The Portland Bureau of Transportation (PBOT) led a planning process in coordination with TriMet to develop the Enhanced Transit Corridors Plan. This plan will help identify where transit priority, streamlining, and access treatments could be most beneficial on the planned TriMet Frequent Service network within the City of Portland. Such improvements can help make transit more attractive and reliable for people to get to work, school, and to meet their daily needs, especially for people who depend upon transit.
Implementation Efforts
City Council held a Public Hearing on June 20, 2018 to:
- Adopt the Enhanced Transit Corridors Plan and Executive Summary
- Endorse a list of Enhanced Transit candidate project locations for submittal to the Metro Regional Enhanced Transit Concept Pilot Program to help advance project development
Characteristics of Enhanced Transit…
- Increased capacity, reliability and transit travel speed
- Moderate capital and operational investments
- Context sensitive
- Deployed relatively quickly
- Can include buses and streetcar
ETC Plan Goals:
- Increase transit ridership and improve the experience for current riders.
- Support planned growth in centers and along corridors consistent with the City’s 2035 Comprehensive Plan.
- Define and identify “Enhanced Transit Corridors” in Portland.
- Establish clear and objective operational performance measures and thresholds to define what success looks like for the most heavily used Frequent Service lines.
- Guide the prioritization of capital and operational investments in Enhanced Transit Corridors.
Why this plan:
We need to do more to support transit in Portland.
- Buses are a “work horse.” Some bus lines carry as many riders as MAX and Streetcar lines.
- Data shows that buses are getting stuck in traffic and trips take longer.
- New growth is happening in areas in need of better transit service and access.
- However, ridership is not growing adequately to support growth and the City’s policy goals.
- We have limited sources of revenue. We need to identify priorities on where to start.
Enhanced Transit Toolbox:
As a part of the of the Enhanced Transit Plan, our consultant team developed an Enhanced Transit Toolbox. This Toolbox is a collection of potential capital and operational treatments that can be applied to improve transit performance or create safer, more predictable interactions with other travel modes.