TriMet’s Cuts Aren’t Dependent on the Special Session

When you read headlines like OPB’s TriMet announces sweeping cuts to services starting in November don’t assume that’s part of some public negotiation for the pending special session. Trimet plans to implement those cuts regardless of what the legislature does.

One key cut addresses a structural funding problem that the Cascade Policy Institute has warned about for decades. TriMet’s Green Line, which connects light rail from Portland State University to Clackamas Town Center, is being cut in half. Instead, the slow train will stop at Gateway. Passengers will have to get off at this crime-infested stop, where Fred Meyer is forced to close a store, and wait for a passing Blue Line from Gresham or Red Line from the airport. Each time, the federal government generously funded a new MAX line, TriMet didn’t have to worry about buying these expensive trains, but as Cascade has been pointing out for a long time, TriMet has not had a financial plan to replace them when they reach the end of their useful life.

That future is here. One of the original Gresham trains is being retired to a museum. It’s not being replaced. The most greedy version of HB 2025 didn’t raise enough money to fund the capital cost necessary to replace the 1980’s cohort of trains. So, TriMet’s service strategy for the past 40 years is a bigger driver of its financial woes than a dip in ridership. That’s a detail you probably won’t read over at OPB, which faces its own federal funding crisis.

Eric Shierman lives in Salem and is the author of We were winning when I was there.