Every day, millions of people move throughout greater Portland’s communities. This is a journey we share – whether shoulder to shoulder on transit, or lane by lane on streets and highways. Wheels turning, feet stepping, we go many miles – or just down the block.
You are here: Regional Snapshots
Regular check-ins on issues that matter to greater Portland: Housing, jobs, transportation and more.
Learn more
Our ability to get around – to cross bridges, travel highways and streets, catch a bus or MAX, walk or bike – is something we often take for granted.
But as we grow and greet a changing world, how can we ensure the region's streets, roads, transit and bridges still work for everyone?
Here are 5 things to know about keeping greater Portland moving.
1. Previous generations of Oregonians invested in roads, bridges, transit and trails. It has shaped who we’ve become.
We can still trace the imprint of those earliest investments on our region today. The 6.5-mile wooden Great Plank Road built in 1856 still connects the Tualatin Valley to the Willamette River as SW Canyon Road and the Sunset Highway. The gridded, walkable neighborhoods of inner Portland, Oregon City and Forest Grove are an artifact of an extensive early 1900s streetcar and electric rail network. The Trolley Trail connecting Milwaukie and Gladstone is a repurposed rail line from 1868.
Transportation investments leave a lasting impact on a place. What people chose to build over a century ago still affects how we get around today.
The early days of the Great Plank Road, precursor to the Sunset Highway. Photo: City of Portland.
Through the mid-20th century, greater Portland grew in step with the rising popularity of private cars and mirrored auto-dependent development patterns of other metro areas.
In the 1970s, though, the people of greater Portland decided to change course and build a transportation system that would give people more options for getting around: transit, trails and bike routes in addition to roads and highways.
The result is that today, greater Portland’s travel habits more closely resemble those of older metro regions like New York, Boston, and San Francisco – places that developed over 100 years before the introduction of the automobile, where transit and walking are built into the fabric of the community.
How greater Portland stacks up with other metro areas. (Click to enlarge.)
People in greater Portland own fewer cars, drive fewer miles per year and keep more money in their pockets (and the local economy) because they spend less money on transportation than people in similar metro areas.
Our transportation reputation is considered a major factor in attracting new businesses and talent that have driven our recent economic growth.
But today the region faces new challenges – and new opportunities to define our future.
A journey we share
Just as greater Portland changes, so do our lives – and our needs for getting around. Six Oregonians share their journeys. Learn more
2. Greater Portland is growing – and feeling the effects.
The Portland metropolitan area has added the equivalent of about two Greshams (more than 200,000 new people) since 2010.
Investing in transportation options has helped the region absorb this growth. Nearly half of the region’s 150,000 new commuters get to work by walking, biking, transit or working from home. Per capita car ownership has decreased since 2000.
That’s a lot of traffic that could be on the roads, but isn’t.
Still, roughly 78,000 new drivers have joined area roadways for each day’s commute – squeezing through the same chokepoints and bottlenecks, spilling onto neighborhood streets and slowing buses. And that affects us all.
In a recent poll by KATU, nearly three-quarters of Portland-area residents said traffic congestion affects their quality of life.
It's no surprise that in a recent KATU poll, nearly three-quarters of Portland-area residents said traffic congestion affects their quality of life. (46 percent said congestion is "sometimes a bother", 22 percent said it "adds stress every day" and 3 percent said it "ruins my quality of life.")
By 2040, we’re expected to add a half-million more people to the metropolitan area. We need to update how we manage roads, bridges and transit systems if we are going to keep up with growth, protect our quality of life and economy, and ensure our system works for everyone.
We also need to maintain what we already have. Our roads, bridges and buses have aged. They wear out with time. Some will inevitably need to be overhauled or even replaced.
Most of greater Portland's bridges are decades old.
We can still get many more years of life out of much of existing facilities if we invest in maintenance and operations. There's a need for about $12 billion in road and bridge operations and maintenance regionwide through 2035. (This number is currently being updated.)
There's a need for about $12 billion in road and bridge operations and maintenance regionwide through 2035.
That's a big number, but it grows bigger if wear and tear goes too far.
A bigger challenge will be to build for the next 40 years. Can greater Portland once again take action together?
A journey we share
Just as greater Portland changes, so do our lives – and our needs for getting around. Six Oregonians share their journeys. Learn more
3. The communities of greater Portland have laid out plans to invest in the future.
We're still a place with plenty of vision.
Every four years, Metro works with residents and a variety of public agencies and local governments to update the Regional Transportation Plan – a vision for the future of getting around greater Portland, and the investments it will take to get there.
Together, the region creates a list of all of the transportation investments communities need. It’s a big list, intended to look decades ahead for roads, transit, freight, and biking and walking. The current plan, adopted by the Metro Council in 2014, includes 1,256 projects.
Roads, bridges and walking and biking had the most projects in the 2014 Regional Transportation Plan.
Projects vary widely in cost, from a few thousand dollars to a handful of billion-dollar projects.
Projects in the 2014 Regional Transportation Plan range from a few thousand dollars to nearly $3 billion.
Understandably, a large highway or transit project costs more than a single bike boulevard or sidewalk. So some kinds of investments have fewer individual projects, but a bigger share of the cost to build everything on the list.
Some kinds of projects require bigger investments, even if there are fewer of them in greater Portland's plans.
See an interactive visualization of these projects, including which have been built or funded since 2014.
These projects are located in communities across the region, falling into two buckets based on how likely they are to built.
"Constrained" projects were the highest priorities in the 2014 Regional Transportation Plan. When the plan was adopted, leaders thought these projects had a reasonably good chance of being built in the next 20 years: Construction money had either been committed or expected based on funding trends. "Strategic" projects were considered important, but would require working together to find new sources of money for construction.
The projects on this list will soon be updated as the region works together on the 2018 Regional Transportation Plan. Some will likely be removed, and others added based on current priorities and input from the region's residents.
No matter what's on the list, here's the bottom line: If we want to build these projects, we’ll have to work together to figure out how to pay for them.
A journey we share.
Just as greater Portland changes, so do our lives – and our needs for getting around. Six Oregonians share their journeys. Learn more
4. We need to work together to update how we invest in roads, bridges and transit that work for everyone.
At current rates of funding, we could have an outpost on Mars two centuries before the Portland metro area has a complete walking and biking network. Completing our planned highways and transit investments could also take decades.
At current rates of investment, greater Portland's planned transportation network will not be complete until 2252.
Most people would like these improvements for their families and communities to come sooner than 2242.
This is a good opportunity to examine how we fund our transportation system.
Most transportation funding icomes from local sources such as development fees, property taxes, parking meter revenues and local gas taxes in places that have them.
State and federal sources have been declining over time.
A journey we share.
Just as greater Portland changes, so do our lives – and our needs for getting around. Six Oregonians share their journeys. Learn more
Oregon doesn’t have as many transportation funding sources as other states to start with. Most states in the country have a state sales tax, a tax on vehicle purchases, or both. Oregon has neither. (It also charges less for fees like new vehicle registrations than other places.)
Did you know?
Oregon introduced the nation’s first fuel tax – a penny per gallon – in 1919, as a strategy to start building a network of roads.
For a long time, Oregon has turned to the gas tax to pay for many of its road needs.
Oregon introduced the nation’s first fuel tax – a penny per gallon – in 1919, as a strategy to start building a network of roads. A century later, state and federal funding sources rely heavily on the gax tax, which state and federal leaders have increased irregularly over the years.
Unfortunately, gas taxes’ usefulness has been diminished by technology and time.
Oregonians used an average of 11 percent less gas over the past 20 years, thanks to improved fuel efficiency and hybrid and electric vehicles. This is great news for the environment (and drivers), but the average driver with a 15-gallon tank is “able to wear down the roadways with 35 extra miles of driving before they have to stop, refuel, and pay anything in gas taxes.”
The gas tax also doesn’t rise with inflation. Just as the price of bread isn’t the same as 20 years ago, neither is the price of road construction.
What does that mean? It means the gas tax just isn't able to build as much as it used to.
Traditional sources alone won’t be enough to fund the project priorities outlined in the Regional Transportation Plan. We’ll need to look to new sources and reform how we invest in transportation to ensure we keep pace with a growing population, inflation and more fuel-efficient vehicles.
A journey we share.
Just as greater Portland changes, so do our lives – and our needs for getting around. Six Oregonians share their journeys. Learn more
5. Investments in transportation matter to everyone.
Roads, transit and bridges are more than hard infrastructure. They represent opportunities: Getting people to work and home again, supporting businesses and bringing goods to market, helping schoolchildren arrive safely at school.
They also represent choices: The choices we make about the place we want to be – and the lives we want to live. The earliest transportation investments still shape the form and character of the Portland metro area today. And the roads, bridges, transit lines and bike facilities we build and fix now will influence how people experience this place for many years into the future.
A journey we share.
Just as greater Portland changes, so do our lives – and our needs for getting around. Six Oregonians share their journeys. Learn more
Through 2018, communities are once again working with Metro to revisit the Regional Transportation Plan and the investments we want to make in transportation. We’ll need to work together to find resources to make that vision a reality.
Greater Portland has a long history of innovation. We’ve risen to the challenge before. If we can work together to reform our system, we can manage the rapid growth straining us today and also make investments that prepare for the growth of the next 20 years.
Take the next step
You can help find solutions as we look to the future of getting around greater Portland.
Ready for the next step? Here are a few things you can do:
Stay informed and speak up. Sign up for emails from Metro to learn how to share your experiences with leaders to help inform the choices they make about transportation.
Continue the conversation. Make transportation something to talk about. Bring it up among friends and family, at a neighborhood association or place of worship, or write a letter or email to an elected official or local media.
Share. Share the Snapshot on Facebook, Twitter, Nextdoor and other social media to help others get involved.
Help update the vision. Learn about a major update of the blueprint for the region's streets, highways and transit and stay involved as the 2018 Regional Transportation Plan takes shape.
Let us know how you plan to contribute!
Take this quick survey