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TriMet Compounding 40 Years of Bad Decisions

Portland’s transit agency, TriMet, has spent nearly $5 billion (in present-day dollars) building 59 miles of light-rail lines. Now the agency says it has to spend another $7 billion correcting the mistakes of its previous decisions. Meanwhile, the city of Portland is responding to urban congestion with a plan that will make congestion far worse.

Click image to download a four-page PDF of this policy brief.

The eagerness of Portland officials to build light rail—an eagerness not shared by Portland-area voters—has given the city the reputation of being some sort of transit mecca. The reality is that the urban area’s transit planners have made a series of bad decisions that continue to cost the region dearly. Continue reading

Surprise! TriMet Wants More Light Rail

In a move that surprised no one, the staff of TriMet, Portland’s transit agency, wants to build light rail instead of bus-rapid transit between Portland and Sherwood. Since the Obama administration no longer requires transit agencies to do a rigorous alternatives analysis, this decision was based on subjective criteria and erroneous assumptions, yet will probably not be challenged by either TriMet’s board or the federal government that will have to pay for most of the line.

TriMet’s last light-rail line cost about $168 million per mile. This proposal is for an 11.5-mile line that will cost at least $2 billion, or $174 million per mile. Of course, that cost is likely to go up. By comparison, Portland’s first light-rail line cost only about $28 million per mile in today’s dollars.

A state auditor says TriMet, Portland’s transit agency, is falling behind on light-rail maintenance. TriMet’s general manager says that the agency’s pension and health-care obligations are so great that it will have to cut all transit service by 70 percent by 2025 to meet those obligations. So naturally, it makes perfect sense to talk about spending $2 billion that the agency doesn’t have on another low-capacity rail line.

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Time Running Out for TriMet

Portland’s transit agency, TriMet, is building one of the most expensive light-rail lines ever and is planning several more. Yet the agency is running out of money. The cost of maintaining rail lines grows rapidly as they approach 30 years of age, and TriMet’s oldest line was opened for business 28 years ago.


Click image to download the Secretary of State’s audit of TriMet (5.6-MB pdf).

An audit of TriMet by Oregon’s Secretary of State finds that the agency is already falling behind its maintenance needs. A decade ago, it was completing 92 percent of track maintenance and 100 percent of signal maintenance on time. Today those numbers have fallen to 53 percent for track and 72 percent for signals.

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TriMet Tramples on People’s Credit; Streetcars Still Late

Portland transit follies are increasingly scrutinized by the local media, something that should have happened years ago when there was still a chance of stopping projects such as the $1.5 billion boondoggle low-capacity rail line to Milwaukie. (The video below shows why it is such a boondoggle.)

Joseph Rose, the superreporter who can walk faster than a speeding streetcar, has found that the fare machines for Portland’s low-capacity rail lines are in service a lot less than the agency claims. Some are down more than 35 percent of the time. Since they give out $175 tickets to people who don’t pay their fare, this can be distressing.

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TriMet Makes More Friends

One peculiar thing about almost every light-rail line in the country is that fares are on the honors system. There are no turnstiles, no drivers who demand fares upon boarding (the drivers are in a separate compartment from the passengers), and no fare collectors.

Instead, there are ticket boxes at stations and an occasional fare inspector who issues expensive tickets ($175 in Portland) to people who aren’t carrying proof of payment. If the potential for abuse by freeloading passengers is great, the potential for alienating fare-paying customers is almost as serious, particularly since the fare rules aren’t always clear and the ticket boxes at the stations don’t always work.

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Naturally, the attorney who was banned from riding the trains is suing. We can only hope that the court will determine that, not only do people have free-speech rights, they have the right to claim they have free-speech rights without fear of being kicked off the trains. In the meantime, I advise the attorney to telecommute or start riding a bicycle to work.

TriMet Tax Fraud

TriMet, Portland’s transit agency, gets about half its operating funds from a payroll tax. In 2004, this tax was 0.6218 percent, meaning employers had to pay TriMet $62.18 for every $10,000 they paid employees. Employees, other than the self-employed, are largely unaware of this since it is on top of pay, not a deduction from pay.

In 2003, TriMet persuaded the Oregon legislature to allow it to increase the tax by 0.01 percent per year for ten years, starting in 2005. In 2009, TriMet went back and convinced the legislature to allow it to continue increasing the tax by 0.01 percent per year for another 10 years. Thus, the tax now stands at $69.18 per $10,000 in payroll, and will rise to $82.18 per $10,000 in 2025.

At the time, TriMet promised that all of this tax increase would be dedicated to increasing service, and as of 2010, TriMet CFO Beth deHamel claims this is being done. But according to John Charles of the Cascade Policy Institute, that’s not what is happening.

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TriMet’s Latest Big Lie

TriMet’s $166 million “Westside Express Service” (WES) commuter rail is a miserable failure. After going 60 percent over budget, it is carrying only about 600 round trips per day. The amortized value of the capital cost alone is enough to buy every one of those commuters a brand-new Toyota Prius every year for the next 30 years. Those Priuses would be cleaner than the WES too.

Click for a larger view. Thanks to Steve Schopp for the photo.

So naturally TriMet wants to “celebrate WES” so much that it is advertising this great project on the back of its buses. Note that it isn’t asking people to actually ride the train, because that would never happen — no offense to Wilsonville, Tualatin, or Tigard, but from a transportation view the train goes from nowhere to nowhere, which kind of explains why hardly anyone rides it.

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TriMet Is Failing, So Build More Rail

Portland’s transit agency, TriMet, spent something like $166 million on its commuter-rail line which at one time was supposed to cost $104 million. The line is now carrying fewer than 600 round trips per day. It isn’t really surprising since the line goes from nowhere to nowhere.

The agency offers free health insurance, costing as much as $1,900 per person per month, to all its employees, retirees, and their dependents. This turns out to be the best transit agency benefits package in the nation. Aside from being reminiscent of the benefits programs that sank General Motors, it is so outrageous that the president of TriMet’s board actually resigned because he felt it was so unfair to taxpayers.

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TriMet Crime Coverup

Light-rail associated crime has been a big issue in Portland, so you would think the media would be all over the story when a woman was assaulted at a light-rail station in Portland last Christmas Eve. Instead — nothing.

Normally, says the Gresham Outlook, the police inform the media about such crimes. But in this case, the police were silent. Why? Because the woman reported the crime to the TriMet transit police. Apparently, TriMet was not interested in more bad publicity for its fabled rail system.

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TriMet Responds to “Debunking Portland”

TriMet, Portland’s transit agency, has posted on its web site a response to the Antiplanner’s article, Debunking Portland. The response makes six points:

1. Light rail is “a well-considered decision” made 25 years ago (TriMet says 55, but that is obviously a typo).

2. Portlanders love light rail.

3. Light rail is cheap.

4. Light rail is fast.

5. Light rail “translates into more density, less parking, and new mixes of commercial and residential development.”

6. Light rail is a great investment in the future.

The laugh is on the taxpayers who had to shell out $1.65 billion, and rising, to build Portland’s light-rail lines.

Here are the Antiplanner’s replies.

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