A plan to bring faster and more reliable bus service to 82nd Avenue has started in earnest. The effort will be led by Metro in partnership with the City of Portland. Initial planning stages are underway and Metro says they have an eye toward bringing a version of TriMet’s new Frequent Express (FX) service to this former state highway (you might recall that the City of Portland became the official owner of 82nd Avenue when the jurisdictional transfer from the State of Oregon was completed in April 2022).
82nd Avenue is home to TriMet Line 72, which has the highest ridership of any bus line in the Portland area. It carries an estimated 8,500 riders on an average weekday and runs from Clackamas Town Center to northeast Portland’s Roseway and Sumner neighborhoods. Improving bus service on 82nd has been identified as a top priority in the Regional Transportation Plan and Metro’s High Capacity Transit strategy lists an FX-style bus (like the one TriMet just opened on SE Division) alongside four other Tier 1 projects: Southwest Corridor MAX, Tualatin-Valley Highway FX bus, Interstate Bridge MAX and Montgomery Park streetcar.
If this feels like deja-vu that’s because we’ve been here before. There was a serious look at bus rapid transit on 82nd as part of the initial plans for the Division Transit Project in 2016 (back then it was called the Powell-Division Transit and Development Project). But it was scrapped at that time because ODOT wasn’t ready to restrict driving capacity on 82nd that would have been necessary to speed up buses (and the options to widen the street were consider too expensive or politically infeasible).
Now we’ve got another chance to do something big on 82nd. And this time around, ODOT won’t have nearly as much say in the matter since they only own the portion of 82nd from the Clackamas Town Center to the city limits.
In a factsheet published back in October, Metro wrote:
Bus rapid transit service would significantly improve travel time, reliability, and comfort by allowing the bus to separate from or bypass other vehicle traffic in key areas along the route and improving stations.
Metro’s High Capacity Transit strategy specifically calls out projects that “provide better alternatives to driving that encourage new ridership in support of the region’s climate goals.” Metro, which thinks of high capacity transit as the “backbone” of our regional transportation and growth plans, has been putting the pieces in place for major transit investments since 2009 when they adopted their Regional High Capacity Transit (HCT) System Plan. In an update of the 2018 Regional Transportation Plan they introduced the Enhanced Transit Concept, which they now call “Better Bus.”
The “better bus” project on 82nd has even more momentum right now because it’s being timed to take advantage of the $185 million pledged by ODOT and the Portland Bureau of Transportation as part of their Building a Better 82nd Avenue plan.
The timeline is to develop the design concept now through this spring and then a steering committee will identify a locally preferred alternative this summer. Local and regional governments will be asked to adopt the project this coming summer and fall. Metro will apply for federal grants and begin the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) process will in 2024 and it is scheduled to open in 2029.
Get plugged into the planning effort and learn more at Metro’s website.