 Portland is a weird city, and yes, keep Portland weird as a thing. It's a city that, within North America at least, has a reputation for being quite transit-friendly, and just quite a good urbanist city. The city is famous for its countercultures, its transit-oriented development, pretty nice public spaces, being cycling-friendly, and most of all for me, it's interesting and quite extensive forays into higher-order transit. I've actually spent a lot of time in Portland myself, probably actually more than even Seattle. I grew up in Vancouver, hence the UBC sweater. And so I have some thoughts, both on what the city gets right, and also what it gets wrong. And I think some of these things may come as a surprise if you're used to just hearing about Portland being this transit utopia. So let's dive in. If you like my videos, consider supporting via Patreon or YouTube Memberships, and make sure you like and subscribe. Portland has this real reputation as being this hub, or mecca, for urbanism, public transit, and all things cities. And while I will say I don't think Portland is quite as good as people often make it out to be, I will say it's one of the best cities in North America. Not just for its size or whatever. But at the same time, I think the city has a lot of unmet potential, generally, but also, dare I say, for a world-class public transportation system. The system Portland has today is actually really good in a number of ways. For one, I'd argue Portland has a primary strength that goes above all the others. And that's its very extensive light rail system known as Metropolitan Area Express, or usually just Max. The system has around 100 station stops over nearly 100 kilometers of routes, making one of the larger rapid transit systems in North America by pure numbers. But also really quite good on a per capita basis, given Portland is just around a medium-sized city here in North America. Portland has a total of five different light rail lines that interline quite heavily, but that also do have a decent minimum service standard that I would say is quite good in the United States. I must say too that while I can list a lot of interesting things to do in Portland, I probably can't even scratch the surface. And that's just a testament to the fact that Portland is an interesting city. There's lots of cool stuff there. It's something that's definitely helped by the interesting geography and the tiny downtown blocks that make the core of Portland really walkable and just generally super fun and human-scaled. Now if I can give one overwhelming win to Portland on its public transit network, it's the extensive scale of the rail system. If you're going to Portland for a trip, you can probably get around on Max and just by walking and cycling, no problem. From the airport to downtown to Amse to Union Station to Voodoo Donut to Powell's Books to Pioneer Square and Washington Square Park and some of the more interesting suburbs of the city. You can basically go to most places you'd want to, at least on a weekend trip, on the rail system and I think that's actually really impressive. It's something that reminds me of a bigger city like London or New York where you can just kind of go wherever you want on the subway or the tube. It's just a really powerful thing and having such an extensive rail network means that even if your bus service isn't necessarily up to snuff, which in my opinion Portland isn't necessarily, you can do a lot and so kudos to Portland for the big rail network. That's kind of unique in North America. At the same time, Portland has done a surprising amount with other modes. You can get to the Hilltop Oregon Health Sciences University by the Portland Aerial Tram, which is really cool and one of the more prominent examples of cable-based transportation in North America. You can also get to a lot of downtown adjacent areas and just nice neighborhoods on the Portland Streetcar Network, which is a modern streetcar, many of which aren't great, but the Portland one is actually decent. It has a decent service frequency and it's surprisingly extensive. Though I'm not a huge fan of the vehicles and I do think the stops are a little underwhelming for a modern system. There's also the Portland bike share service, which at least at one point in the past was called Nike Bike Town, which I found quite hilarious, but which is a cool hybrid system that doesn't necessarily have the kind of fixed docks you see in London or New York or Toronto, but has kind of a simple passive docks that you can connect your bike to if you're at a dock, but that also allow you to just lock up your bike anywhere and have this kind of free-flowing system, which is pretty cool. Now the bike share system is also oddly associated with Lyft somehow, so that's weird. Now, Portland has also actually been one of the better North American cities for transit fares, go figure. Well, the fare system might actually be a bit too simple. I think you could manage to have a little more complexity in there to provide some discounts in some places and maybe some higher fares in other places. The system is affordable. $2.50 gets you two and a half hours riding the system, and after you've ridden just twice in one day, literally just spent $5, you're capped and you can ride as much as you want for the rest of the day, which is really great. There's also a monthly cap, so that's generally really good. And all of that's available with a pretty good smart card service called Hop, which is one of the few systems in North America to actually offer a virtual smart card that you can get on your phone. So yeah, fares in Portland are pretty good. I'd also say there are some underappreciated elements to Portland's transit system. Forgetting about the giant bridges and interchanges of the pretty dense urban highway network that I know isn't necessarily very popular in Portland, the system is really quite cost-effective in its construction and design. Max station stops are not barren, they do have lean bars, seats, and canopies, but they're also not these gigantic monoliths that are bigger than they need to be, and I think that cost-effective design is part of how Portland has managed to get so much track for only being a moderately large city. The system is also proof of payment, so that these stations don't need to have fare gates and they can be relatively simple affairs, which definitely also helps. And that's because I say that they're bland or boring. I think the wayfinding and design of the stops in Portland is actually really quite nice, and it's one of the things I appreciate the most when I visit the city. I'll also say that while the transfer hubs aren't necessarily most visually impressive, they're generally pretty good, and since they're generally surface level and relatively basic affairs, they're also not that expensive to construct. On the whole, I think what makes Portland's transit system good is that it's simple and unobtrusive. You can use it and it all makes sense. The places you'd think you'd be able to get on rail, you can get to. The fares are pretty reasonable and easy to pay, and hey, they even have sedum track. Could work, Portland, but there are pitfalls. While I do think Portland has a really solid transportation network, it does feel a bit like the city has been resting on its laurels since it opened the Orange Line and the quite impressive Tilikum Crossing, which is a pretty impressive transit pedestrian and cycling bridge, which allows the max light rail as well as buses and streetcars to all cross the William at River, which goes through the central areas of Portland. You see, while other Pacific Northwest cities like Vancouver and Seattle are doing pretty major transit expansion programs, Portland isn't doing all that much these days, and that feels like a real missed opportunity, because the city has so much potential to be among the best transit systems not just in North America, but maybe in the world. The issue is that, like many North American cities, Portland hasn't been consistently building new projects lately, and the fact that there isn't a new major streetcar or max project going on right now, there are some improvement projects, but no major expansion is disappointing. There is the new division BRT light type scheme, and I do like that, but there's just not enough happening in Portland. Now, that's not for lack of projects that Portland could be building, or improvement it could be making to its network to make it better. Here are some of the issues I see with Portland's current transit system, and some of the ways these issues could be rectified, while also making the system notably better than some of its peers. I've mentioned it in a lot of videos over the past five years, but the Portland max system just does not move very many people compared to, say, the Vancouver SkyTrain. While SkyTrain in Vancouver moves a little over half a million people every single day, pre-COVID, the max only moved a little over 100,000 people every day pre-COVID, and that means that Vancouver moves four to five times as many people on a daily basis on its rail network, which is even more impressive when you realize that Vancouver only has roughly half as many stops as Portland, meaning that the average station in Vancouver probably gets about eight times as many riders as the average max stop in Portland on a daily basis, which is really something that we don't talk about nearly enough. Now, there are a couple reasons for this, but one of the more obvious ones is that the Portland max system is pretty capacity constrained. The first reason for this is that the network, as I mentioned before, is heavily interlined. There are not that many pieces of track, especially in the core areas of the city, that aren't shared by multiple light rail services. And what this means is that frequencies are limited as you go further out into the network, which limits overall capacity and service. There's also the notable steel bridge, which is a double-decker bridge in the core areas of Portland that has four of the five light rail services running over it. The bridge is at capacity and basically limits the number of trains that can go into downtown Portland from the eastern parts of the city. Now, besides this limiting service frequency, because all of the lines together can only saturate a two-track bridge over the Williamette River, you also have the fact that a lot of the network is at grade and has a lot of intersections, interactions with traffic, and just a lot of general weaving through downtown Portland that limits the frequencies you can operate. Individual services on the Vancouver Skytrain frequently operate every three minutes or so, but that just isn't the case in Portland. And that not only limits capacity, but also makes the service less convenient, which means less riders are attracted to it. The center of Portland's capacity issues, as I've kind of alluded to, is the center of Portland, downtown. In downtown Portland, all of the light rail lines come together and share tracks on two on-street corridors, which are split single directional corridors. Not only do they weave around a lot, but there are tons of intersections, lots of potential conflicts with pedestrians, drivers, and cyclists, but there's just a lot of general chaos in downtown Portland that limits frequency and capacity. As much as I like Max, it is definitely not rapid transit in downtown Portland. The system does not feel much faster than the Toronto streetcars despite making a lot less stops, and that isn't great, especially for longer trips from one side of the suburban network to the other, which have to go through the painfully slow sections that travel through downtown Portland. At the same time, while I mentioned before that Portland has these adorable little downtown blocks, it seems that despite its urbanist credentials, it doesn't seem all that interested in doing super blocks to allow for longer trains, and that means that trains are limited to the size of a single downtown block, which means you just get two LRV trains, which are really short, even by North American standards. This is another one of those situations where when you compare to Vancouver, it's kind of funny. People go on and on about how the Canada line in Vancouver has short trains, but Portland's trains across its entire network are only slightly longer, and that limits capacity. Now Portland being the reasonable place that it is, does have a solution to these problems. A tunnel. Always got to love a transit tunnel, right? And as it turns out, the idea of putting a tunnel under downtown Portland for Max is actually incredibly good and very natural. Now the project has been kicked around for some time now, but it is such a perfect one to approve. It shouldn't be that expensive relative to other transit projects being built in North America, and the benefits of it are astronomical. It helps fix a lot of the problems with the Portland light rail network, all in one big go. For one, since you wouldn't be having to deal with the downtown blocks in Portland, you would be able to lengthen trains. Initial plans seem to be to double the length of trains, but I'd say make the station boxes long enough for five LRVs. That would be lots of capacity for the future, especially since it seems like getting a second downtown tunnel built in Portland is something that might take a long time. It's also kind of just a small incremental cost, so yeah, build it for five LRVs, have the capacity for the future. I don't think it's a bad idea, especially given this line doesn't have that many stations on it. Now there are a few other minor changes I would make to the plans. For one, I would try to make Goose Hollow station, which is kind of on the west end of downtown Portland underground. This would be more expensive, but it would allow you to continue to use the traditional Goose Hollow station for services on the surface, which would allow for better connections to Max on the surface and the new tunnel services, which would probably be the red and blue lines. Now you might be wondering what about the rest of the stations in the network. The fortunate thing is that a lot of Portland stations outside of the downtown core are just in the middle of suburban streets or on rail right of ways, so lengthening them isn't a huge problem. And I should also mention that adding that new downtown tunnel in Portland would save a ton of time. You would be cutting like half of the stops, you wouldn't have intersections, and you could hit higher top speeds since you wouldn't be running right next to car traffic and pedestrians in some cases. So it would really help speed things up, not just for getting around downtown Portland, but for people making region-level trips on the metropolitan area express. A project like this would also help by emphasizing the core transfer points in downtown Portland. Places like Pioneer Courthouse Square and Union Station would be elevated in their importance because you would have a lot more service calling there and a lot more connectivity. Better yet, the surface-level Max infrastructure could still be reused, since as I mentioned four services currently use the Steel Bridge, at least one of those services could be rerouted onto the traditional surface-level red and blue line infrastructure, and you could maybe have some additional surface-level downtown only service. All of this would mean you still get the benefits of that surface local service, but with faster underground service for the region-level lines. Now, all of this would go a long way to improving capacity and speed on the network, but I would argue there are a few other places where some smart infrastructure interventions could really help things. Now I mentioned that region-level trips are impeded by slow speeds through downtown, but another one of the issues is just that the blue line in particular is super super long, and in some places it actually has really wide station spacings, in particular between the Gateway Transit Center and the Lloyd Center and kind of out west of Beaverton. In these places, I think it could make a lot of sense to consider quadtracking the line. In both cases, you could have the red line trains operate as a local service with blue line trains operating express, making only major stops and thus speeding up trips quite a bit. And since trains would be bigger, you wouldn't necessarily need to lose any capacity with this change in operating mode. You don't even need to do this all that expensively. It could start with some overtaking tracks at some key stations, and then it could be expanded to more and more quad track as more funds were made available. At the same time, given the long and relatively straight stretches of track, especially in these areas, you could probably try to pursue higher top speeds. Right now, Portland system maxes out at around 55 miles per hour or 90 kilometers per hour, and if you were to push that up to just about 100 kilometers per hour or 60 miles per hour, you could save a lot of time on longer trips, especially with those express services, which I think would be really useful to making max more useful for suburb to suburb trips, alongside some more circumferential bus services and maybe even some circumferential rail services in the longer term. As I mentioned before as well, there are a lot of quality of life improvements that could be made on Portland's network. It was built affordably, but major transit centers and stops should be upgraded so that they just have some nicer amenities that match their importance to the city's transportation network. A good example of this would be looking at the various transit centers, where you often have several max platforms and a number of bus bays all in one location. Redeveloping these centers with high density transit oriented development, and when I say that I mean proper towers, not just five over ones or whatever, these are major transit hubs. Redeveloping these locations could mean again adding residential and office space in high density development, as well as providing weather protected connections between buses and trains, alongside transit adjacent amenities like bike parquets that we've seen in places like Vancouver, really nice, and things like shops, which you don't really see in Portland's transit network right now because it's mostly just made up of street level stops. I'm not saying that every stop on the Portland max system needs to be turned into a train station, but having some of the more major interchange points have covered platforms and adjacent high density towers could really elevate the experience of using max and just make the city feel more like a big city. At the same time, as speeds and frequencies are increased, which they inevitably should be in the future, I think taking a Melbourne style approach and doing some grade separations, especially where you have those higher speeds and frequencies would make a lot of sense. And Melbourne has really shown the way to do this with nice public spaces and public realm improvements, all while improving the rail infrastructure. Now with improvements to infrastructure and stations, you'd probably also want nicer trains, and I think this is one place where Portland could really level up with its next order of vehicles. Kind of strangely, like Toronto's Line 5, right now Portland has small LRVs that have one cab, meaning they always need to be paired up, and I think it would make a lot of sense for Portland to just start ordering full-length, 50-ish meter light rail vehicles that are the same length as two coupled vehicles today. Trains such as the ones being used in Edmonton are a perfect example of what this could look like, and at the same time, they could have enhanced interiors with better digital wayfinding, again something that Edmonton is actually getting. The other nice thing is that this would add capacity and give Portland fully walk-through trains, a surprising thing that it doesn't have yet. It would also be a natural train standard to move to, since the longer trains operating on the blue and red line could then couple two of these longer trains together to form their new train sets. Now as I mentioned, the Hopcard is a good service, but there are some odd holes in it. For one, you can't use it for the Portland Aerial Tram, which you should be able to, and the system doesn't currently have open payment, which seems like a big oversight that would make it a pretty much perfect fare system if it was implemented. Another issue with Portland's transit network that I personally kind of get hung up with is the lack of good night service. Toronto has a lot of transit problems, but one thing I'm blessed with here, and I wrote an article about it on Substack that you can check out in the description, is really good night service, and I think Portland has a great opportunity to have more of it. One thing Portland could really lead with is trying to operate some rail services overnight. The network is already quite dense and has a lot of high quality infrastructure for redundancy and the like, and so say operating one max train on each line every hour overnight, even if only on weekends, would be a really cool move to see Portland make, and would honestly make it a leader in North America. I just think not having a regular night service, especially on rapid transit corridors, is a big barrier to people going car free for example, and so I don't think there's a good reason for it not to exist. Now I'm going to end the video off with a few reaches. These are things I don't necessarily think are super likely to happen, but that if they did would be really great changes for the city. For one, the west train is not great. The west train right now only carries a couple hundred people per day, and that's probably because it only operates at peak hours and with small trains. If you're going to have a system like that, operate it all day, even if it can only be half hourly or even hourly, just to provide people some options so that if they get off work early, or if they want to work from home for half the day in this new world we're living in, that's actually an option with the west train. I also think just getting some modern nicer trains, maybe buying Toronto's up express trains that we probably won't need for very long, or buying some Stadler flirts that can do what text rail has, would go a long way to making the trains just feel nicer. At the same time talking about modes that aren't max, I think the Williamette River is a really big missed opportunity for some water-based transit. Now I'm not just saying this to fill my quota of mentioning that ferries exist, but having something like the Thames Clipper, a fast ferry service along the river, could actually be super useful, even if it's only say every half an hour or so. You could have boats starting as far south as Milwaukee, serving areas like South Portland, the South Waterfront, Omsie, maybe serving downtown somewhere near the Morrison Bridge, and then going further north to serve places like the Rose Quarter and the University of Portland. The Williamette River is a really good opportunity to have an express, fast north-south service in the city, and looking into it seems like a good idea, especially because it could probably be implemented pretty affordably, since you just need to build some piers and buy some boats. Now speaking of longer distance fast services, the lack of service to Vancouver, Washington is really bad. I know that it isn't Portland's fault and that Vancouver, Washington has been incredibly frustrating in resisting an extension of Portland's light rail system into it, but that issue needs to get solved, because it doesn't just hurt Vancouver, Washington, it also hurts Portland, which is right next to it. One potential solution to this that could be broader than just simply serving Vancouver, Washington, would be implementing a commuter rail system for the greater Portland area. I'm talking about a system that would go to places to the north like Vancouver, but also to places like Salem and Oregon City. You don't have to necessarily start by operating a ton of trains every day. You could do something like go transit or like the Sounder train in Seattle, with a few morning peak trains and a few evening peak trains, and maybe a train or two in the middle of the day to provide some filler service for people working from home or something like that. I think you could spin up a service like that pretty affordably, given that there's a lot of this commuter rail rolling stock bouncing around North America all the time, and you could also just simply reuse a lot of the Amtrak Cascades infrastructure that already exists, but only gets used a couple times a day. Suffice to say, there's a lot for Portland to work on, but it already does have a pretty solid transit network, but it could have one of the best systems in North America if it started replicating some of the bold policies of the past, like establishing max in the modern era. And that could take it from good to excellent. Thanks for watching.