First look at TriMet’s new Bike & Ride parking at Goose Hollow

The new facility is tucked behind the existing waiting area.
(Photos: Jonathan Maus/BikePortland)

The Goose Hollow MAX light rail station in southwest Portland has more cycling activity than any other one in TriMet’s system. That’s not surprising given that it’s at the bottom of a hill and along a major commuter corridor that connects downtown to the west side and Washington County.

Once it’s open, just tap your Hop card to get in.

To get a better handle on those bikes and to encourage people to not take them on crowded trains, TriMet has installed a new, state-of-the-art “Bike & Ride” station at Goose Hollow that is almost ready for use. As a TriMet bike planner shared with us in 2017, the new bike parking structure was funded with a grant from the State of Oregon.

“This station provides a critical connection for east-west trips,” a TriMet spokesperson shared with us this morning. “We’re looking forward to opening the secure areas of our new bike and rides to help broaden mobility options throughout our region. In the meantime, riders are welcome to use parking that is available outside the cages at Beaverton Creek and Goose Hollow, which is within the coverage of our security cameras.”

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Squeezed into a tight space behind the existing waiting area for eastbound MAX trains, the new Bike & Ride at Goose Hollow has space for 30 bikes: 16 on racks inside a structure and 14 on staple racks outside. To keep bikes safe from thieves, there’s a security camera in place. What makes this parking special (along with two similar structures currently being built at Beaverton Creek and Gateway transit centers) is that users can simply tap their Hop Fastpass card on the door to gain entry.

TriMet encourages riders to keep bikes off trains during peak commute hours. As bike parking facilities get better and more secure, TriMet hopes people will start to keep a “station bike” at the Bike & Ride. “With secure parking at a Bike & Ride or in an electronic bike locker, you can park your bike overnight, then take a bus or train to the transit center and finish your commute by bike,” reads a tip on the TriMet website. “You get the fun and exercise of biking to work or school, without the hassle of hauling it back and forth on MAX every day.”

For more on using bikes on the TriMet system, check out TriMet.org/bikes.

— Jonathan Maus: (503) 706-8804, @jonathan_maus on Twitter and jonathan@bikeportland.org

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Jonathan Maus (Publisher/Editor)

Jonathan Maus (Publisher/Editor)

Founder of BikePortland (in 2005). Father of three. North Portlander. Basketball lover. Car owner and driver. If you have questions or feedback about this site or my work, feel free to contact me at @jonathan_maus on Twitter, via email at maus.jonathan@gmail.com, or phone/text at 503-706-8804. Also, if you read and appreciate this site, please become a supporter.

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maccoinnich
5 years ago

Saw this over the weekend and thought it looked really nice. I hope it’s successful, and can serve as a model for other MAX stations.

mh
5 years ago
Reply to  maccoinnich

A model in miniature.

dan
dan
5 years ago

Yes! Looks like a nice facility, and definitely urgently needed. I would much rather not bring my bike on the train, but sometimes it’s the safest option – this would be an alternative.

Steve
Steve
5 years ago

Hmmm, thanks for the effort TriMet but my experience is that many folks, myself included, use the MAX to avoid the climb through Washington Park, especially during winter when it is dark, but prefer to ride the majority of the way home in the afternoon. I will be curious to see how this works out for sure. Also, for folks with employer provided TriMet passes, is there a way to access the secure parking?

rick
rick
5 years ago
Reply to  Steve

Would you ride more often if there was a bike / walk path through the south side of Washington Park that connected to SW Canyon Court where the overpass is located over Highway 26?

NS
NS
5 years ago
Reply to  rick

There is a path to that route. SW Park Place to SW Sherwood to SW Kingston takes you right to the Zoo, which dumps onto SW Canyon Court. You have to share the lane, but traffic on those roads, at least in my experience, is almost always light.

Allan Rudwick
5 years ago

30 spots? I guess its a start. Hopefully this won’t be nearly enough and we’ll be hearing updates on this in the future

maccoinnich
5 years ago
Reply to  Allan Rudwick

Goose Hollow / SW Jefferson is a really space constrained station, and, as mentioned in the previous story about the project, TriMet had to buy land from the adjacent church just to be able to build this project.

There are other stations on the network with more room, so hopefully we’ll be seeing larger bike storage facilities built elsewhere in the future.

Glennset Transit Center
Glennset Transit Center
5 years ago

Leave your bike in Portland and get on the train — that’s what you do in the alternate universe where TriMet has awesome last-mile service throughout the West Side.

Glenn Hollow (puertas a mi derecha)
Glenn Hollow (puertas a mi derecha)
5 years ago

Or surely they don’t intend that after crawling across the frozen wastes of Beaverton on hands and knees, having to eat my sled-dogs, tunneling through the West Hills on the MAX, I finally arrive at the easy part, the promised land for biking, and THEN I abandon my bike?!?

Chris I
Chris I
5 years ago

Buy a cheap bike and leave it locked up at the west side station. People actually do this with cars for some ferry trips up in Puget Sound.

Toby Keith
Toby Keith
5 years ago

A camera WILL NOT keep your bike safe from thieves.

Todd Boulanger
Todd Boulanger
5 years ago
Reply to  Toby Keith

CCTV does help, but you are correct – one must still lock one’s bike effectively and reduce the amount of nice loose gear one leaves on any bike for overnight or long periods. When I managed bike parking facilities in the past I was always surprised at the number of customers who would often leave their bikes unlocked or poorly locked. (I guess a testament to the overall security and community using those facilities that the parker felt.)

Todd Boulanger
Todd Boulanger
5 years ago

Looking at this project – I was curious if Trimet was going to have the same initial checkin that a new member used to do with their BikeLink operated facilities – where a user would video chat with a call center (now Trimet’s?) and then have a photo taken. Or will it be more like signing up for a Scoot/Lime/ Bird e-scooter…take a photo of one’s license, etc. I did not see anything on the HopPass webpage.

David LaPorte
David LaPorte
5 years ago

This is fantastic! Washington County could use so many more of these, as most destinations are not walking distance from transit centers. I would personally like one at the 74th/Pacific Hwy park and ride in the Tigard Triangle. But that probably won’t happen until the Southwest Corridor light rail makes it out there…

Stephen Keller
Stephen Keller
5 years ago

I’ve got four and eight miles to ride on either end of my MAX ride. What I need is more bike slots on the train and bigger or longer trains. Perhaps this will ease the pressure on those of who need to bring bikes on the train.

Chris I
Chris I
5 years ago
Reply to  Stephen Keller

Train size is restricted by the block sizes of downtown Portland. If we were to build a $2+ downtown tunnel and river crossing, other surface stations could theoretically be expanded to allow 3 or even 4 car trains. I think the best interim solution is greater train frequency during peak periods. The Steel Bridge is not fully at capacity, but is quite close. Building a line down Powell Blvd to take the Green Line off of the congested I-84/Steel Bridge mainline would allow for substantial frequency improvements on the Red/Blue lines.

Hello, Kitty
5 years ago

If TriMet starts encouraging “station bikes”, they’re going to need an awful lot of good, secure parking to make that feasible, and it’s going to fill up with bikes that aren’t used for long periods of time (but might not quite be abandoned). It will be interesting to see how that works out.

Meanwhile, if I had to commute via LRT, I’d probably invest in a folding bike to make it easier to carry aboard during busy times.

GlowBoy
GlowBoy
5 years ago
Reply to  Hello, Kitty

As a daily MAX commuter a few years ago, I bought a folding bike specifically for this reason. Mine was a Swift, which folds in 20-30 seconds and to a size fairly to other 20″ folding bikes.

My usual pattern was to take MAX in the morning, but ride all the way home to Portland in the evening. In the morning time my is tighter (and the West Hills are steeper westbound). In the evening, when the trains are more crowded anyway, I have more time for a fun, relaxing ride home.

Taking a folding bike on MAX sounds like a great solution, but isn’t. I did it for about a year and then gave up. Here’s why:
– Although my bike folded fairly quickly by folding-bike standards, it was a bit fussy and messy, so it was something I’d rather avoid if I could. But the thing is, 20-30 seconds is too long when a train rolls in with all its hooks full and you realize you need to fold it to get on. So really, to get any benefit out of the fold I had to fold it every time I got on the train, even though 80-90% of the time I didn’t end up needing to.
– Another reason I pretty much had to fold the bike for every train ride was that if someone with a regular bike wants to get on the train at a later stop, and there isn’t room to hang their bike because your folding bike is hanging on one of the hooks, everyone thinks you’re a dick.
– A bike folded in half is still pretty big. There really aren’t a lot of good spots on MAX trains for something that big, except to stand with it and try to sort of stay out of everyone else’s way, which gets old quickly on a half hour train ride. On a jam-packed evening train you’re still going to have trouble getting on with a standard folding bike.
– The bike hooks on MAX are placed *just* close enough to the wall that you can’t easily squeeze most folding bikes into the otherwise tempting spot between the wall and a hanging bike. Even my Swift, which folds narrower than most, is a tight squeeze and is going to make occasional contact with the hanging bike as it sways back and forth on the curves. I had a fellow rider get really bent out of shape with me once, just because my bike touched his derailleur! Oh my! (Admittedly I was not experienced with my folder at the time, and had to fuss a bit to get it in the space, which obviously bothered this guy too).
– I don’t care what their proponents say, folding bikes are slower than big-wheeled bikes. My 20″ wheeled bike was noticeably slower than my cyclocross bike: 1-2 mph, which added up to several minutes on my ride home. If you’re ONLY going to use this for a last-mile (or maybe up to last 5 miles) connection to the train, that wouldn’t be a problem, but I really liked my long ride home. The folder was also a whole lot less confident coming down the West Hills in the rain, and overall my evening ride was just a lot less fun.

So taking my folding bike on MAX was a hassle every day, but I didn’t get a benefit from it even once a week.

Bottom line: if you think a folding bike is a solution to the problem of commuting with a bike on MAX, commit to doing it both ways every day and get something that folds up like a suitcase so you can actually fit on the train.

That means a Brompton. They’re even slower than 20″ bikes, but in retrospect I would have been better just saving up for a Brommie, using MAX both ways on days when I rode it and riding my big-wheel bike on days I plan on riding all the way home in the evening.

I wear many hats
I wear many hats
5 years ago

Me too. I would never have hauled my bike to Hillsboro daily except for the fact that there was no safe place to leave it at the station. This stop should have room for 100’s of bikes, not just 30. It will soon be at capacity.

billyjo
billyjo
5 years ago

I can understand these at someplace like Gateway. ride in from your house miles away, then hop on the max to go to work etc.

Do they expect people to get on max with their bike and ride max to that station then get off and park the bike? then get back on max?

Don’t most people want to get on with their bikes at that station so they can skip the ride over the hills? Or get off after skipping the hills?

GlowBoy
GlowBoy
5 years ago
Reply to  billyjo

Okay, maybe they should put in at Gateway too. Meanwhile, Goose Hollow also makes sense, and for years I asked TriMet to put in a bike storage facility there. If you’re commuting from the inner eastside, or anywhere between the river and the West Hills, one of the most logical places to pick up MAX to get to the westside is Goose Hollow. Because of how slow MAX is through downtown, you don’t save any time by getting on the train at, say, Pioneer Courthouse Square. I got on at Goose Hollow daily for quite a few years, until the trains started getting more crowded when gas got expensive in the late 2000s. Then I switched to Pioneer because I was more likely to find space for my bike by getting on earlier, not because it saved me time.

So I think this is a great development.

TK
TK
5 years ago

I had my bike seat and post stolen from my bike in December when it was u-locked at the Bybee Blvd MAX Station, during the daytime and under full view of two security cameras. The seat was secured with a hex screw, not a “secure bolt,” but still it meant that whomever took it had to carry around allen wrenches and was not at all deterred by the threat of being watched. I asked Trimet to review the tapes the next day and was told that it would cost more to retrieve that footage than the seat is worth, so what’s even the point of filming it? When all you have to do is purchase a $3.00 HOP Card to gain access to this locker, all I can think of is that someone will go shopping for a $3.00 bike seat there eventually. I take my bike on the MAX now.