Portland’s streetcar is slow and expensive, ridership is stagnant, and fare recovery is negligible. So obviously the solution is to extend the streetcar line. At least, that’s what Portland’s Bureau of Transportation proposes.
Streetcar ridership peaked in 2016 at 4.86 million trips per year. In 2018 they had fallen slightly to 4.79 million. Although the fare is nominally $2, actual revenues amount to just 17 cents per trip. Of course, those revenues don’t come close to covering costs, which average $3.50 per rider. The city spends $39 per streetcar revenue mile running it, where TriMet buses cost only $12.50 per mile.
Despite these flaws, the report proudly announces that the city has received a $1 million grant from the Federal Transit Administration to study the possibility of extending the streetcar a little over a mile to Montgomery Park, which is not a park but a former Montgomery Wards warehouse. The terminus would be near Forest Park, which is a 5,100-acre park with hiking trails in Portland’s West Hills.
The city claims the streetcar “ensures equity” because some people who ride it don’t have high incomes (and why wouldn’t they since no one seems to collect fares?). But the neighborhoods it serves are mainly high-income areas. Oregon’s median family income in 2016 was about $74,000, and Portland’s was about $86,000. But median incomes in the north end of the existing streetcar line (zip code 97209) were more than $98,000, while at the south end of the line (zip code 97239) they were nearly $137,000. Worse, median incomes in the neighborhood where the extension is planned (97210) were nearly $156,000.
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The city also claims the streetcar “catalyzes development” and one goal of building the streetcar to Montgomery Park is to rebuild an old industrial area. But, as the Antiplanner has explained before, new development took place along the streetcar line only where it was subsidized in one of the city’s urban-renewal districts. TIF subsidies alone in these districts total to almost $1 billion (see page 20; includes Central Eastside, Downtown Waterfront, North Macadam, River, and South Park Blocks districts). Meanwhile, almost no new development took place in the one neighborhood the streetcar served outside of the urban-renewal districts.
Besides, Northwest Portland hardly needs any government incentives for new development. It has the highest population densities in Oregon, some of the highest incomes, and is prized by the people who want to “Keep Portland Weird.” Despite the high median incomes in zip code 97210, some of the areas there have affordable housing occupied by many young people. The revitalization the city would promote gentrification of those neighborhoods and force people out — hardly the image of “equity” the city claims to promote.
The city’s latest report on the city’s assets indicate that only about a third of the streets and bridges are in “good or very good” condition, while more than half of local streets and nearly half of arterials are in “poor or very poor” condition. Instead of building a streetcar, the city should repave the streets and let developers rebuild the Northwest industrial area at their own expense.
Transit is secretly a gentrification tool. Why else put politicians in charge of it.
According to some the key to “success” would be to build a “modern streetcar”.