Providing a better service will generate more ridership, if less people drive, then there will be reduced demand for expanding roads. The solution is not to keep on investing in car infrastructure, it’s to provide a more sustainable and healthy future. This isn’t the 1960s, so stop thinking like it.

Nico — if you look at historical MAX ridership, it peaked over a decade ago. Ridership was in decline before the pandemic lockdowns. It fell off a cliff during the pandemic, and is only now beginning to recover. But it is only about half or perhaps 60 percent of pre pandemic levels.

Here is a MAX graphic.

Electric cars also destroy the environment through resource mining, manufacturing processes and ultimately going to the landfill in mass droves. The pollution they cause is simply unnecessary as is the amount of urban space squandered on parking and other paved over autocentric wastes. MORE VEHICLES ON THE ROAD MEANS MORE AVOIDABLE DEATHS WILL CONTINUE TO CONSTANTLY OCCUR!They also perpetuate redlining, urban sprawl, the food deserts that come from that invariably, along with cities that are not navigable as a pedestrian or bicyclist and are, in fact, inhospitable to humanity along with being lethally horrendous towards animals.They add to traffic congestion. Commodification of societal needs and normalization of trying to substitute rampant consumerism where we need standardized, regulated and uniform public utilities doesn’t work.

Putting the financial burden of transportation inefficiently and directly on the individual citizen is simply not wise or fair and hasn’t been the norm for even 80 years. We need to invest in commuter rail that’s properly implemented as it typically is overseas. A commuter rail system is an engineering marvel while buses are just buses. The most reliable predictor of a neighborhood being impoverished is if it has no commuter rail connection. The American people are apathetic through decades of disenfranchisement and a lot of that marginalization (eg Robert Moses’s racist urban renewal) is through divestment of public infrastructure, utilities and programs to help the American people. We can’t undo the social inequities inflicted upon and retained by redlining until we transcend the highway robbery carcentric built habitat that physically structurally reinforces them. We’re past the point of car dominated transportation being anything better than a tragic hindrance or an outright travesty. Public works materially improving life for the taxpaying citizenry will bolster civic pride. 

Transcontinental High Speed Rail should integrate seamlessly with commuter rail networks so it can evenly function as one cohesive system and this will convert flyover country (CONUS flights should be virtually eliminated) back into a thriving heartland by functioning as an artery of commute and commerce which will reduce clustering on the coasts. Similarly, wholly integrated circuits of commuter rail blended with interurban routes, light rail lines, street car grids, subways, and even trolleys along with electric ferries functioning together as a comprehensive, coherent series of interwoven systems would prevent people from having to live on top of each other in city centers in order to have quick access to urban cores and downtown areas so this would stimulate our local economies and prevent gentrification from demolishing  cherished heirlooms of our historicity, destroying our classic neighborhoods, shredding the fabric of our communities and toppling our civic landmarks and architectural heirlooms along with other social capital such as venerable culture generating venues. We lost so many marvelous structures for nothing more than mere surface lots as our city was hollowed out on the heels of white flight to the lily white, poorly planned suburbs. Whole swaths of communities were obliterated in a racist/classist attack on the people of Portland and we lost entire neighborhoods along with cultural centers such as the Jazz District, our Italian and Jewish neighborhoods as well as other minorities who weren’t assisted with any sort of fair, decent assistance to relocate. The absolute annihilation of our city still adversely hinders us collectively to this hamstrung day, and the groups targeted, intensely even if so many folks don’t know enough to connect the dots of cause and effect.

Numerous studies show that built environments of homogenously bleak and bland duplitecture dreck that profiteering developers push on us for their privatized gains to our public loss for the riches of themselves and corporate slumlords not only cause homelessness from being financially inaccessible to most Americans, but also cause depression from creating such a devastatingly sterile, cold, unloving urban habitat that’s too congested and overcrowded to work properly as a correctly engineered built environment. Our roadways are overcrowded and no amount of widening them and adding lanes will do anything to help it because it just leads to induced demand that inevitably grinds to a halt at snags and bottlenecks down the road. Shouldn’t American cities be thriving centers of culture and character rather than austere and chintzy morasses of mediocrity? 

I believe that we can design the cities of our nation to reflect a future that embraces humanity and that we also must for America to have any sort of a bright future ahead of it. Right now we are mired in the destruction of our cities from the inward attacking neocolonial oppressors who weaponize their clout of wealth against the nation for their own off-shore un-American gains of privileged, parasitic, private profits. This greed fueled anti-social exploitation is present day feudalism driving us into another gilded age. Tons of new petrochemical building  “luxury living” housing units remain empty serving only as financial assets in investment portfolios of hedge fund, “private equity” and permanent capital firm cretins sheltering dubiously acquired wealth instead of as direly needed shelter for humans. We deserve a landscape we can be proud of and country should come first before corporate looting and exploitation. Legacies are important and live on forever. 

With space opened up in our cities we could rebuild beloved structures gone from economic and environmental disaster utilizing new technologies such as hempcrete and 3-D printing. We could create vertical agriculture, green pocket areas, etc. on spots currently now just serving as paved over squares and nothing more. We can extend democracy into offering the taxpayer residents democratic say in what their city consists of, how it looks and how it operates promoting civic engagement and participation. If you don’t like that then stay in Camas and mind your own business John instead of disingenuously using cherry-picked and otherwise misrepresented stats while pretending you’re any sort of expert and without ulterior motives.

I grew up in the SF Bay Area and part of my time there I commuted via BART from a suburban station to San Francisco. BART is a heavy rail system. It operates 10 car trains at peak times. These trains are capable of carrying 1500 passengers (or more depending on how crowded the cars get) at one time. Tri-Met trains appear to be capable of carrying a maximum of 200+ passengers per train. “Light” rail is slightly cheaper to build since station platforms are shorter. But all the other costs (rail, electrical, switches, etc.) are identical between “Light” and “Heavy” rail transit systems.

Rail transit systems are inflexible. If a train has a mechanical problem or if some other problem blocks the line, then the system is (partially) blocked. Everyone is late. (Once on BART, I was on a following train when a medical emergency required evacuation of a passenger from the station at the first stop in San Francisco. A dozen following trains were “trapped” in the Bay Tube (under water) and at stations in the East Bay waiting some 35 minutes while Medics evacuated the disabled passenger.) Unfortunately, various “glitches” caused smaller delays, making “schedules” a rather annoying joke. I haven’t ridden any Tri-Met trains, but from news reports, it seems that similar problems regularly delay trains.

Busses, however, can generally easily pass a disabled bus or detour a few blocks around a disruption on the streets. I commuted via bus parallel to the BART routes for years before and during BART construction. My busses were rarely late except once or twice when some serious disruption occurred on the Bay Bridge. Even then, late busses rarely were more than just a few minutes behind schedule. Once BART was built, workers would arrive significantly late at least once a week.

Vancouver and Clark County don’t need Tri-Met. The line that will connect to the IBR is operated at a very slow speed over city streets (stoping at signals, etc.) while express busses could go right to a central Tri-Met station near downtown, allowing transfer to Tri-Met or other local bus lines. Of course, point to point (Uber, Lyft) transit is likely to become more popular over time. Busses and car services do not require the expensive infrastructure as a rail system requires. (A dedicated bridge lane during commute hours for busses and autos with 3 or more passengers would be sufficient.)

PGE burns coal to produce electricity. Not really green energy.

How is the bus “greener” than the MAX, when the MAX is powered by 100% renewable energy. Also the MAX according Trimet’s statistics show that it gained ridership for both the MAX and the bus in 2023 when compared to 2022.

Alex —

MAX light rail is not “green”. It carries fewer and fewer passengers each year.

TriMet buses are “greener” than light rail. However given the reality that most of the buses are running around with only a handful of passengers, the 49 passenger buses with 8-10 passengers is not “green”. You could a hotel-style van that carries 15-20 people on most TriMet and C-Tran routes and carry current passengers, except in the morning & evening rush hours. That would be even “greener”.