This Week in the Mercury
Wednesday, August 12, 2009
Transportation TriMet Axes Free Bus Service from Fareless Square
Posted by Sarah Mirk on Wed, Aug 12, 2009 at 2:56 PM
After months of debate and vocal protests from a loose transit riders' union, the TriMet board this morning voted 6-1 to eliminate buses from Fareless Square.
“When Fareless Square was started some 34 years ago, it was a bus-only system. We now have four MAX lines that will serve this area once mall service begins,” says Mary Fetsch, TriMet’s spokesperson.
While eliminating free bus service from downtown saves only $800,000, TriMet expects to see improvements in bus efficiency and a reduction in bus fare-related evasion. TriMet is counting on this projected savings to help close its $3.5 million budget gap.
At last month’s Board of Directors' hearing, nearly 20 people showed up to voice their opinions on TriMet’s Fareless Square proposal. “This vote demonstrates that the TriMet board is not interested in public opinion,” says JL Dunn, a rider's union member. “This is why we support having a democratically elected board.”
- Riders union members protesting Fareless Square cuts in July.
We're waiting for a call back from Lynn Lehrbach, a teamsters rep and the one dissenting vote on the TriMet board, but the WW blog quotes him explaining: “I expected this outcome, we talked about it, but I feel it is important to keep Fareless Square intact. We can afford to have a Fareless Square.”
At the root of this change is the big problem with how TriMet is funded—a significant portion of their budget comes via payroll tax. That means while millions of dollars are still pouring into sexy transportation projects (like the streetcar), TriMet has to slash budgets when unemployment soars.
I asked East Portland Representative and transportation committee co-chair Nick Kahl if he thinks there is a better way to fund TriMet. Probably not on a state level, he explained, because putting more transportation dollars into public transit would mean changing the way the Highway Trust Fund spends its money. "It’s very unlikely that a wholesale revision of the highway trust," says Kahl. "Voters of Oregon have had a half dozen opportunities to bust the trust fund and use the dollars there to pay for other things and they haven’t. Oregonians seem to feel pretty strongly that their gas tax dollars should go to fixing roads and that’s it."
Other transit experts are ambivalent about the change. Chris Smith, of Portland Transport, thinks the issue of eliminating free bus service has been blown out of proportion. “What we want to look at is mobility in the central city,” he says. “The change is relatively small.”
Get your free rides in now—the fareless bus service ends as of January 2010.
— Post co-written with Rachael Marcus.
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Capital dollars, while very important, tend to come from other funding sources and tend to have strings attached. The new Eastside Loop streetcar project is funded in large part by federal dollars which _cannot_ go toward operations, and by local improvement district (LID) paid for by property owners, urban renewal money, etc.
The same sorts of funding issues affect MAX lines.
These capital projects usually don't move forward until all the funding plans can be lined up in advance (save for overruns, aka, the Aerial Tram).
I don't think most people realize that TriMet goes through more operating dollars in a year or two than the 30-year cost of a new MAX line or streetcar system.
Because operating revenues/expenditures are ongoing and the amount is dependant on economic conditions, they are eventually hit by these economic fluctuations.
Because so many people depend on transit, especially during lean economic times, it may be useful for TriMet to look at creating some kind of operational buffer fund, similar to the "rainy day fund" for schools.
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Why is anyone boo-hooing over this one?
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Fareless square FOR BUSES is being killed, not the buses from the square. holy fuck!
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I honestly can't imagine there's a huge demographic of able bodied people out there who takes the bus exclusively inside downtown and only goes from areas that aren't serviced by streetcar or Max to other areas that aren't serviced by streetcar or Max and also can't be bothered to walk or bike.
For the elderly and those with limited mobility who rely on the bus, I find it hard to believe there are many who don't already have a $25 bus pass, or who are unable to spend $25 a month on transportation.
And for the people who somehow do fit that description, it seems like aid could be more efficiently rendered than an eight hundred thousand dollar program that most people use as an incidental convenience.
Just sayin.
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In your particular case, would the Green Line (or Yellow Line, slated to switch to the mall at the end of this month) not work for you? Those would still be fareless, and run the entire length of the mall.
I think the people most impacted by this, as has been pointed out by others in the past few months, will be those needing to make east-west trips, as the only fareless east-west route will be MAX on Morrison/Yamhill.
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