The city auditor's office popped the Portland Bureau of Transportation with a stinging right-hand jab back in April, releasing a report that questioned PBOT's management of, and spending on, the Portland Streetcar. This morning, the auditor's office finally followed that bracing right with a solid left hook.

In its long-promised followup to its first streetcar audit, the auditor's office's found PBOT has been overstating or falling short on some of the bedrock performance measures of the city's expanding streetcar system—namely that streetcars arrive late more often than the city says, that streetcars in some cases run almost half as frequently as the city demands, and that ridership is slightly lower than what the city says.

The audit says PBOT was "unaware" of its responsibility to report ridership updates to the city council starting after 2004—part of a promise that officials would increase streetcar ridership in exchange for $300,000 in parking revenues that could fund other transportation needs. (Overall, the streetcar costs PBOT $4 million a year, about 5 percent of its budget.)

The audit also takes aim at the streetcar as an engine for economic development, arguing hardly any "causal" data has been produced linking the streetcar with growth that wouldn't have happened otherwise.

Taken together, the audit's findings make for an ill-timed deluge of bad headlines about PBOT right when it's trying to win council approval for a $43.8 million "Portland Street Fund" that would raise new revenue for maintenance and safety improvements. The auditor's office hit PBOT with a similarly scathing two-parter nearly two years ago, releasing one audit on PBOT's budget (which is set by city council, let's not forget) and another on its proportionally reduced spending on paving—which has become a talking point in the street fee fight.

"We found PBOT did not systematically report on and manage to the city’s three stated goals for safe, reliable and cost-effective transit services," the new streetcar audit says.

Here's one of the three most interesting charts, showing the difference in reported ridership vs. real ridership. The audit questions the effectiveness of having people do fare surveys that lack teeth vs. real enforcement.

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The next chart points out that the city's reported stats on the streetcar's on-time performance dramatically exaggerate real performance, as measured with trip tracker data. The audit also points out that current policy on punctuality means a streetcar can show up five minutes late and still be considered "on time."

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Finally, the audit notes that the system's goal of 10-minute frequencies, important for a slow system like a streetcar, was never ever met according to data current as of the middle of this year.

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