Light rail costs as much to build as “heavy rail” with limited savings due to shorter train platforms. Light rail simply means “low volume” Compare the capacity of Tri-met 2-articulated car trains vs. the 10 car (maximum) trains on “heavy rail” BART. (BART is also 100% restricted right-of-way that give it a significant operational advantage over the Tri-met with its large amount of street-level track. The Yellow line’s 15mph average speed (that would serve the IBR) is one sign of the inefficiency and thus unattractiveness of Tri-Met. (This says nothing about the orders of magnitude construction cost differences.)

Bus Rapid Transit (as being used in Clark County) makes sense to be extended across the IBR into Portland. Either a central terminal (like the San Francisco “Trans-Bay Terminal”) or looping routes past the highest frequency destination(s)–allowing convenient transfer to Tri-met service would create fast and flexible schedules and routes.

Having grown up in BART territory, I observed the failure of the system to grow with the economic and business changes over the years. Serving various suburban communities to “feed” riders to the central downtown proved a disaster when high taxes and high office costs in the central city caused companies to “rethink” their downtown central-city locations. HQ companies moved “clerical and other support staff” out of the central city into satellite offices in the suburbs. For a variety of reasons (importantly, cheap vacant land suitable for office park development) caused new jobs to be built in areas where BART did not serve — and the cost of building new rail lines was not financially viable (though some extensions of existing corridors has occurred over the years). Over time, the potential riders used other means to reach their worksites since the fixed infrastructure of the rail system simply didn’t (and couldn’t without tremendous expense) serve the areas where the jobs were located.

Bus Rapid Transit offers the flexibility of routes, schedules, and “unexpected” growth patterns that rail transit systems simply cannot match. Bus Rapid Transit can operate over dedicated right-of-way, shared streets (perhaps with dedicated lanes), or simply over streets shared with all other traffic– and at a lower overall cost.

Frankly, rail transit is at its best when very high volumes of passengers are moving over the system (there are perhaps 5 U.S. cities where this makes economic sense — and Portland isn’t one of them). Light rail (Tri-met) is a half-measure (as it can’t really handle truly high volume passenger traffic) that is expensive and inflexible. It’s easy enough to add more busses (every 5 minutes instead of every 15 minutes) to a bus rapid transit system. Increasing the capacity of a rail system would require rebuilding stations to handle longer trains — and a far, far higher cost. Note: trains could schedule on 3 minute (or less) spacing — but that occurs where the most trains “bottleneck” (e.g. where all trains share facilities at some point — on BART that is the trans-bay tube, so suburban trains (on multiple “spokes”) run every 15-20 minutes since they ALL have to go through the tube at the same time…)

When the inevitable “breakdowns” occur, a rail system is blocked and trains stand and wait (a “bus bridge” can be established with great inefficiency of passenger movement). A Bus Rapid Transit vehicle simply uses another lane or detours over other streets when a service interruption occurs.

 Clark County, WA voters rejected light rail on the proposed CRC I-5 Bridge at the ballot box in 2012, and in 2013, voters insisted on a vote prior to extending Portland light rail to Clark County.
What has changed? Transit ridership is down significantly in WA and OR since 1999, costs of building and operating light rail higher continue to escalate.

What’s changed? C-TRAN Launches Microtransit Service Across Clark County, WA 2022
C-TRAN has launched The Current, a mobility on-demand service. With The Current, customers can request shared point-to-point rides in five zones across Clark County: Washington State University (WSU) Vancouver/Salmon Creek, Rose Village, Camas/Washougal, the Port of Vancouver, and Ridgefield/La Center. Customers can book rides in real-time using an app, online portal, or phone. A standard fare to use The Current is $1

Back in 2011, the rosy predictions of dramatic increases in transit ridership were the basis for recommending light rail. However, those predictions did NOT come true, and the 2022 transit ridership rosy predictions for future years are again, unrealistic.

Public investment should be based on true need, and met economically. With only about 1.7% of trips across the bridge on transit this demand and future years can realistically be met by more flexible and less costly bus/van service that runs in a lane shared with freight and other traffic or Bus on Shoulder lane. Vehicle size and routes are more flexible with bus/van service.

Cost was a factor in 2007, 2011, and still is in 2022. The light rail cartel wants the $, and is not concerned about the costs to the public, or high tolls. After all, they stand to gain tremendously, whether their outlandish claims about transit use skyrocketing over the next 10-30 years are realized or not.