TriMet Wants Another Tax Increase

Portland’s transit agency, TriMet, “knows the key to increasing ridership is offering more frequent bus service.” But, guess what, the agency is devoting all of its resources to building rail lines that hardly anyone will ride. So the only way it will actually be able to increase ridership is to get a tax increase.

Portlanders voted against expanding the convention center (the twin glass towers), but the city expanded it anyway and now is mostly empty. Portlanders voted against expanding the light-rail system, but TriMet expanded it anyway, and now it says it doesn’t have enough money to improve bus service. (I think the high rise visible between the twin glass towers was also subsidized — JK will know for sure.)
Flickr photo by ahockley.

TriMet is funded out of an “employee tax” (it’s really an income tax, but it doesn’t appear on people’s paychecks as a payroll deduction, so most people other than employers aren’t aware of it) that is scheduled to increase over the next decade.

TriMet also gets property taxes to help pay for the west side light-rail line. But voters rejected a property tax to pay for a line north to Vancouver and south to Oregon City. So the city is using urban-renewal districts and limited-improvement districts to pay for that line.

But all of those taxes are not enough. TriMet knows it can get huge increases in ridership for a tiny fraction of the cost of building a rail line simply by increasing bus frequencies from, say, twice per hour to four times per hour. While the capital costs of such bus-line improvements are negligible, TriMet doesn’t have the funds to operate more frequent buses.

Where is TriMet’s money going?

• A commuter rail line between the suburbs of Wilsonville and Beaverton. Who wants to go between Wilsonville and Beaverton? Hardly anyone, but TriMet hopes Wilsonville commuters (who have an independent bus service created when Wilsonville seceded from TriMet) will transfer to the light-rail line to Hillsboro or Portland. A few will, but not many compared to the number of drivers.
• A light-rail line from Gateway to Clackamas Town Center, which is not even served by any bus lines today. Why build a light-rail line there? Because the route has cheap right-of-way along a freeway and is located astride some urban-renewal districts, ripe for tax-increment financing of rail construction.
• The Portland streetcar, half of whose operating cost is paid by TriMet even though it generates almost no fares (most of the route is in a free-fare zone and the part that is not is on an honor system). People may ride it, but the main reason for the streetcar is to give the city of Portland an excuse to give hundreds of millions of dollars in subsidies to local developers.

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Money sink.
Flickr photo by NeiTech.

TriMet wants voters to supplement its existing revenues with a gas tax, motor vehicle registration fee, property tax, or developer impact fee. Ironically, one of the reasons used to justify rail transit is that voters will supposedly support sleek, speedy trains but not clunky old buses. Now that Portland voters have shown they no longer support trains, TriMet is hoping people will buy into the bus.

I don’t think it is likely. Portland voters are too angry about aerial trams and other real-estate scams. Too many of them see light rail and streetcars, and the real-estate developments that take place next to them, as diverting resources away from fire, police, and other essential services. At least some voters will see right through the “you won’t support rail, so we’ll spend bus money on rail and ask you to support buses” rouse. Others just won’t support a tax increase.

How much longer before sanity returns to Portland and TriMet and other agencies start spending money effectively instead of on rail/real-estate scams?