Portland Transit | TriMet/Mass Transit News

[dizflip]

Originally Posted by aquaticko

The confusing thing for me viz a vis MAX ridership is that the peak of ridership was, at this point, years ago: 2016 (per a graph from TriMet posted on the Wikipedia page), at just over 40 million. Prior to measure 110, prior to COVID, prior to work-from-home, etc., the system was annually down over a million riders from its peak. What happened to cause that change?

I grant that frequency's not great, but the idea of built a rail transit system is to spur development around stations, which has mostly not happened. Don't bother mentioning things like Orenco; it's almost like in terms of its influence on Portland urban structure, it may as well not exist. It's just kind of a joke to say "MAX was just a favor for developers", because if it was, it clearly didn't work. The way this is all supposed to work--or at least does in places with good transit ridership--is that land values increase around transit nodes; cities reap tax windfalls; taxes go to running/maintaining/improving/expanding transit services; land values around transit nodes continues to increase, etc., etc.

As far as I can tell, Portland never had a particularly strong urban structure; it was (and is) highly decentralized in a way similar to places like LA and other younger, car-centric cities that developed mostly in the latter half of the 20th century, which show similarly poor transit usage.

So...even if it was a gift to developers, why didn't they take the bait?

Regarding your so-called "gift to developers", you might be confusing the MAX with the Portland Streetcar.

Also, I maintain that Wikipedia article, and you'll be disappointed to know that the MAX's peak was actually much earlier: 42,193,180 in 2012 (Source)