Portland Transit Mall

The Portland Transit Mall covers much of the public transportation in Downtown Portland providing much of the vital right-​of-​way to MAX.
Light rail does not have the speed that subways do and so it requires skilled management to be efficient. Portland Transit Mall has a propensity to be up to that task.
It is low cost and the benefit of the low cost is the ability to quickly expand the territory covering it and to maintain it. Other systems in the United States might have a subway, but the high costs of subways detract from many of the nuanced but important parts of daily usage. Sometimes vehicles are not replaced and the number of stations are slow to expand.
I like looking at the time of arrival and when not that many people are standing around, waiting on one of the seats. Being the fan of downtown that I am, I like the train stop’s proximity to all kinds of parts of downtown. The MAX does have to wait for some of the lights but it gets into outer places like Beaverton in a quick way.
The streetcar is the main point of criticism, because it is even more vulnerable to the lights. But the bus service is pretty good.
Although I know that those in Portland value public transportation more than most in the United States, only when we become more like Japan in our valuing of it is our work complete. Many of the lines run fairly frequently. Portland does not decide the priorities of the public compared to defense, but it can make due with the funds it can get from the federal government, therefore I praise the Portland Transit Mall as an outcome of effort.
Low fares here seal the deal.
The Portland Transit Mall is a great way to move about downtown.

By the middle of the 1970s, Downtown Portland was dying and not expected to survive. It was the era of the great migration to the suburbs, and many of the downtown department stores had already moved to the malls. Nordstrom had plans in place to move out of downtown permanently and it would have surprised no one had Meier & Frank followed suit. Like my dad used to say, one could have fired a cannon down the middle of Broadway and not hit a living soul. Downtown workers fled by 5 pm and never stayed late because the area was pretty much «owned» at night by a dangerous element. On the weekends, everybody shopped at the malls and never came down just to hang out and enjoy. All in all, a very bleak outlook for our patient, Portland.
The Portland Transit Mall pretty much saved Portland from going the way of so many other cities at the time — a long slow death march into urban hell. Nordstrom also agreed to build their flagship store in downtown Portland at this time. All of this revitalized Portland and has helped bring it to a place of prominence nationally that most Portlanders knew it deserved (there was a time that only San Francisco and Seattle were ever mentioned in the national media; Portland was considered the quaint country cousin).
Sorry for the history lesson from this long-​time Portland citizen, but I think it’s interesting to compare and contrast and see how Portland has become a leader in transportation options. Considering it’s a government-​backed project, the Portland Transit Mall surprisingly came together in the mid-​1970s without too much controversy and has continued to serve so many of us via bus, street car, and MAX in the tri-​country area pretty efficiently and with some great updates over the years. Considering how large the system has become, there’s so much that could go wrong (which on occasion it does), but there’s so much more that goes right and attracts visitors and dollars to our fair city. I say Hail to the Portland Transit Mall.

Echoing Frank L’s sentiments, Trimet does a really great job of keeping the show going. Fare woes aside, compared to every other city I’ve taken public transit in, our downtown transit mall runs very smoothly and comfortably. Those neat-​o real-​time arrival screens are nice, the covered shelters are usually plenty big, and watching the buses and Max roll up and out in harmony is pretty slick.
Best transit system of all time? I dunno. Pretty good in general? Definitely. Portlanders love to bitch about Trimet, because we’re spoiled as hell, but I truly believe it’s pretty smooth here. Sometimes there’s some riff raff at the stops. Big deal! Sometimes there’s riff raff anywhere. Downtown Bus Mall has always served me well.

This is the guts of downtown public transportation in Portland. The workings of the bus, MAX and car traffic on 5^th and 6^th Avenues amazes me. It really does. Toss in all the pedestrians, bikes and assorted downtown weirdos and it’s truly astounding that the whole area doesn’t just come to a grinding clusterf**k of a halt. (Well, sometimes it does, but not very often.)
The way the buses and trains weave around each other is like watching the Transformers do ballet. The entire area is also very aesthetically pleasing, if you haven’t taken the time out of your busy commute to notice. Portland is a beautiful city – even down in the guts of downtown.
I know, I know, I’m constantly complaining about the late buses, fare increases and irritating panhanders, but Trimet does a pretty good job getting all of us Portlandians around – and through the Portland Transit Mall, they get us around in style.