The Clinton Street Theater updated its historic marquee at Southeast 26th Ave. and Clinton St. to highlight the BRT 101 event.
The historic Clinton Street Theater hosted a glimpse of the future Monday at noon at Metro's BRT 101 event.
The Powell-Division Transit and Development Project will build a bus rapid transit line up inner Southeast Powell Boulevard and outer Southeast Division Street between Portland and Gresham.
The bus rapid transit project – the region's first – will pass just few blocks south of the corner at Southeast 26th Avenue and Clinton Street, where the theater has stood for nearly a century.
But as the roughly 60 attendees learned Monday from Metro and TriMet staff, there are still many possibilities for what that bus rapid transit could look like here.
"The trick [with bus rapid transit] is there's no one thing," Alan Lehto, capital planning director for TriMet, told the audience.
Instead, Lehto said, bus rapid transit is really a series of choices and options to make bus travel faster, more reliable and more comfortable for riders – both those who depend on transit and those who could choose it instead of other ways of getting around.
A SDX bus rapid transit bus gets ready to pull into the Bonneville Transit Center in Las Vegas. The bus has a dedicated lane and priority at traffic lights.
A spectrum of choices
Lehto's presentation outlined many of those choices, including passenger amenities, physical changes to streets and buses, operational systems, payment processes and more. Each of these choices presents a spectrum of possibilities, he said, from relatively minor tweaks to major transformations.
With each choice, planners and engineers must find a balance that improves rider experience, makes efficient investments and serves community goals. And though bus rapid transit is a brand-new concept in this region, examples from around the country and world provide lessons about what's possible and appropriate on Powell and Division, where nearly 18,000 people get on buses every day.
For instance, take the issue of avoiding congestion, a recurrent headache for many bus commuters. During rush hour, a relatively small percentage of a bus trip is spent actually moving at the speed limit. "Too much of it isn't," Lehto said. The rest of the time, buses are doing things like sitting in traffic, waiting in a queue for a signal, waiting to merge with traffic, loading or unloading.
Finding a way to turn much of that delay into actual drive time is a key goal of a bus rapid transit project. In some American BRT systems, like Los Angeles' 18-mile Orange Line, planners avoided congestion altogether by building an exclusive bus track for the entire corridor. But that used an old rail right of way – a luxury the Powell-Division corridor doesn't have. Cleveland's 7-mile HealthLine uses bus-only lanes for some key areas of congestion, while in other areas transit shares lanes with cars.
Other systems use bus-exclusive lanes only during rush hour or at especially congested intersections – a feature already present in a few places around the Portland region, including on Powell at its intersection with Milwaukie Ave.
Regardless of whether they use bus-only lanes or not, most bus rapid transit systems try to speed up the boarding and stopping process with techniques like pre-pay station platforms, multiple entry doors, and stops designed so transit vehicles don't have to wait to merge back into traffic.
All of these are choices that will need to be analyzed and discussed extensively before they could become part of a Powell-Division bus rapid transit project, Lehto emphasized.
And there may be different solutions for different sections of the corridor.
"What I think we can say with confidence is that because it's a 15-mile corridor and it varies in conditions, it's not going to look exactly the same for the entire length," Lehto said.
Powell-Division project manager Brian Monberg emphasized that the project is intended to make travel better for everyone who travels on or across these busy streets, no matter how they get around.
A spectrum of people
As the project moves ahead, Lehto and Metro project manager Brian Monberg emphasized, planners will need to think about how choices about bus rapid transit affect everyone who travels in the corridor. "We all use the streets," Monberg said.
Lehto noted that BRT projects often come with improvements for pedestrians accessing transit. "Every transit rider is a pedestrian too," he said.
Questions from the audience following the presentation addressed a few other interested people planners must consider in their analysis.
One audience member asked about how bicycles could access the new transit line. Lehto highlighted a range of options for storing bikes on vehicles and at stations.
Another in the audience asked about what would be done to local bus service. Lehto again emphasized that other systems have addressed this in various ways, including continuing to run a local service on the same route but spreading bus rapid transit stations further out, or reducing local service but having bus rapid transit stations closer together. These choices and their impacts will be explored in depth, he said.
Finally, there is the question of who lives in the corridor today – and how that will change as new development comes. That's a key reason the Powell-Division project is both a transit and development project, Monberg said. Planners will consider new growth in the corridor as they assess which changes to transit, roadways and bicycle and pedestrian routes can work in the area, and they'll also explore strategies to make sure new transit investment doesn't lead to displacement of the very residents who are most dependent on transit today.
Busy winter
The winter is not a time of rest for the Powell-Division project team. Staff from the project partners will be reaching out to the public to get feedback on route options like where the project will transition from Powell to Division in Portland, and how it can serve Mount Hood Community College and downtown Gresham. Additionally, the project team will study where different features of bus rapid transit – like dedicated bus lanes – could work in the corridor and what they might look like.
In February, the project team will hold public workshops to consider these options and possibilities, before presenting findings and feedback to the project steering committee in March.
The project team is also considering holding additional "BRT 101" events around the region, and has posted an "all about BRT" webpage.
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