't trying to build a train system for its own sake. The light rail mostly there as a compliment to the bus system. 

The problem was that people in the Eastern suburban area of Portland would have to ride a bus all the way from downtown, through the clogged streets of inner eastside Portland, before even getting close to their neighborhoods. And before the Westside MAX, there were big chugging articulated buses that for some reason went over the winding roads of the West Hills, and then on to Beaverton. Currently, for example, it is 20 minutes between downtown Portland and Beaverton via light rail, versus 40 minutes by bus. And currently, on the East Side, it takes 17 minutes to get to Clackamas Town Center from Gateway, versus 38 odious minutes on the bus. 

So the original reason for the light rail was just that it was necessary for the entire system to work: without the light rail, 3-5 miles was the limit to how practical a bus ride could be. But with light rail, the entire system came alive. 

Only now, as mentioned, there is lots of point-to-point commutes possible on the MAX, so that reasoning doesn't make quite as much sense. 

This is also pretty relevant to a discussion of Vancouver Light Rail, because even under the ambitious plans, the goal for the train would be to cross the river and have maybe three or four stops in downtown Vancouver. 80-90% of the people taking it from Portland would then have to transfer on to a bus to get where they are going in Vancouver. So it could seem a little unpractical to build a billion dollar light rail extension that will still necessitate a bus trip through the streets of Vancouver.


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## Bob Dylan

Some Urban Planners do Excellent Work in certain Cities, while others ( Austin,San Antonio etc) make you wonder how the Morons ever got their Jobs let alone keep them.


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## Willbridge

Matthew H Fish said:


> One thing that people are missing from the discussion of the light rail and its fare system, is that when Portland built the MAX, they weren't trying to build a train system for its own sake. The light rail mostly there as a compliment to the bus system.
> 
> The problem was that people in the Eastern suburban area of Portland would have to ride a bus all the way from downtown, through the clogged streets of inner eastside Portland, before even getting close to their neighborhoods. And before the Westside MAX, there were big chugging articulated buses that for some reason went over the winding roads of the West Hills, and then on to Beaverton. Currently, for example, it is 20 minutes between downtown Portland and Beaverton via light rail, versus 40 minutes by bus. And currently, on the East Side, it takes 17 minutes to get to Clackamas Town Center from Gateway, versus 38 odious minutes on the bus.
> 
> So the original reason for the light rail was just that it was necessary for the entire system to work: without the light rail, 3-5 miles was the limit to how practical a bus ride could be. But with light rail, the entire system came alive.
> 
> Only now, as mentioned, there is lots of point-to-point commutes possible on the MAX, so that reasoning doesn't make quite as much sense.
> 
> This is also pretty relevant to a discussion of Vancouver Light Rail, because even under the ambitious plans, the goal for the train would be to cross the river and have maybe three or four stops in downtown Vancouver. 80-90% of the people taking it from Portland would then have to transfer on to a bus to get where they are going in Vancouver. So it could seem a little unpractical to build a billion dollar light rail extension that will still necessitate a bus trip through the streets of Vancouver.



A year ago I looked into retiring to Washington. In the case of Vancouver, I found that C-Tran local buses ran on what are known in the industry as ******* headways that made connections with their own interstate buses into Portland a bad trip. I understand why non-clock headways are necessary for some transitions such as between a daytime pattern and night pattern, but this was all day. It's not a big problem where service is more frequent. In low density areas it's often a symptom of lazy management and/or political leadership that is more focused on symbolism than on substance. So if that continues it would sabotage the interstate light rail line connections.


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## bratkinson

Matthew H Fish said:


> This is also pretty relevant to a discussion of Vancouver Light Rail, because even under the ambitious plans, the goal for the train would be to cross the river and have maybe three or four stops in downtown Vancouver. 80-90% of the people taking it from Portland would then have to transfer on to a bus to get where they are going in Vancouver. So it could seem a little unpractical to build a billion dollar light rail extension that will still necessitate a bus trip through the streets of Vancouver.



Matthew, you make a very interesting point. Once MAX is extended into Vancouver, it would have to terminate at a transit hub comparable to Rose Quarter Transit Center or Beaverton Transit Center were there are numerous connecting bus routes. Obviously, numerous bus routes were revised to stop at, or terminate/originate at the transit center. Seeing the MAX line extending beyond Beaverton makes me think the line initially went to Beaverton and then the extension to Hatfield Government Center was added later. Vancouver could do the same thing. Initially build to a transit hub and ultimately extend it further out, possibly with a branch line to somewhere else as well. 

It's common knowledge that most transit riders would prefer a single seat ride. Even on Amtrak, I find riding the Springfield Shuttle to New Haven and switching trains there a pain in the butt. I certainly wouldn't want to do it every work day. Airline hub-and-spoke routes work great as long as 99% of the passengers are OK with changing airplanes at the hub to get from A to Z. If Vancouver wants to pick up the tab for a MAX extension to get there, I'm sure it can be done, despite politics on both sides of the Columbia River. The question becomes would Vancouver area passengers be willing to take a bus to the hub and then switch to rail there? I'd have to say 'why not?' as they have no problem switching airplanes at Denver, for example, to get to New York City. The single-seat ride is what keeps people in their car when plentiful mass transit exists. One of the tricks to get people out of their car is what is done in Chicago...make parking outrageously expensive and big traffic jams getting there. NYC is even worse with it's practically non-existent Manhattan parking and unbelievable traffic jams. I chortle to myself every time I ride Amtrak into NYC and see the traffic at a standstill on I-95.

As a railfan, I always thought that it would really be great to ride a commuter train every day to work and back. But in the past 4 years, satisfying my goal of riding every commuter train route out of NYC (LIRR, MN, and NJT) the 'long faces' on most of the passengers forced to ride for 30-90 minutes each way then get in their car (expensive parking) makes me happy that I never had to live that far away from my workplace, usually 15-20 minutes. 

Maybe 'build it, and they will come' will work for Vancouver. It certainly worked great in Portland!


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## Matthew H Fish

bratkinson said:


> Matthew, you make a very interesting point. Once MAX is extended into Vancouver, it would have to terminate at a transit hub comparable to Rose Quarter Transit Center or Beaverton Transit Center were there are numerous connecting bus routes. Obviously, numerous bus routes were revised to stop at, or terminate/originate at the transit center. Seeing the MAX line extending beyond Beaverton makes me think the line initially went to Beaverton and then the extension to Hatfield Government Center was added later. Vancouver could do the same thing. Initially build to a transit hub and ultimately extend it further out, possibly with a branch line to somewhere else as well.
> 
> As a railfan, I always thought that it would really be great to ride a commuter train every day to work and back. But in the past 4 years, satisfying my goal of riding every commuter train route out of NYC (LIRR, MN, and NJT) the 'long faces' on most of the passengers forced to ride for 30-90 minutes each way then get in their car (expensive parking) makes me happy that I never had to live that far away from my workplace, usually 15-20 minutes.
> 
> Maybe 'build it, and they will come' will work for Vancouver. It certainly worked great in Portland!



The Hillsboro Line was opened all at one, or at least Beaverton and Hillsboro were, but in planning, I believe it was going to end near Beaverton. Beaverton is definitely a transit hub for everything in the west metro area. 

The Vancouver Yellow Line would probably cross the river to downtown Vancouver, then run up to the Clark College campus, just outside of downtown. Currently, Vancouver already has a BRT line running up the main artery, Fourth Plain, along that route, and that would be the obvious line for Light Rail. In a "dream scenario", there might also be a branch northward towards the Salmon Creek area, along I-5. And also the Red Line to PDX could be extended across the river to meet this line. But for the foreseeable future, the main usage of the the Yellow Line to Vancouver would be to carry people to and from Portland, not to carry people in Vancouver. 

I think that having to make a bus transfer is not as odious as it seems, but it is something that...raises eyebrows. Like, when people make transit choices, both personal, and long range planning, sometimes pretty simple problems can seem like deal breakers. Walking across a transit center in the rain, having to deal with a panhandler, waiting 5 or 10 minutes...all of these are things that make an efficient system seem troublesome. Once people get used to it, it can be okay, and in Portland, waiting at a train stop can be pleasant. But it is part of the "Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt" that make people wonder about mass transit. 

But I think that you are right "Build It And They Will Come"...people in Portland, who have experience with the MAX, tend to like it, even when it has slight delays. I think that once people came to Vancouver, they would like it pretty quickly.


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## Matthew H Fish

Oh, and something Amtrak related:

The MAX Light Rail in Portland goes directly by Union Station, like you can take the train to Amtrak with a walk of 200 feet. 

In Vancouver, the Amtrak station is out in a weird-to-navigate warehouse district west of downtown, and I still have problems finding it. The closest bus, which is one of the smaller routes, incidentally passes by, about five blocks away. 

So that is another thing that Vancouver could work on with intermodality...


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## Willbridge

Siegmund said:


> I too have not yet seen an inspector on a MAX train, any of the half dozen or so times I've ridden it.
> 
> By contrast -- in one round trip riding the train from the Denver airport to downtown, I had my ticket checked TWICE on the same trip inbound, and once outbound. It hardly feels like a proof of payment system at all if you're going to have inspectors on every train.


This is applicable to the A-Line because of the special fare zone at the airport. It occurs to some people to buy an inner zone ticket and ride through to DIA. This folklore-based scam was abetted by inspections done on a quick basis on other long lines, checking only for date/time validity.

The second part of this special situation is that the FRA wants two-man crews on the trains it regulates. There is no coal to shovel and as an all-new signalized and PTC'ed system there isn't much for a conductor to do. A two-man crew is no more needed than on the Berlin S-Bahn, for example. So, the security guards can be seen carrying out the remaining duties of a conductor.

The third part is security work. For whatever reasons, people who try to steal rides are likely to have other issues. A train full of people with luggage, fancy cameras, etc. that makes intermediate stops in an industrial area could be tempting. Checking fares offers a raison d'etre for looking every passenger in the eye.

I've been riding rail transit lines in the Denver region since 10 October 1994 and have only been double-checked once, aside from on the airport A-Line. That was late at night by plainclothes Lakewood officers, followed by plainclothes Denver officers on the W-Line. I doubt if they were checking the fare zones, but they were looking at date/time validity.


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## Willbridge

Matthew H Fish said:


> Oh, and something Amtrak related:
> 
> The MAX Light Rail in Portland goes directly by Union Station, like you can take the train to Amtrak with a walk of 200 feet.
> 
> In Vancouver, the Amtrak station is out in a weird-to-navigate warehouse district west of downtown, and I still have problems finding it. The closest bus, which is one of the smaller routes, incidentally passes by, about five blocks away.
> 
> So that is another thing that Vancouver could work on with intermodality...



The Vancouver (SP&S Rwy) station was situated to mesh with a new line from Puget Sound, a new line from Pasco and a new bridge over the Columbia, all built decades after the city was platted.

A long walk has been the case with bus access since at least the 1950's. Downtown Vancouver developed around the ferry landing upstream of the rail station, before there was a rail station. Narrow-gauge streetcars of the Portland system ran up what is now Martin Luther King Blvd from Portland, and later on less-congested Williams Avenue, then on a longgg trestle to connect with the ferry. Vancouver had a separate system of city streetcars that focused on the ferry.

When the Interstate Bridge opened, the Portland interurban line was extended into downtown Vancouver, but the two systems remained separate. Later on, Vancouver-Portland Bus Co. replaced the interurban, so three cash fares of three companies were involved to get from our dentist to our home. In the late 1960's the adult Portland - Vancouver fare was 35 cents, as was the rail fare. However, hardly anyone made the 10-mile trip on the five trains a day because of the isolated station.


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## jis

This is really great info and background! Thanks!


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## bratkinson

Matthew H Fish said:


> Oh, and something Amtrak related:
> 
> The MAX Light Rail in Portland goes directly by Union Station, like you can take the train to Amtrak with a walk of 200 feet.
> 
> In Vancouver, the Amtrak station is out in a weird-to-navigate warehouse district west of downtown, and I still have problems finding it. The closest bus, which is one of the smaller routes, incidentally passes by, about five blocks away.
> 
> So that is another thing that Vancouver could work on with intermodality...



Intermodality is 'key' to me in my Amtrak travels. When I'm going to spend a night in a city, my goal is to find a transit line that runs to or past the Amtrak station and stops close to a reasonably priced hotel/motel. In Portland, the University Place Hotel is an enjoyable MAX ride from Union Station. The New Orleans streetcar ends at NOUPT and passes several hotels, most notably a Hyatt and Holiday Inn, both within walking distance from the station (I've walked both as well as have ridden). When I'm riding Amtrak to get to some commuter lines such as Metro North or SEPTA, switching from Amtrak to a commuter line is a breeze, although I sometimes have to take a separate line to get to one I want to ride. 

All the big city stations WAS to BOS on the NEC have intermodal rail connections either underground or within 100 feet of the door as does CHI, STL, DAL, FTW, LAX, SAN, SJC, OKJ, SAC, SEA, and, of course, PDX. Connecting to buses such as Amtrak Thruway is OK for non-commuters, but in my opinion, taking a Thruway bus on a daily basis to get to work would make most commutes longer than 60 minutes is a non-starter. In my own observation, I think most 'commuters' on Amtrak are not every day riders, at least on the NEC. Price vs comfort vs schedule frequency favors the likes of Metro North and the other commuter lines that share the NEC. Amtrak 'commuters' I've talked with or seen multiple times usually go in to the city on Monday or Tuesday, and come back on Wednesday-Friday. One Amtrak NEC commuter I rode with numerous times did just that every other week (he and I get on and off at WNL), in on Tuesday to corporate HQ and back on Wednesday, including a 20 minute LIRR ride as well. For him, it was about 4 hours each way between home and HQ. A 6:10AM departure from WNL on Tuesdays and 9:50PM arrival at WNL on Wednesdays made two very long days for him. 

As for Vancouver, having 2 or 3 bus routes with schedules that mess well with arriving and departing trains would be ideal. As for a light-rail to city bus or MAX to city bus, that works well in Portland from what I've seen. Whether an extended MAX line or light rail line goes to Vancouver, perhaps the best 'transit hub' location would be 100-200 feet from the Vancouver Amtrak station. That would mesh well with a commuter train along the former SP&S line in the future.

In short, the trend towards multimodal stations including trains to planes as well as trains to light/medium/heavy rail and buses is the transportation 'glue' of the future. Most major cities have accomplished this to varying degrees already. It's up to smaller communities such as Vancouver to do that as well.


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## jis

Plane to Train integration of the extremely intimate kind...

At Amsterdam Schiphol central arrival concourse you see the entrance to tracks 1/2 and in the background 3/4 with the next departure displayed. The platforms are right underneath. All trains from Amsterdam to the South including Thalys to Paris and Brussels stop there. The little yellow posts in the foreground are the tapping points for the OV Chip Card, which is the common fare instrument for all public transit in the Netherlands, except in high speed trains which require reservation and international trains. There is a staffed ticket office along the back wall right under where you see the blue Schiphol sign. But most people deal only with the yellow TVMs that you see by the platform entry point.


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## Willbridge

bratkinson said:


> Intermodality is 'key' to me in my Amtrak travels. When I'm going to spend a night in a city, my goal is to find a transit line that runs to or past the Amtrak station and stops close to a reasonably priced hotel/motel. In Portland, the University Place Hotel is an enjoyable MAX ride from Union Station. The New Orleans streetcar ends at NOUPT and passes several hotels, most notably a Hyatt and Holiday Inn, both within walking distance from the station (I've walked both as well as have ridden). When I'm riding Amtrak to get to some commuter lines such as Metro North or SEPTA, switching from Amtrak to a commuter line is a breeze, although I sometimes have to take a separate line to get to one I want to ride.
> 
> All the big city stations WAS to BOS on the NEC have intermodal rail connections either underground or within 100 feet of the door as does CHI, STL, DAL, FTW, LAX, SAN, SJC, OKJ, SAC, SEA, and, of course, PDX. Connecting to buses such as Amtrak Thruway is OK for non-commuters, but in my opinion, taking a Thruway bus on a daily basis to get to work would make most commutes longer than 60 minutes is a non-starter. In my own observation, I think most 'commuters' on Amtrak are not every day riders, at least on the NEC. Price vs comfort vs schedule frequency favors the likes of Metro North and the other commuter lines that share the NEC. Amtrak 'commuters' I've talked with or seen multiple times usually go in to the city on Monday or Tuesday, and come back on Wednesday-Friday. One Amtrak NEC commuter I rode with numerous times did just that every other week (he and I get on and off at WNL), in on Tuesday to corporate HQ and back on Wednesday, including a 20 minute LIRR ride as well. For him, it was about 4 hours each way between home and HQ. A 6:10AM departure from WNL on Tuesdays and 9:50PM arrival at WNL on Wednesdays made two very long days for him.
> 
> As for Vancouver, having 2 or 3 bus routes with schedules that mess well with arriving and departing trains would be ideal. As for a light-rail to city bus or MAX to city bus, that works well in Portland from what I've seen. Whether an extended MAX line or light rail line goes to Vancouver, perhaps the best 'transit hub' location would be 100-200 feet from the Vancouver Amtrak station. That would mesh well with a commuter train along the former SP&S line in the future.
> 
> In short, the trend towards multimodal stations including trains to planes as well as trains to light/medium/heavy rail and buses is the transportation 'glue' of the future. Most major cities have accomplished this to varying degrees already. It's up to smaller communities such as Vancouver to do that as well.


You're right that intermodal connections are a good thing, but I've worked on intermodal station projects and Vancouver, WA is a tough nut to crack. My guess is that several other Cascades Corridor stations are more likely to gain intermodal status before Van. Neither Tri-Met nor C-Tran have shown an interest. The Portland Union Station intermodal features were instigated by ODOT, with Tri-Met being the last piece of the puzzle. And Tri-Met misses out on strengthening the intermodal terminal by imposing a transfer between the airport and Union Station.

My dad remembers SP&S commuter trains, and when I was a kid the loop that they turned on in the Vancouver Shipyard was still there. That brought them past downtown Vancouver and things like that would have to be considered in any serious effort.


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## Matthew H Fish

bratkinson said:


> As for Vancouver, having 2 or 3 bus routes with schedules that mess well with arriving and departing trains would be ideal. As for a light-rail to city bus or MAX to city bus, that works well in Portland from what I've seen. Whether an extended MAX line or light rail line goes to Vancouver, perhaps the best 'transit hub' location would be 100-200 feet from the Vancouver Amtrak station. That would mesh well with a commuter train along the former SP&S line in the future.
> 
> In short, the trend towards multimodal stations including trains to planes as well as trains to light/medium/heavy rail and buses is the transportation 'glue' of the future. Most major cities have accomplished this to varying degrees already. It's up to smaller communities such as Vancouver to do that as well.



While it would seem to make sense to put an intermodal station next to the Vancouver Amtrak station, there are reasons that it would be both really difficult and not very useful, mostly based on accidents of geography. 

First, the Amtrak station is located at the western edge of Vancouver. Probably only 1-3% of the area's population lives west of the station. The only things west of the station are a single residential neighborhood, and then a lot of port and industrial stuff, and lots of wetland, including Vancouver Lake. The most natural place for a Vancouver Light Rail to come across is downtown Vancouver. This is a little less than a mile east of the train station, but in order to get to the station, it would have to take a sharp turn to the left after reaching Vancouver, to the train station, and then turn back to the east to the route that most people would want to take: up Fourth Plain. 

Then there is the location of the Vancouver Amtrak station itself. It lies right in the middle of a triple interchange of railroad tracks: basically where the North-South tracks (Seattle to Eugene) and West-East tracks (Portland to Spokane) come together to form a triangle. Because this is a busy area, there are three sets of tracks in some locations. To build light rail tracks over them would probably delay lots of heavy freight rail trains during construction, and with the same problem during operation. 

So, even though a Vancouver intermodal station sounds good...it presents significant logistical difficulties. Many of which date back to the construction of the Northern Pacific (Portland-Seattle) and Seattle Portland and Spokane railways, which were constructed more than a 100 years ago, when Portland and Seattle were small logging towns in the middle of nowhere, and automobiles hadn't been invented yet.


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## Willbridge

Matthew H Fish said:


> While it would seem to make sense to put an intermodal station next to the Vancouver Amtrak station, there are reasons that it would be both really difficult and not very useful, mostly based on accidents of geography.
> 
> First, the Amtrak station is located at the western edge of Vancouver. Probably only 1-3% of the area's population lives west of the station. The only things west of the station are a single residential neighborhood, and then a lot of port and industrial stuff, and lots of wetland, including Vancouver Lake. The most natural place for a Vancouver Light Rail to come across is downtown Vancouver. This is a little less than a mile east of the train station, but in order to get to the station, it would have to take a sharp turn to the left after reaching Vancouver, to the train station, and then turn back to the east to the route that most people would want to take: up Fourth Plain.
> 
> Then there is the location of the Vancouver Amtrak station itself. It lies right in the middle of a triple interchange of railroad tracks: basically where the North-South tracks (Seattle to Eugene) and West-East tracks (Portland to Spokane) come together to form a triangle. Because this is a busy area, there are three sets of tracks in some locations. To build light rail tracks over them would probably delay lots of heavy freight rail trains during construction, and with the same problem during operation.
> 
> So, even though a Vancouver intermodal station sounds good...it presents significant logistical difficulties. Many of which date back to the construction of the Northern Pacific (Portland-Seattle) and Seattle Portland and Spokane railways, which were constructed more than a 100 years ago, when Portland and Seattle were small logging towns in the middle of nowhere, and automobiles hadn't been invented yet.



That's a good summary. The SP&S Vancouver station was built as the operations heart of that railway, with the telegraphers situated where they could see both main lines and the Columbia River drawspan. The third leg of the wye connecting the North Bank Line with the Pool Line has very slow moving freights on its curve. (It has been used for passenger detours and for the beloved SF Bay Area to interior BC "Caribou Country Specials"). It's a tricky area. My pre-Amtrak file photo may add to this understanding. It's looking south (timetable direction westbound), with the station on the left.


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## Matthew H Fish

I hope we aren't getting too far into the weeds on this topic, but it is actually pretty relevant overall, because I think in lots of cities, rail terminals are in legacy locations that make them inconvenient for transit use, because of how the city has developed. So, here are some photos taken from Google Maps. 







This shows the general area. The current last MAX stop is at the Portland Expo Center, towards the lower left. An extention would cross Hayden Island, probably having a stop there, and then stop in downtown Vancouver (right where it says "Vancouver" in bright red letters) and then head NE to Clark College, in the upper right of the map. It would cross I-5 either near Mill Plain, or near Fourth Plain. The Vancouver Amtrak station is just north of the river, right next to the BNSF Rail Bridge (called, poetically enough, 9.6). It is kind of visible from this map that it is in an industrial area, but not as apparent how little lies west of it. 

Here is a close up of the area around the station:





So here we see it located in the triangle formed by the merging of the East-West and North-South tracks (Actually, the SPS route to Spokane pretty much originates here.) The best way to get to the station is along 11st Street, which involves crossing three separate railroad tracks, on a road that doesn't have a sidewalk. This industrial area, needless to say, is not very pedestrian friendly. It is not even really motorist friendly. Across from the station, there is a gigantic industrial metal recycling plant, which is appealing, but is not really bucolic tourist fare. And there is also no transit access to the station, not without walking a few blocks. 

This is one of those cases where a little bit of inconvenience can really deter travelers. A commuter rail line between Vancouver and Kelso/Longview might appeal to some people...but just added the added burden of having to walk five blocks from downtown, and it can be quite an annoyance. 

Of course, all of this is due to the fact that the railroad bridge was built in 1906. At the time these rail lines were built, the area in the picture was Vancouver: the current location of I-5 would have been the eastern border of the city, other than the fort. In the years since, and especially starting in the 1970s-1990s, the city poured out eastward. So the cities current transit choices are curtailed by the legacy of Vancouver being built as a lumber town over a 100 years ago.


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## Matthew H Fish

Update: I am in the Portland area now, specifically in Vancouver, and I have had a chance to ride the Bus Rapid Transit system. 

It is...an incremental improvement on the bus it replaced, in terms of speed and service. It doesn't seem to be that heavily used, but perhaps using larger buses does that, spreads the people out a bit more. Entering and leaving the bus is a little easier, and it takes some time off its journey, but...I don't really know if it is a "Bus Rapid Transit" system, as much as it is an Articulated Bus.


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## crescent-zephyr

Matthew H Fish said:


> I don't really know if it is a "Bus Rapid Transit" system, as much as it is an Articulated Bus.



That's the issue... a bus system with dedicated lanes and dedicated right of way can be a great solution. But just plopping an articulated bus into the same traffic is not going to be a great solution, but obviously it is cheaper. Same with street running with LRT. 

Dedicated right of way is always going to be best. The transit tunnels in Seattle that allow for LRT and Busses are a very ideal solution.


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## Seaboard92

Except now the Transit Tunnel in Seattle is now exclusively light rail.


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## gswager

There is one in Los Angeles. It's the Orange Line. It's extremely popular. It may be changed the passenger count once the subway construction is completed in near future


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## Matthew H Fish

crescent-zephyr said:


> Dedicated right of way is always going to be best. The transit tunnels in Seattle that allow for LRT and Busses are a very ideal solution.



It definitely does not have its own dedicated Right of Way. But of course, even the Light Rail in Portland does not have that.


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## crescent-zephyr

Seaboard92 said:


> Except now the Transit Tunnel in Seattle is now exclusively light rail.



Shows you how long it’s been since I’ve used it! Why did that happen? Poor patronage on the lines?


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## crescent-zephyr

Matthew H Fish said:


> It definitely does not have its own dedicated Right of Way. But of course, even the Light Rail in Portland does not have that.



Some do.


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## Metra Electric Rider

crescent-zephyr said:


> Shows you how long it’s been since I’ve used it! Why did that happen? Poor patronage on the lines?



I think it was the planned increase in rail traffic through the tunnel - too many of those darn trains running through it once the extensions and branches start to open.


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## Trogdor

Metra Electric Rider said:


> I think it was the planned increase in rail traffic through the tunnel - too many of those darn trains running through it once the extensions and branches start to open.



Basically this. They start construction in the tunnel this winter to build a temporary platform at Pioneer Square to accommodate transfers while the lines deal with new crossover and switch construction related to the East Link (which will include single-tracking in the tunnel during this construction period). Then, once East Link opens, rail headways will go down to 3 minutes in the tunnel. Since buses already limit rail capacity, and because they wouldn’t be compatible with the coming single-track operation, they had to come out of the tunnel and head up to the surface.


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## Matthew H Fish

I should probably do a post about Seattle-area transit, but I am not super experienced with it.


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## Matthew H Fish

crescent-zephyr said:


> Some do.



There are some sections of some lines that have their own right of way, but all lines have some sections that don't. And those sections kind of define the flexibility of the entire system: trains can zip between Lloyd Center and Gateway on their own Right-of-Way as frequently and quickly as they want, but it doesn't matter, because outside of that range, they have to constrain themselves to the demands of automobile traffic. 

Probably one of the better decisions for the Green Line is that all the parts of that are exclusively Green Line (Gateway south) are on their own right-of-way. The Green Line when it runs on the same tracks as other lines (West of Lloyd Center) doesn't have its own tracks, though.


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## Willbridge

Matthew H Fish said:


> I should probably do a post about Seattle-area transit, but I am not super experienced with it.



Here are three of the longest-running facts regarding Seattle transit: trolley coaches on good headways climbing like mountain goats in the rain.


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## neroden

The locals say that Vancouver, WA has an obsession with cars and an irrational fear of rail -- at least compared to Portland. There have been a gazillion proposals to extend Portland's light rail system over the Columbia, but "the Couv" comes up with fearmongering articles claiming that "the bad element" from Portland will ride the train to their suburb and so there's always a huge political fight against it. Nutters, IMO.

Portland and Oregon have laid down the law: they won't support a new Interstate bridge without a light rail extension. (It wouldn't pass environmental review anyway.) However, when it eventually happens, expect "the Couv" to shove the light rail station as close to the river's edge as possible and make it as inconvenient to walk to as possible.

It's pretty obvious that there should be a MAX extension across the Columbia -- it's a bottleneck. Even if it ended up being a park-and-ride station just at the terminus of the bridge, it would massively relieve traffic. According to some studies, there are currently lots of people with Washington State license plates driving across the bridge to park at Expo Center and ride MAX. Just moving their park-and-ride location across the river would save everyone a lot of hassle.

The hostility from previous Vancouver, WA governments and state officials has been extreme and insane. One can only hope that the demographics of Vancouver are improving enough that the irrational knee-jerk anti-rail hostility will recede *just enough* to allow for one station on the north side of the river!


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## Willbridge

neroden said:


> The locals say that Vancouver, WA has an obsession with cars and an irrational fear of rail -- at least compared to Portland. There have been a gazillion proposals to extend Portland's light rail system over the Columbia, but "the Couv" comes up with fearmongering articles claiming that "the bad element" from Portland will ride the train to their suburb and so there's always a huge political fight against it. Nutters, IMO.
> 
> Portland and Oregon have laid down the law: they won't support a new Interstate bridge without a light rail extension. (It wouldn't pass environmental review anyway.) However, when it eventually happens, expect "the Couv" to shove the light rail station as close to the river's edge as possible and make it as inconvenient to walk to as possible.
> 
> It's pretty obvious that there should be a MAX extension across the Columbia -- it's a bottleneck. Even if it ended up being a park-and-ride station just at the terminus of the bridge, it would massively relieve traffic. According to some studies, there are currently lots of people with Washington State license plates driving across the bridge to park at Expo Center and ride MAX. Just moving their park-and-ride location across the river would save everyone a lot of hassle.
> 
> The hostility from previous Vancouver, WA governments and state officials has been extreme and insane. One can only hope that the demographics of Vancouver are improving enough that the irrational knee-jerk anti-rail hostility will recede *just enough* to allow for one station on the north side of the river!


In late July I was frequently at the Parkrose station on the Red Line and it was close to park-and-ride capacity on peak days. About a third of the cars had Washington plates.

One issue that complicates things is that there are Washington interests pushing real estate eastward up the Columbia River Gorge. They prefer bridge alignments that encourage that.


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## Matthew H Fish

Willbridge said:


> One issue that complicates things is that there are Washington interests pushing real estate eastward up the Columbia River Gorge. They prefer bridge alignments that encourage that.



Meaning a Camas-Troutdale Bridge. 

The problem with this, than the cost, and even putting aside the environmental problems, etc, is that most of those people will not actually be going to Troutdale, or even to Gresham, but to downtown Portland or points west or south, is that they will still be dealing with the Banfield, the Sunset Highway, the I-84/I-205 junction, the I-84/I-5 junction etc. 
Obviously even if the bridge works perfectly, it won't change the fact that the freeways in Portland aren't going to get any wider.


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## Matthew H Fish

So after a few years, it looks like there is more talk of replacing the I-5 Bridge over the Columbia River, and that federal grants are dependent on including the Yellow Line to downtown Vancouver. Right now, the plan seems to be to have only one stop in downtown Vancouver, and to connect to Bus Rapid Transit there, because there would be political problems with taking the Right of Way further.









I-5 Bridge project lands on light rail for replacement bridge


Light rail will be part of the plan for the Interstate 5 Bridge replacement, bringing MAX trains into Vancouver from Portland.




www.columbian.com





Given that this is still in the early stages, it might be many years before this actually gets done.


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## Asher

Portland is a nice town and may be transit friendly with all the different routes and bridges, The view from Interstate 5 driving north its butt ugly.


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## Willbridge

anumberone said:


> Portland is a nice town and may be transit friendly with all the different routes and bridges, The view from Interstate 5 driving north its butt ugly.


There are attractive and/or interesting places in North Portland, but the Interstate alignment was not selected for the scenery.

If the LRT line just goes into downtown Vancouver, it'll be history repeating itself. The Vancouver streetcar system was a separate company, as was the local bus system prior to C-Tran. The interstate service was originally a ferry connecting with the Portland system. When the Interstate Bridge was built it opened with narrow-gauge tracks taking the Portland cars into downtown Vancouver. Before the federal regulation of interstate buses, Vancouver-Portland Bus Co. gained grandfather rights and the narrow-gauge interurban was abandoned. Greyhound also provided several trips a day on local Pacific Highway runs.


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## Matthew H Fish

This is a YouTube video I made yesterday showing the "Central Park" area of Vancouver, Washington. This is an area that includes the Fort Vancouver National Historic Site, as well as other local parks, a college, and a high school. Basically downtown Vancouver is bordered by a 3/4 by 1 mile block of public facilities and greenspaces. Which is a mixed blessing, because it is useful to have public spaces, but it also divides downtown from residential areas to the east. 
In terms of where the light rail tracks would go, they have to cross I-5, probably right outside of downtown. This would mean going under I-5 along Mill Plain Blvd, taking a turn to the north, stopping at Clark College, and then turning east on Fourth Plain. So the light rail tracks would have to take two sharp turns on heavily-trafficked roads in about a mile. It isn't an insurmountable obstacle, but it does show some of the engineering challenges of the light rail line. 

(Transit discussion begins at 6:30)


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## Matthew H Fish

I hope I am not going too far in addressing a very specific issue, but it has wider ramifications. In the video above, I point out one intersection that might be a place where the light rail would be routed. I was kind of guessing, so I decided to look up some maps. First I found a map of proposed routes from 2012, when the light rail proposal was defeated (narrowly) by Clark County voters. 

This route has three planned stops in downtown Vancouver, before turning eastward and terminating on McLoughlin Boulevard (one major road and 400 meters from the intersection I am showing in my video). 
And here we have the second map, showing the current plan, and related to the bridge rebuilding:


Notice this one only has two stops after crossing the bridge into Vancouver. And they are along the freeway, not through downtown. It then terminates on Evergreen Blvd, (one major street and 400 meters before the Mill Plain intersection in my video). Apparently, according to this map, there would be a BRT line right there. 
For me, the second map makes a lot more sense. But it depends on how people view light rail. As I said in my original post, light rail in Portland is very different in different neighborhoods. In some, it is almost a commuter rail system, while in others it is a trolley. One of the things that has held MAX back in Portland has been that when it was built, it had many stops in downtown Portland (which got business and community support, because it made the stops very convenient for people going to certain buildings), but also made it slow overall. 
If the main point of the light rail extension north of the river is to carry commuters from Vancouver to Portland, then making it a neighborhood trolley will make the commute too long. One or two stops that connect to major bus lines or BRT lines makes a lot more sense.


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## Matthew H Fish

I posted this video in my thread about the Willamette Valley, but I am also posting it here, but for a different reason:


The first six minutes are mostly in the Portland area, mostly in the Western/Southwestern suburbs. I take the MAX from downtown Portland to Beaverton TC. The Beaverton TC is a good example of how light rail and buses work together. I also show there the WES commuter rail between Beaverton and Wilsonville---that wasn't running at the time, because it is a commuter rail system that only works during morning and evening rush hours. 
As the Portland area has grown, the southwest of the city is the only area that doesn't have a MAX line (except, of course, Vancouver). This is due to technical reasons, with the West Hills presenting an engineering challenge, and also due to preferences of at least some people in the area. The commuter rail was a "nifty idea" that is now almost 15 years old and that never lived up to its promise. 
As it is, the western, and especially southwestern part of the Portland area is much less transit oriented than the eastside...but it is also, compared to most suburban areas of mid-sized cities, very well served by transit lines. 
I will probably try to put together a post with some maps soon.


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## caravanman

I like Portland very much, and have enjoyed riding the MAX in the city area, as well as a few bus routes. Your video's make me realise that there is a lot more to see than just the city itself. Is there one good source to find info on all the transit options in the vicinity?
I tend to snap lots of photos on my travels, but feel motivated to try video in future... May I ask what camera you used to create yours?


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## Matthew H Fish

That is a great question. And the answer is "no"---there is no single source that makes it easy to navigate the area via transit. (Other, than, of course, google transit, which might not always be accurate, especially with the smaller systems). 
Trimet, the MAX and the buses, have unified schedules that all work together. And that are all online with a very sophisticated interface. And, on the ground, you have transit centers that make transferring between buses easy. But there are actually close to a dozen different transit systems around the Portland area, but to find their schedules, you have to scrounge around on county websites, sometimes doing things like finding pdfs that are scans of printed schedules...and often, they use landmarks as time points, so it will list times for places like "Jim's Market". And because the schedules aren't coordinated with each other, you might have something like an hour long weight in a gravel parking lot of a deli. (I am using this as an example, I don't know if that is a literal situation that exists)
Which is too bad, because there are lots of great side trips that you can take on a bus around the Portland area. Many of which work with Amtrak schedules. For example, it is possible to get off of the Empire Builder in White Salmon, and use local buses to go to Hood River, Multnomah Falls, and on to Portland--and then continue on from there on the Coast Starlight...or at least on the Cascades. But its nothing a casual traveler would know about, because you literally need an excel spreadsheet to figure it out.


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## Willbridge

You can get some help out of Google Transit and the agency listing on this web page:






Oregon Department of Transportation : Transportation Resources for Car-Free Travel in Oregon : Public Transportation : State of Oregon


Plan your next trip in Oregon using car-free and alternative forms of travel.




www.oregon.gov





It's sad, but I think it has been typical of the states that try to accomplish something, that there are improvements for a while and then things stagnate or go backwards. It requires constant attention due to the budget-driven service changes. For example: connecting with trains that switch from daily to tri-weekly to daily to five days a week, etc. And then there are the states that do nothing.

Radical innovation: bus stop sign.


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## Matthew H Fish

Willbridge said:


> Radical innovation: bus stop sign.
> 
> View attachment 28829



When I went to Waldport, the bus stopped outside of Ray's Market. No sign, no shelter, not even a bench. On one hand, I can understand if a small town or county doesn't have a lot of money, but also I think it is often assumed that the people who are using the bus are locals and that they just know this stuff.


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## Willbridge

Matthew H Fish said:


> When I went to Waldport, the bus stopped outside of Ray's Market. No sign, no shelter, not even a bench. On one hand, I can understand if a small town or county doesn't have a lot of money, but also I think it is often assumed that the people who ar e using the bus are locals and that they just know this stuff.


That's an example of the fluctuating interest in the Thruway lines. The photo was on the Bend<>Ontario route, which I think was set up before the coast route that you rode, with a different staff person. When I was at ODOT, the idea of bus stop signs was new. Prior to that it was the bus company's problem. The dividing line in the early-70's was when Greyhound economized by deleting the field representative in their Portland office. Agency stations then became fewer and a bus stop sign only was issued if it was requested.

You are right about locals. What I found, though, was that as time passed that generation of customers faded away. I kept finding Oregon towns where people thought they needed a ride to a bigger city because they did not know that there was a stop nearby.


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## Matthew H Fish

Yesterday, I walked across the Columbia River bridge, between Portland and Oregon:


One mistake I made in this video: I didn't specifically talk about how the light rail bridge would most likely be a separate, parallel span next to the replacement bridge. But hopefully this video demonstrates a few things, including how wide the Columbia River is at this point, how cramped Jantzen Beach would be, how much traffic is going over the bridge, and how many different transportation methods are all packed in one space. Hopefully seeing it makes it more clear what the debate is all about.


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## daybeers

Matthew H Fish said:


> No sign, no shelter, not even a bench


I think you'd be rudely awakened by the state of most bus services in this country. Here in CT it's rare to find a stop without a sign, but also rare for it to have the route number. If you find a shelter or bench, that's a gold mine.


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## Matthew H Fish

daybeers said:


> I think you'd be rudely awakened by the state of most bus services in this country. Here in CT it's rare to find a stop without a sign, but also rare for it to have the route number. If you find a shelter or bench, that's a gold mine.



Well, in this case, I was referring to an intermediate distance line, a county line that goes between cities, so it wouldn't have a route number. And it having a sign, and a shelter, would be much more important, because it only runs about five times a day. 
But in general, you are right--- in Portland, where buses are considered part of transportation infrastructure, shelters and transit centers are kept clean and comfortable with up-to-date schedules. In other cities, where transit is considered a social service, making it efficient isn't always as important, because they seem to think "beggars can't be choosers", and since it is all being dispensed as a favor, there is no reason to have reliable schedules or clear route marking.


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## Matthew H Fish

caravanman said:


> I tend to snap lots of photos on my travels, but feel motivated to try video in future... May I ask what camera you used to create yours?


Sorry, I forgot to answer this question. I actually have four cameras --- my Android (which I used for videos before May, mostly), a flip phone (which is good for when my other cameras have run out of battery), a Nikon camera (which is water and shock proof, and which I use to take mostly stills where I might drop it---it is so sturdy, I accidentally had it in my pocket when it went through the wash, and 30 minutes in a washer didn't damage it at all), but, most of my recent videos were taken on a relatively entry-level Sony Handycam. It cost 250 dollars, but it was worth it. Last summer, I bought a generic video camera for like 80 dollars, but it just didn't work right, and it eventually stopped working at all. The Sony is relatively easy to operate, and it came with everything. I would recommend it.


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## Matthew H Fish

This is a video I made of myself in downtown and central Portland:

Not all of it is transit-related, but significant parts of it are. (And even the parts that aren't, are related indirectly)
There are two things that are probably the most important. The first is the Portland Streetcar, which opened in 2001. When I lived in Portland, up until 2009, it wasn't a very useful thing, because it mostly just went around the core downtown area, and it mostly carried shoppers. It was mostly a convenience, and not even that, because usually the time to wait for it was longer than just walking, at least for me. (I was in my 20s and had a lot of energy  ). So, like a lot of Streetcar systems, it seemed to be a cute way to attract suburbanites to a downtown area. But over the years, it expanded, and it now is long enough that it makes visiting certain places a lot faster. And I just checked---in 2019, it carried 5 million people a year, which makes it about half as busy as, say, Sacramento's "Real" Light Rail system. (Even compared to Portland's MAX system, it is considerable, carrying about 1/8th as many passengers). So I was pleasantly surprised to see how useful the Streetcar could be. 
Towards the end of the video, I show the Steel Bridge, which is the double-lift bridge that carries both the MAX Light Rail on the top deck, and heavy rail (including the Coast Starlight and Cascades) on the bottom deck. When the MAX was first built, there was only one line. Now, all of those lines go over this bridge. So this bridge is one of the limiting factors for how many trains they can run through downtown. 
Both of these points are related, because it shows how transportation infrastructure can sometimes scale in ways that are not expected. When the MAX opened in 1986, and even when the Streetcar opened in 2001, Portland was quite a different place than it is now, and so sometimes transportation plans have had to adapt to the city changing.


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## Matthew H Fish

TriMet Unveils a New Frequent Bus Line Following Historic Service Cuts


After six years of conception, planning, design, and construction, Portland is set to see 60-foot-long, bright green TriMet buses driving up and down SE Division Street in less than a month. The buses are part of TriMet’s new Frequent Express (FX) service—high capacity buses that run every 12...




www.portlandmercury.com




TriMet is about to open a new BRT line, along Division, between downtown Portland and Gresham. This will replace the #2 Division bus, which is one of TriMets most frequently ridden routes. The line roughly parallels the main East/West MAX Blue line, about a mile or two to the north. 
To me, this project signifies how TriMet has used a "kitchen sink" approach, in a good way. TriMet has built many light rail lines, but it wouldn't have been economically/practicable to build a second light rail line so close to the main line, so they built a BRT line that supplements service. 
Also, the link I shared talks about how this is happening at the same time as service cutbacks---but hopefully the service cutbacks are caused by temporary economic conditions.


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## MARC Rider

daybeers said:


> I think you'd be rudely awakened by the state of most bus services in this country. Here in CT it's rare to find a stop without a sign, but also rare for it to have the route number. If you find a shelter or bench, that's a gold mine.


One thing that amazed me when I lived in Israel in 1971-2 was that every dinky rural bus stop in the middle of nowhere not only had a sign with the route number and destination of the bus, it also had the bus schedule. And nearly all the stops had a paved pull-out with a proper platform. And back then, I think Israel was still considered a "developing country." I'm not sure what it's like today, as a larger percentage of the population drives cars.

I guess they still do. Here's an example:



For those who don't know Hebrew, this says

Kibbutz Orim

030 Be'er Sheva
376 Tel Aviv

Which suggests that the 030 bus goes to Be'er Sheva and the 376 bus goes to Tel Aviv. No schedule shown here, I'll have to look around some more.


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## Willbridge

Matthew H Fish said:


> TriMet Unveils a New Frequent Bus Line Following Historic Service Cuts
> 
> 
> After six years of conception, planning, design, and construction, Portland is set to see 60-foot-long, bright green TriMet buses driving up and down SE Division Street in less than a month. The buses are part of TriMet’s new Frequent Express (FX) service—high capacity buses that run every 12...
> 
> 
> 
> 
> www.portlandmercury.com
> 
> 
> 
> 
> TriMet is about to open a new BRT line, along Division, between downtown Portland and Gresham. This will replace the #2 Division bus, which is one of TriMets most frequently ridden routes. The line roughly parallels the main East/West MAX Blue line, about a mile or two to the north.
> To me, this project signifies how TriMet has used a "kitchen sink" approach, in a good way. TriMet has built many light rail lines, but it wouldn't have been economically/practicable to build a second light rail line so close to the main line, so they built a BRT line that supplements service.
> Also, the link I shared talks about how this is happening at the same time as service cutbacks---but hopefully the service cutbacks are caused by temporary economic conditions.


An interesting note: the Division line on the East Side was never a rail line. Most of Portland's frequent service lines include former streetcar or interurban routes.

The main hazard of opening a new line during service cuts is that some forecasted connecting traffic will be lost, Then the new line does not meet projections and the critics pounce. That happened with the original Portland MAX line and happened with RTD's West Line.


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## Matthew H Fish

This is a video I took yesterday of the MAX Yellow Line in North Portland. This is an at-grade stretch of the MAX, with my video showing the main 2 mile stretch of it, with stops every half mile. 
I talk about this in the video, but one of the things I wanted to show was that while many portrayals of the MAX service in Portland focus on how it works in the downtown core and high-density neighborhoods, it also travels through lower density neighborhoods. Basically, this is the less glamorous side of Portland transit. 
When we look at the system regionally, this could also be a shortcoming. If the Yellow Line is extended to Vancouver (as I talked about in previous posts), the speed will be limited because of this "streetcar" like stretch of At-Grade rail. Many of the problems with the MAX system come from its dual use as both a regional and neighborhood transit system.


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## Willbridge

Glad you mentioned that N. Interstate Avenue was US99W. It explains the motor hotels, several of which were stops on the _Seattle Times _delivery route because so many customers were traveling to or from Puget Sound. What helps to explain the single family homes is that Interstate Avenue was a creation of the auto age, cut through streetcar-vintage neighborhoods. The avenues in that area were named for states. The newer I-5 alignment was called the Minnesota Freeway as compared to other alternatives named for other states.

A bit of film shows the "anchor" of Interstate Avenue, its intersection with Broadway. This was the transfer point for our family trips from the Broadway streetcar (and then bus) to the St. Johns trolley coach. In addition to that line, the Interstate Avenue and the Mississippi Avenue trolley coaches came through the intersection. Vancouver-Portland Bus Co. diesels also stopped at the intersection shown in the film. When US99W was created the highway was extended south from Broadway onto the Steel Bridge and Harbor Drive.



One of the reasons for the stop spacing is the grid bus network transfers. As this rail line depends on lower community auto ownership levels it needs the bus feeders. It does not have major parking except for the shared lot at the Exhibition Grounds.

The Yellow Line neighborhoods were redlined in the 1940's and 1950's due to having had Scandinavian and Eastern European populations attracted by waterfront industries and the packing plants. The Black population came as a consequence of the Vanport flood in 1948 which destroyed housing built for war industry workers. Due to the postwar housing shortage my family lived there for a year before its destruction. Prior to that, most of Portland's Black churches, businesses and residents had migrated from Northwest Portland to the Albina neighborhood, served by the Mississippi Avenue, Williams Avenue, Russell-Shaver, and Union Avenue streetcars.


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## Matthew H Fish

Willbridge said:


> What helps to explain the single family homes is that Interstate Avenue was a creation of the auto age, cut through streetcar-vintage neighborhoods. The avenues in that area were named for states.


I mentioned the amount of single family homes and low density retail (and also, I don't mention it, but there is a dental clinic visible), because I want to show what the light rail is like outside of downtown. Much of the coverage of the MAX focuses on downtown Portland and tourist spots, so this video shows what it looks like in a mostly residential area. 
A lot of transit advocates talk a lot about "density", and there is a big subset of people that believe that the only way to have transit is to have dense apartment buildings. Someone on reddit told me that single family homes represented a "disturbing ideology". So the reason I made this video was to show that transit occurs in traditional residential neighborhoods.


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## Metra Electric Rider

Matthew H Fish said:


> A lot of transit advocates talk a lot about "density", and there is a big subset of people that believe that the only way to have transit is to have dense apartment buildings. Someone on reddit told me that single family homes represented a "disturbing ideology". So the reason I made this video was to show that transit occurs in traditional residential neighborhoods.


They obviously haven't been on co-op or condo boards - the most conflict and strive ridden organization ever (I say this as a board member).


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## Metra Electric Rider

Metra Electric Rider said:


> They obviously haven't been on co-op or condo boards - the most conflict and strive ridden organization ever (I say this as a board member).


And I obviously can't spell "strife" either.....


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## Matthew H Fish

Metra Electric Rider said:


> They obviously haven't been on co-op or condo boards - the most conflict and strive ridden organization ever (I say this as a board member).


There are transit advocates who believe that transit is the solution to all social problems. I am a transit advocate myself, of course. But there are people who blame car culture and suburban living for all problems, and think that all social problems will be solved if we all just lived in row houses along rail lines.


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## Matthew H Fish

This is a video showing Vancouver, Washington, and Fourth Plain Boulevard. This is the site of Vancouver's first BRT line (they recently opened another one), and would be the most probable route if the Yellow Line was extended into Vancouver eastward. (which, at this point, would probably open at 2035 at the earliest). This video shows that something is already happening in this area that also happened in North Portland, along another low-medium density transit corridor: the addition of higher density housing. But at the same time, the area has low-enough land values that there is still some abandoned retail in the area.
From a transit point of view, it isn't quite clear that this corridor would be a likely place to put light rail, but it could be that once light rail was built, or in the process of being built, that more high-density housing would go up. Or, at the very least, the empty retail lots would be used.
The video also shows the current state of the BRT stops. The viewer can decide if this is a real BRT line, or if this is just an articulated bus running on a city street.


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## Willbridge

Portland Railway, Light & Power photograph from 1918 in downtown Vancouver.




The guy with the leather gloves is the motorman, the man in the middle is the conductor, and the young fellow at left is the fare collector. They could schedule a Limited in the days before streets were jammed with automobiles.


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## Matthew H Fish

I mentioned the Vancouver Amtrak and how poorly positioned it was to be part of the city's transportation infrastructure, but here is a video that might demonstrate the case better than words could! This video shows the warehouse district and triple railroad tracks you have to cross out of downtown before getting to the station.
Maybe it looks worse than it is because I took it in a wet snowstorm in December, but it really is on the fringes. The station itself is a nice, historic old building, but its location is very difficult.
(I just realized I made a big mistake in that video: I called the Columbia River the Willamette)


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