Portland is often used as a model of what we wish Sacramento to become, and we even have some of its former public administrators now in leadership roles in Sacramento to help us make that wish more of a reality.
While we move towards that, here is some reporting on how Portland’s light rail project has evolved over the years, and it is not a model we want to emulate.
Light Rail Follies #1: State Troopers Ride Max
We have a spate of light-rail follies this week. First up: Crime on Portland’s “MAX” light rail has gotten so bad that, in November, Oregon’s governor directed state police to ride the rails regularly to protect passengers from assaults. “I am absolutely adamant that its citizens feel safe at all times in using a fine mass transit system,” said the governor.
Grateful representatives of TriMet, Portland’s transit agency, expressed confidence that the troopers would be able to solve the gang-related crime problems that have plagued the light-rail system. The troopers “will allow us to better work out a long-term solution with local law enforcement people,” said TriMet’s public services director.
While potential passengers might look upon this action with relief, the only problem is that it happened in November, 1988. When TriMet opened the light-rail line in 1986, it eliminated its transit police because it did not have enough money to both operate light rail and offer passenger security. The light rail gave drug dealers and other inner-city criminals easy access to the suburbs, and soon they were intimidating and assaulting riders.
“Once we had verbal assaults,” said TriMet’s general manager in November, 1988. “Now we’re talking about knives and guns.”
Oregon’s governor in 1988 was Neil Goldschmidt, the man who, a dozen years earlier, had decided to build the light-rail line because he had a hundred million federal dollars that he had to spend on transit capital improvements–or lose the money to some other city. Buying buses wasn’t an option, because TriMet didn’t have enough money to run that many new buses. So Goldschmidt selected the light-rail technology precisely because of its high capital cost.
Goldschmidt failed to foresee that the cost would be far higher than originally projected. To make up some of the difference, TriMet cut bus service and raised fares, with the result that transit’s share of commuting fell from 9.8 percent in 1980 to 6.7 percent in 1990. Plus, of course, it cut its budget for transit police.
How well did the state troopers work out? For nearly six months, at a cost to state taxpayers of $31,000 a month, seven troopers rode the light-rail cars, ejecting riders for failing to pay their fares and discouraging members of the Crips and Blood gangs from bothering passengers.
The program hit a snag when Portland’s transit union complained that TriMet was engaging in unfair labor practices. The union was upset that TriMet cut its own transit police (who would have been transit union members) and was relying on state police instead. A labor relations board rejected the union’s complaint….
Of course, as the Antiplanner has reported several times in the past few months, Portland’s light-rail crime problem is worse than ever today. TriMet’s solution: end the downtown free-fare zone. If people have to pay to get on, TriMet officials reason, criminals will be less likely to use the system.
“Fareless Square provides a free ride for panhandlers, who go back and forth between downtown and the Lloyd Center, and drug dealers and rowdy gangs of young people, homeless people and drunks who are using the train as a shelter and a place to do their business,” says TriMet’s general manager.
