MAX Green Line Means Growth
The Sunday Oregonian profiles on the front page the expansion of Portland’s MAX light rail system and the opening of the new Green line. The Green line will cover the reworked transit mall in downtown, the already served I-84 corridor, and now 6.5 miles down I-205 to the Clackamas Town Center Mall. The story tells us that the project had a total cost of nearly $576 million. If you add the new track in downtown to the track along I-205, the project cost approximately $72 million per mile.
Here are some facts regarding the MAX system from the above mentioned Oregonian story:
• In downtown Portland, each light-rail stop on the transit mall will have an arrival every six minutes on weekdays. That includes a PSU-Union Station loop that will run only on weekdays, but it’s more frequent service than the current 7 1/2-minute interval for the Red and Blue lines on Morrison and Yamhill.
• Along Interstate 84, trains headed to and from downtown will arrive every five minutes. Riders will have a choice among Green, Red and Blue line trains west of Gateway.
• The 6.5-mile I-205 segment of the Green Line connects to 19 bus lines, five park-and-ride lots with a combined 2,300 spaces, and one of the largest regional malls, the Clackamas Town Center. It also connects to the Red Line for easy access to the airport
The story also points out that a new line connecting downtown with Milwaukie has already been approved at a cost of $1.4 billion, or $200 million per mile. No mention in the story of why the Milwaukie line will cost nearly 3 times more per mile than the Green line did.
To put the cost of the Milwaukie project into perspective, $1.4 billion is enough money to pay 4 years of tuition at the University of Oregon for every single kid in the Portland Public School District today….and still have $400 million left over.
What do you think Portlanders, is the cost worth it?
Read the entire Oregonian story at OregonLive.com.
I would love to hear the cities rebuttal on why it is going to cost 3 times as much to put in the Milwaukie line
It isn't. It costs slightly more for the Milwaukee line and a whole TON to put in the transit only bridge near south waterfront.
Two seperate projects, that again, TriMet is confusing people with by connecting the two to gain access to more federal onies (I suspect).
Ok so I've been a Portlander all my life and the 3 times I've ridden the Max There were only six people at most on it. Why keep wasting money on something proven wasteful.
Did you know:
there are 575,930 folks who live in Portland per Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portland,_Oregon)
That mean, by my math, the $575 Million that TriMet wasted – I mean spent – on the green line is enough to give every man, women and child a $1,000 stimulus check?
For as much as we complain about folks buying houses they couldn't afford, should we apply the same standard to our local, state and federal governments