A Snapshot of Transit's Impacts in Portland

 Issues with TriMet Transportation in Portland

"Total MAX ridership peaked a decade ago in 2012 at 35 million originating rides, declining 12 percent to just below 31 million in 2019 before the pandemic. The addition of two new light rail lines failed to stimulate ridership. TriMet officials appear to be on track to be short of their optimistic projections by over 50,000 passengers for just two of those lines." - John Ley on TriMet’s Broken Promises on Getting People to Use Transit. 

U.S. mass transit seems inadequate. Our mass transit systems are centered in cities, but nearly three times as many people live in the suburbs in our most prominent metropolitan areas. Suburbs are not dense enough or designed for walking; they are built for cars. Newer American cities have primarily been built like suburbs, and many older cities were retrofitted to accommodate cars in trying to compete with the suburbs. This makes it even harder for their transit systems to have enough ridership. So, residents tend to demand policies that carter to their needs as drivers, so we end up perpetuating a lack of public transit that is not only terrible for emissions and air quality but also does not work for low-income households that can not afford the cost of buying a car and having insurance and gas. 

Despite transit systems seeming popular, ridership is at its highest point since the early 1950s, but still, only five percent of the population uses public transit to commute to work. However, that does not mean there are not cities doing a lot to do transit work: Chicago, Denver, Minneapolis, and even Los Angeles, the most famously car-obsessed city in the country — all have new transit projects underway. 

So how can we make the transit systems better? America spends a lot of money building stuff for cars, and most of our national support for mass transit comes out of the Highway Trust Fund. Only about 15 percent of the trust goes to mass transit. One way to fix this would be by raising the gas tax. Both Democrats and Republicans have tried to do this. However, it is difficult because some people with a lot of corporate money do their best to block it every time a gas tax comes up. As a collective group, we must show up and vote and do much research to understand what is going on. The federal money goes to state and local governments, so local people are the people who ask for it and decide how it gets spent. All in all, you have acquired to use public transit more often. You will not know how it could be better until you know how it works.

References:

Ley, John. “TriMet’s Broken Promises on Getting People to Use Transit.” ClarkCountyToday.Com, 13 Apr. 2022, www.clarkcountytoday.com/news/trimets-broken-promises-on-getting-people-to-use-transit

Davis, Jeff. “Highway Trust Fund 101.” Eno Center of Transporation, www.enotrans.org/article/highway-trust-fund-101

Butler, Zach. “These Are the 12 Most Car Crazy Cities In America.” The Fast Lane Car, 26 Apr. 2019, https://tflcar.com/2019/04/these-are-the-12-most-car-crazy-cities-in-america/

Written by Patrick Acevedo