Portland’s regional planning agency, Metro, is proposing a “faster transit line to Gresham.” Gresham happens to be the terminus for Portland’s first light-rail line, which opened 29 years ago. But the “faster-transit” line will use buses, not rail.
Before the Gresham light-rail line opened, Portland’s transit agency, TriMet, operated express buses between downtown Portland and Hollywood, Gateway, Gresham, and other neighborhoods along the rail corridor. All of these were cancelled when the light-rail opened, even though the busses were faster than the trains. This is one reason why Portland transit ridership plummeted during the 1980s.
In proposing a faster-transit line to Gresham, is Metro tacitly admitting that light rail was a mistake? Only indirectly. The bus routes is is proposing won’t be express buses but bus-rapid transit, and as such probably will be a little slower than the light rail, at least between downtown Portland and Gresham. They’ll just be faster than the existing conventional bus service.
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Still, this constitutes a quiet endorsement for buses. A review of the planning documents makes it clear that Metro’s real goal is to densify the corridor. Rail advocates claim that trains stimulate economic development while buses do not, but Metro clearly expects buses to play the same role in generating such redevelopment. Of course, we know that neither buses nor trains generate such development; they merely provide an excuse for cities to subsidize the development.
Metro’s real goal isn’t to increase transit ridership–which has been flat since 2007–but to avoid having to expand Portland’s urban-growth boundary. Under Oregon law, Metro must provide for 20 years worth of housing demand, but it can do so by adding greenfield to the boundary or by upzoning existing neighborhoods to higher densities. Upzoning is controversial, but transit lines give cities an excuse to do it over the objections of neighborhood residents.
No doubt many progressives think that Portland is lucky to have such wise and powerful overseers who are willing to ignore public opinion, declining housing affordability, the impacts of gentrification on low-income families, and increasing traffic congestion in order to save a few acres of Oregon’s abundant farm land from development. The Antiplanner is appalled that anyone would think this is a fair trade off.
“Of course, we know that neither buses nor trains generate such development;”
No, but they do permit development at a particular location. There is a limit to how many cars can be squashed into a road network.
There is also a limit on how many people can be stacked and packed into a area, without overloading the road network. Especially when they do not choose transit, like the planners planned.