More Portland Follies

After a mere 14 years of planning, Portland’s “westside express” commuter-rail line is about to start operating. As the Antiplanner previously noted, however, this 14.7-mile line really doesn’t go anywhere that anyone wants to go, so TriMet predicts a whopping 2,600 riders a day (i.e., 1,300 round trips). It may end up being more, but the numbers will be insignificant either way.

Flickr photo by Hardlinejoe.

TriMet plans to run 32 round trips a day, which means each trip will carry an average of 40 passengers. For that, they have railcars with 80 seats, and they are ready to run them in pairs. Too bad TriMet couldn’t have found a bus or two capable of carrying 40 passengers.

There are several reasons why TriMet wanted a commuter train to nowhere. Most important, the two freeways in the Wilsonville-to-Beaverton corridor, SR 217 and I-5, are probably the most congested roads in the Portland suburbs. The local congressman, David Wu, actually earmarked some federal money to add new capacity, but Metro, Portland’s planning czar, turned it down. Running commuter rail makes it look like they are doing something to relieve congestion and provides an excuse to zone some more neighborhoods for high-density transit-oriented developments.

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As a local county commissioner put it, the final cost was “comparable to building a new highway.” At a cost of $5 million per lane mile, which is reasonable for suburban freeways, Oregon could have built two lane miles of highway for every mile of commuter-rail line that it got.

According to the Federal Highway Administration, the typical Portland-area freeway lane carries 9,641 vehicles per day — and these roads above typical. So even if those vehicles only hold one person each, two new highway lanes could have moved about eight times as many people as the rail line will, which would do far more to relieve congestion.

But hey, the commuter train is going to have free Wi-Fi, not to mention the “interactive public art” at each of the stops. I guess that makes it all worth it.

One of the stops on the new line is Washington Square (actually the stop is about a quarter-mile away), one of Portland’s largest shopping malls. A decade ago, Metro wrote one of its wonderful plans to turn Washington Square into a “compact residential community.” Needless to say, absolutely nothing has happened, mainly for the lack of about $200 million for “infrastructure,” meaning utopian projects like a people mover.

Maybe now that the commuter-rail train is going, the 1,300 people who ride roundtrip on it every day will stimulate new development. Yeah, right.