Transportation / Portland, Oregon

Credit:Portland Bureau of Transportation

“In Portland it’s almost like cars don’t exist, right? They ride bikes! They ride double-decker bikes! They ride unicycles! They ride trams, they ride skateboards!" — Carrie, Portlandia

Carrie, the female protagonist of the comedy series Portlandia, has one thing right: in Portland, Oregon, it’s easy to get around without a car. Thanks to a commitment to transit-oriented development, environmental stewardship, and infrastructure investments, the second-largest city in the Pacific Northwest has developed an expansive, popular public transportation system.

City-based transit ridership grew almost twice as fast as the population and three times faster than expansions in transit service between 1996 and 2006. Eighty-six percent of riders choose TriMet over driving, and transit ridership remains high throughout the week—even on weekends.

“I can’t imagine that there is another major city that comes anywhere close to that,” says Kaid Benfield, NRDC’s director of Sustainable Communities and Smart Growth. “That is real, meaningful transportation performance, due to the nation’s best—by far—coordination of land use and transportation planning.”

TriMet provides light-rail, bus, and commuter rail services to the tri-county Portland region and partners with the City of Portland to deliver streetcar services. Portland’s Metropolitan Planning Organization (Metro) oversees transit at the regional level. Both authorities collaborate closely with local developers and city planners.

Transit Access in Portland Metropolitan Region (light green lines indicate location of metro region with darker brown regions showing higher transit access), Credit:CNT H+T Affordability Index

“We learned long ago that the frequency of service really matters,” says TriMet Land Development Manager Alan Lehto. In order to attract and retain ridership, “we pay attention to the total transit experience and try to remove all the barriers we can,” Lehto says. That means everything from running frequent services to prominently displaying bus stop signs and maintaining a clean, useful website.

Ever since the 1970s, Portland has embraced transit-oriented development and resisted urban sprawl. City planners have attempted to encourage dense development and prevent suburban sprawl within an urban growth boundary in order to preserve the green space and forestland that lies beyond. Metro also provides tax incentives for transit-oriented development.

Portland’s Downtown Transit Mall, established in 1978, keeps the city center pedestrian-friendly with one-way streets intended specifically for transit. Ever since 1975, passengers have been able to ride public transit for free—any day, any time—in downtown Portland. The free service began with certain downtown buses, the only form of transit available at the time, and is now limited to light-rail and streetcar services within downtown Portland, the Rose Quarter, and the Lloyd District.

“We see transit as being part of sustainability, part of the smart growth solution in the region,” Lehto says. “Our role is to make the parts inside the urban growth boundary more attractive, easier to live in,” and to help people “embrace a lifestyle that means you don’t have to drive everywhere.” According to Environment America, “the percentage of people who bike to work in Portland is now eight times the national average.”

Portland also has an aerial tram that links two campuses of the Oregon Health and Science University. The aerial link, owned by the City of Portland, carries 980 people per hour in each direction; by 2007 statistics, 86.4% of tram riders are either employees or students of the medical facility.

The Streetcar Story

Portland’s Pearl District revitalization has become a classic case study for urban planners. “In the early ’90s,” Lehto explains, “the Pearl District was mostly old industrial warehouses and an abandoned rail yard. A small group of developers, along with city planners, [envisioned] a much denser urban neighborhood.” The stakeholders struck a deal: the city would provide the area with a modern streetcar line, and the developers would invest in mixed-use development projects all over the neighborhood.

“The streetcar became the icon of the commitment to the district and the strongest sales material the developers had,” Lehto says. Collaboration between the city, private developers, TriMet, and the nonprofit Portland Streetcar paid off. Today the Pearl District is one of Portland’s trendiest neighborhoods, boasting a mix of local and national retailers, residences, and parks.

Current projects look beyond downtown Portland, aiming to link the city with other high-density communities in the region. TriMet hopes to link Portland directly with Milwaukie by 2015 by extending rail and streetcar services across the Willamette River. This summer, construction will begin on “the first bridge across the Willamette since the 1960s,” Lehto says. “The bridge will have light-rail, bus, streetcar—but no cars. There’ll be a very wide path on each side for pedestrians and bikers.” Community stakeholders worked with transit planners to develop the plan, and there was strong support for a car-free bridge.

Another light-rail extension, this time across the Columbia River, will connect Portland with Vancouver, Washington, by 2020. Perhaps the most comprehensive initiative, the Southwest Corridor Plan will lay out a framework for integrated transportation and land-use planning along the corridor between Portland, Tigard, and Sherwood.

“We’ve had great success in building a number of high-capacity transit lines,” Lehto says. Federal grants, most recently from the 2008 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, have helped cover initial costs for most major projects.

Sustainability

“When we, as an agency, look at our mission and values, nobody questions [our commitment to] sustainability,” Lehto says. From green construction practices to reducing greenhouse gas emissions, congestion, and waste, TriMet has embraced a holistic environmental vision. All TriMet buses run on a biodiesel fuel blend, and the newest buses use a NASCAR-inspired engine cooling system and computer monitoring to boost fuel economy. Older buses have been retrofitted with exhaust filters that make their diesel engines burn 90 percent cleaner. Driving policies also help: drivers turn off bus engines while at transit centers rather than idling.

Portland maintains a strong commitment to environmental stewardship, and both the city (PDF) and the state have published climate action plans. By 2020 Oregon hopes to achieve greenhouse gas levels 10 percent lower than 1990 levels and, by 2050, to achieve greenhouse gas levels 75 percent below 1990 levels. Currently, 38 percent of Oregon’s carbon emissions from fossil fuels come from the transportation sector. Meeting transportation-related carbon targets poses a challenge for any community. Yet if any region can get there, chances are, it’ll be Portland.