Lanna Hampton clutched handwritten notes in front of the Powell-Division Transit and Development Project steering committee at Gresham City Hall Monday.
The 66-year-old, a longtime resident of East Portland and Gresham, lives in an apartment at 121st Avenue and Division Street. She takes two buses and the MAX Green Line to her job at a New Seasons in Happy Valley – an hour-long ride when her transfers align and a much longer one when they don't.
Hampton addressed the committee – her first time giving public testimony – before they dug into a difficult question: How to place stations for TriMet's first bus rapid transit line so it can be both fast and accessible to everyone.
She is concerned about spacing stations too far apart, she said – not so much for herself, but for elderly people and young families she sees in her neighborhood, struggling to reach and board buses at today's stops.
"My main concern is the access they have and how far they have to go to get to it," she said.
Hampton's comments set the stage for a committee discussion that raised more questions for project staff to explore before they return to the steering committee in February to seek consensus on a final route and several dozen station locations along it.
It isn't an easy question, committee members and project staff acknowledge, because it involves striking a tricky balance with several elements.
Bus rapid transit stations must be located where they get the greatest number of people where they're going easily and more reliably than today's buses. They should be far enough apart so that transit vehicles aren't constantly pulling over to let one or two riders on or off, frustrating anyone riding more than a few stops – particularly in a corridor where the average rider goes more than 3 miles.
But leaders want to make sure the new line doesn't make getting to transit more difficult for people who already face enough challenges getting to their current bus stop – particularly in parts of East Portland and Gresham where walking can be challenging and treacherous.
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"There are a lot of very legitimate concerns about how we thread the needle between an efficient, quick-moving service that makes a real improvement for riders that already use this corridor, and continue to provide high-quality service for people who have challenges getting to transit, not make those challenges greater," said Metro Councilor Bob Stacey, who co-chairs the steering committee with Councilor Shirley Craddick.
Kelly Betteridge, TriMet's manager of capital planning , presented a map with about 38 proposed bus rapid transit stations, depending on the route chosen for the line. She said project staff had worked hard put the proposed stations where they would benefit the most people.
The stations would be a third of a mile to half-mile apart on average. "But it wasn't about deciding they should be half a mile apart and placing them on the map," Betteridge said. "It was about looking at what was happening and placing them where it made sense in terms of existing ridership."
If all the stations were put in place, she said, 74 percent of today's bus riders on the alignment would see no change in where they get on and off the bus, just better facilities and more reliable transit. Just five percent would have to walk more than three blocks – about 800 feet – from their current stops to a new bus rapid transit station.
Questions will shape engagement
Committee members, ranging from Gresham community activists to East Portland's representative to the Oregon House, raised many questions for staff. Who were those 5 percent that would have longer walks? What would it mean to them? Who benefits the most?
For instance, planners should account for the fact that being close to a stop as the crow flies is different from the distance and experience on streets in some neighborhoods, said John Bildsoe of the Gresham Coalition of Neighborhood Associations.
"Some of these routes to the stations are already very dangerous," Bildsoe said. "If you make it longer you're going to lose some riders."
Project staff said questions like these would help shape an intensive focus on engaging bus riders in the coming months.
"We can't expect to know how these stations will work for riders. We have to go out and ask them how they will work," said Dana Lucero, who leads public engagement for the project at Metro.
Lucero said Metro would soon release a multilingual online survey and conduct bus rider focus groups to see how well the new stations would serve them and understand what improvements – like sidewalks, crosswalks or lighting – could help them get to the new stations.
Staff will return to the committee with the results of that engagement and a refined station map on Feb. 1, 2016.
But another matter – how regular bus service will run on the same streets as bus rapid transit and streets that with the new transit line – will remain unresolved for several years.
TriMet service planning manager Kerry Ayres-Palanuk said the transit agency could guarantee frequent regular bus service would continue on the portions of inner Division and outer Powell that the bus rapid transit line will not directly serve.
But TriMet won't determine what to do with regular bus service in the same streets or connecting with the line on inner Powell and outer Division for several years. Ayres-Palanuk presented several scenarios for the streets with new bus rapid transit service, ranging from continuing the same frequent bus service today in addition to the bus rapid transit, to eliminating regular bus service when bus rapid transit service is implemented. Reductions in regular bus service on the bus rapid transit streets could free up resources for new or improved north-south bus connections with the new line, she said.
But some committee members were concerned about taking a final action on the bus rapid transit line without knowing what will happen to regular bus service in the corridor.
Kem Marks, who represents the East Portland Action Plan on the steering committee, said it made it difficult for him to vote for a final map of bus rapid transit stations – because he can't guarantee residents in his Division Midway neighborhood will be able to access regular buses easily enough when the new line begins operating in 2020.
"If the locations aren't predicated on what kind of (regular bus) service is ultimately going to be happening on Powell and Division, then my question is what kind of input on the ultimate decision is this body going to have?" Marks asked.
Gresham hones in on Hogan Drive
After several months of intensive engagement with Gresham residents and transit riders, planners are closer to identifying a preferred route to connect downtown Gresham with Stark Street and Mt. Hood Community College, Gresham planner Katherine Kelly told the committee.
Hogan Drive, the easternmost of three options, has proven most popular with the public, Kelly said. Planners will now prioritize it for a closer design and engineering look.
In Portland, planners are prioritizing 82nd Avenue to connect Powell and Division based on public feedback, but holding onto 50th and 52nd as backups for now. And the Portland Transit Mall is emerging as a preferred route in downtown Portland, but an east-west loop on SW Columbia and Jefferson streets also remains under consideration, Betteridge said.
As with the station locations, the steering committee will seek consensus on a final route on Feb. 1. If a decision isn’t made in February, the Steering Committee will revisit the questions on March 28.
Local actions also discussed
Another set of work will continue after the transit line planning is done – even after it's running. Portland and Gresham have both developed "local action plans" seeking to have the transit investment help, not hurt, housing affordability, local businesses and equity at key opportunity sites in the corridor.
Portland's chief planner, Joe Zehnder, said his city's action plan includes an exhaustive list of actions and priorities. Many of them don't yet have funding sources, he acknowledged, but he said the collaborative approach to developing the plan had put Portland on solid ground for moving forward in a meaningful way.
"The geeky bureaucrats in this are actually very excited about this moment of coordination between the bureaus," he joked.
After feedback from its city council, Gresham planners refocused their draft action plan on leveraging the transit project to help with goals and projects the city has already identified in key neighborhoods and streets, said David Berniker, the city's urban design and planning director.
"A lot of things you will see in the plan are things we already have in motion," Berniker said. "It's kind of how we roll out here. We have to keep it tight and be smart with the limited resources we have."
Work on the local action plans will continue with help from Metro's community and planning development grant program.
Each city's plan will be considered by its respective city council in the spring.
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