Whose Yellow Line Is It, Anyway?

[Jeff Rubard]

As metropolitan-area residents will be aware, the May 1st opening of the
TriMet-MAX Yellow Line to North Portland went ahead as planned: the
light-rail extension's arrival was greeted in the various neighborhoods
it serves with festivities of various kinds, bands and community fairs.
But in terms of the line's impact upon civic life, those inclined to
think upon the design of this system from the perspective of urban
planning are encouraged by this writer to discard a "quantum" of
conventional wisdom regarding light rail, its relative
cost-ineffectiveness, and consider the Yellow Line in terms of its
cumulative effect upon TriMet's North Portland service. Traditionally,
North Portland has had one of the heaviest riderships of any section of
the metropolitan area, but the willingness of area residents to make
public transit a *primary* means of daily travel was hobbled by the
relatively long transit times involved: a bus trip to the city center
from St. Johns took roughly as long as bus travel from Hillsboro
(causing carless area residents a certain degree of disorientation as
regards their "image of the city").

Travel along the entire line takes roughly 20 minutes; but as many will
notice, the economy in transit times due to the introduction of Yellow
Line service is not primarily due to train speed. TriMet has
systematically redesigned its North Portland service along the lines of
82nd Ave, with its multiple lines served by "improved" bus shelters --
compared to the hub-and-spoke system implemented in Clackamas and
Washington counties, the new "matrix" system for North Portland is a
veritable boon on account of its articulation of non-automotive transit
in a manner which does not *infringe* upon already-existing habits of
daily life. But such improvements are not without their cost, and those
mindful of the "open" design of the Interstate stations might do well to
consider the Yellow Line as "autonomic": that is, selecting its own best
conditions of operation for its given ridership. The difference in
ridership mores already manifested as compared to "orbital" bus lines
suggests that, in fact, the Yellow Line is not a "white elephant" as
light-rail is commonly reputed to be: but further consideration of the
Yellow Line's strengths and weaknesses should turn on its efficacy as an
aid to high-wage employment, a practical means of transportation and
guarantee of a sufficiently mobile workforce.

--
Jeff Rubard
opensentence.tripod.com
Your guess is as good as mine

[Jeff Rubard]

Jeff Rubard wrote:

>

Caveat: I am neither an employee of TriMet nor a resident of North
Portland, and these comments do not express the views of any
organization. Comparative research regarding the MAX system was done
for this article using www.nycsubway.org, to whom the expression
"TriMet-MAX" owes -- information about the line's operation can be found
at www.trimet.org.

[Jeffrey Rubard]

2021 Update: Incidentally, Tri-Met banned cigarette smoking on MAX property in 2005, the next year.
(We "area yardies" would generally know this, as it occasioned some difficulty for our whiter shade of pale.)

[Jeffrey Rubard]

In the heavily African-American area the Yellow Line served, tobacco use on MAX was already less of
an issue; it was an interesting question how much the normal activity of life on the line had "prompted"
the systemwide policy.

[Jeffrey Rubard]

2022 Update: Something to see, all those years ago.