Advocates closely tracking the status of TriMet’s 82nd Avenue Transit Project are worried that the quality of the bus service might be compromised in light of pushback from some businesses along the corridor.
The Line 72 that runs on 82nd has more riders than any bus line in the state with about 10,000 daily boardings. It also has the most delays due to all the drivers and their cars that get in the way. Whether or not Line 72 gets better along with the generational investment underway on 82nd has never been in dispute; but how much better is the big question. With two lanes in each direction, a dedicated bus lane — also known as business access and transit, or BAT lanes — for all 10 miles of the project between Clackamas and Portland’s Cully neighborhood would mean a lot less space for cars.
Back in May, when TriMet asked the general public whether they wanted “some” BAT lanes or “more” BAT lanes, the results were clear: 70% of respondents chose the “more” option. Now however, it appears TriMet has heard feedback from business owners that’s not as supportive.
“While the survey in April indicated support for the ‘More BAT’ lanes option, we heard that more business engagement was needed,” reads a slide that will be presented tomorrow (Weds, 9/24) at a meeting of the 82nd Avenue Transit Project Community Advisory Committee (CAC). “In recent discussions with businesses,” continues the text on the slide, “we heard support for the transit and safety improvements, as well as significant concerns to BAT lanes.” TriMet says those concerns had to do with “customer access,” “construction impact,” and “traffic and vehicle diversion.”
Now I’m hearing a bit of worry in messages from some advocates who are tracking this project closely. While many thought the project was moving forward with BAT lanes along nearly the entire corridor, there’s significant concern that TriMet project managers might compromise the BAT lane to win business support. That could mean we’d see BAT lanes only on some sections of the project corridor — a move that would likely result in slower buses.
One transit advocate shared with me today that, given what they feel is a recent change in tone from project leaders about the BAT lane issue, “I am on high alert.”
TriMet has just uploaded a new draft design concept that shows continuous BAT lanes for the entire project within Portland city limits (SE Luther Rd). However, their materials make it clear that nothing is final. “BAT lane under evaluation. The extent of this feature is still being explored,” TriMet writes. The agency expects to make a final decision about the BAT lanes in late 2025.
This topic will be discussed at the CAC meeting tomorrow (9/24) from 6:00 to 7:30 pm at PCC SE Community Hall Annex (2305 SE 82nd Ave.).
Thanks for reading.
BikePortland has served this community with independent community journalism since 2005. We rely on subscriptions from readers like you to survive. Your financial support is vital in keeping this valuable resource alive and well.
Please subscribe today to strengthen and expand our work.
Here’s where those City Council members that we elected to represent us, the citizens, and not solely business interests, need to step up and do the right thing and turn a lane in each direction on 82nd into bus only lanes.
No more meetings, no more committees, do the f’ing job we elected you to do.
Oh that’s right, brave stances that might not lead to your re-election is something you aren’t willing to do, huh?
If brave stances are the job we elected folks to do, why would doing so jeopardize their reelection?
Do we want a car centric 82nd or a people centric one? Mixing it has been shown over and over to be very dangerous. The whole point of this re-design was to address safety along 82nd. The catalyst was multiple pedestrian deaths in the same week. Prioritizing access for drivers at the expense of mass transit and pedestrian safety is the antithesis of what this project is about.
End of the day do we want used car lots, car part stores, and an alternative to 205 for drivers to cut through the neighborhood or a corridor that’s safe and inviting to alternative transportation and people? I don’t think you can have both.
The fact that the 72 has the highest ridership of any line in OREGON tells me there’s a huge latent demand for a friendlier street to non-car users. Opting to compromise the BAT lane in any way diminishes the positive effects to all road users. As an occasional car user, I LOVE driving on simple single lane roads. I feel safer and calmer and I would definitely frequent 82nd more with improved access and ease of use.
Should we be surprised that the bus line on one of the busiest streets in the largest city in Oregon has the highest ridership?
Who said anything about being surprised?
But as you state, one of the busiest streets in the largest city in Oregon has the highest transit ridership. Therefore, it should be configured to get those transit riders to their destinations as efficiently as possible, preferably with a full-length BAT lane.
I can’t even imagine what point your comment was trying to make.
My point is that we shouldn’t assume latent demand. There is no evidence of that.
Has the FX2 seen significantly higher ridership than Line 4 saw when it ran on Division?
I would ride the 72 bus on 82nd more often if it was quicker and more convenient than driving. Instead, I drive for errands that are a little too far/inconvenient for a bike ride. Also a big part of choosing to drive over biking around the 82nd area is security for my bike when I get to my destination, but that is another topic.
Yes! In its first year of operation, FX2 had about 40% higher ridership than the old Line 4. While some of that is obvious attributable to post-COVID recovery across the system, it’s considerably better than the +15% ridership change (from 30m trips in 2022 to 34m trips in 2023) the bus system as a whole saw from 2022 to 2023.
https://news.trimet.org/2023/09/trimets-first-fx-frequent-express-bus-line-speeds-up-trips-and-increases-ridership-by-half-a-million-rides-in-first-year/
https://www.transit.dot.gov/sites/fta.dot.gov/files/transit_agency_profile_doc/2023/00008.pdf
I’m not sure that we’ll ever get a clean answer to this question, as the pre-2020 ridership on Line 2 appears to be higher, with 9,140 average weekday boardings on the line, which would add up to more than 50,000 weekly riders, exceeding the FX2 numbers noted in Trimet’s 2023 report.
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=89978449&url=https://trimet.org/about/pdf/route/2019fall/route_ridership_report_(sorted_by_route)_weekday.pdf&ved=2ahUKEwic0I-6svKPAxVZJDQIHY6GGZ04ChAWegQIFBAB&usg=AOvVaw0LmFVbXovuvSt9YJdcDFdi
It’s hard to suss out increased ridership due to service improvements vs the noise of the pandemic.
In the TriMet report, they specifically compare the FX2/2 lines ridership growth to the system as a whole, which is an attempt to suss out service improvements vs. noise of the pandemic.
I think it’s a bit misleading to directly compare the 2 and FX2, because they do serve different places – most notably OHSU/PSU for the FX2 but not the 2. Since it makes travel to the downtown core slower, but travel to OHSU/PSU faster, and since OHSU/PSU have generally had a stronger worker commute recovery than the downtown core, at least some of the difference is explained by that rather than service levels.
That aside, I think it’s difficult to argue that the FX2 hasn’t been a qualified success – but with a serious qualification that the project shot itself in the foot immediately by not being BRT. An actual Powell-Division BRT could have had even faster and more reliable travel time, and if we compare to the Van Ness situation in San Francisco (where ridership is above pre-pandemic levels on the 49), it should be obvious that faster travel time + more frequent service means more ridership
Even if ridership didn’t grow, at least the trips got faster.
No, it’s not surprising, but that along with the delays and congestion does indicate that the existing low-efficiency configuration should be converted to something higher capacity.
I’d love to know which specific businesses are against buses.
I mean, the street is full of auto sales, gas stations and car washes. You don’t have to guess which ones would be against it lol
I don’t view car dealerships as particularly high traffic business. They see far fewer potential customers than most businesses. I would think that the restaurants (fast food in particular) and grocery stores would be more skeptical of reconfiguring the road.
Historically, the biggest and noisiest opposition to any changes on 122nd was from car dealerships, who have a lot of money and employees. Buying a car, even a used one, is the biggest purchase most renters will ever make, and most adults are renters rather than homeowners in Portland. I see lots of people wandering car sales lots all the time, contemplating future purchases, far more people than I’ve ever seen at a bike shop.
Sure, but I’m willing to bet that the number of used car shoppers is dwarfed by the number of cars that go through Burgerville’s drive through.
Again, every bus rider is a potential customer to the car lot.
Ever been to River City Bikes on a sunny Saturday afternoon in July?
YES TO BAT on 82nd!
More BAT lanes=less car dealerships and less auto-centric businesses. This means more housing and more stores for people-needs, not car-needs. Remember, 82nd was a narrow country road with houses along it, not all that long ago.
Businesses come and go, but 82nd bus lanes will be forever!
Curious why a car dealership would pick up and move shop due to the presence of BAT. Seems like they’d view everyone waiting at the bus stop in front of their business as a potential customer.
it also doesn’t seem like a given that a vacated car lot would be replaced with housing.
The customers of these businesses are people. The cars aren’t autonomously shopping.
They’re going to love parking their auto transport vehicles in those BAT lanes while they unload inventory.
For what it’s worth two vacated RV lots near me on 82nd are being/were converted to transitional housing.
This is the completed one. Before. After.
This is the second site which is expected to open early next year.
Maybe it’s not the type of housing MontyP was thinking of but it’s an improvement over what was there.
Yes, it is all incremental change, and anytime a used car/RV lot gets turned into housing of some sort is a win for me.
The businesses of today will likely not be the businesses of 10-20+ years from now. The change has to start somewhere, and the design of this road will play a huge part in that.
If 82nd was much more transit and pedestrian friendly, a lot of those lots that are zoned to allow residential building projects would actually get developed. And, the city would likely rezone others to allow for more housing. A good example is the old Elmers/eastern Cathay/Taste of Szechuan property to the SW of the 82nd Ave. transit center/max station. That one acre CM2-zoned property was recently for sale, but no one wanted to buy it to develop it into housing and retail spaces. If 82nd was nicer, that project would likely be under construction right now.
Cool info! Veering directly OT discussion: if the 82nd landscape is changing (and I think it is and will be with or without bus lanes), it’s no surprise RV dealerships go first. It’s baffling to me how they stay afloat with that much overhead on their lots.
I am so tired of buisness owners getting to dictate whether or not we get good, pedestrian friendly infrastructure. They are a tiny minority of people and yet they weild an immense amount of power. Why do we allow this as a society?
Because ThE EcOnoMY ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Especially frustrating when it nearly always ends up being good for business too.
I’m so tired of business owners providing vital goods, services and employment to my community. /s
$14 smoothies, Crystals, and shitty used RVs are not vital goods. Half the businesses on 82nd won’t exist when the project starts construction.
Its consumers who provide those things, not the buisnesses. Without the consumers, the buisnessess would cease to exist.
I could have sworn that buisnesses exist to meet the demands of the consumers.
It’s also weird that we treat businesses as if they are permanent fixtures that can’t be disturbed. Some businesses are attracted to car sewers and some are repelled. As the city changes and more people live in certain areas, and more people expect to have an enjoyable residential experience and less danger, the car sewers have to go. That change will inevitably change some of the businesses in those areas. Setting up shop does on a street not entitle someone to freeze that street in time and ignore the needs of the people living close by.
And on 82nd they aren’t going to lose anything. There’s no on street parking so a lost lane won’t affect their customers ability to visit their businesses. They could even advertise “come by bus, they have their own lane”. “Bus riders get 5% off any purchase over $50.”
It’s amazing how many business owners can’t leverage this as a bonus and an opportunity, not a negative.
“Can’t have bike lanes, we need that space for transit.”
…one or two years later.
“Can’t have bus lanes.”
Come on Jonathan, it’s a web survey that you and your pals (BikeLoud etc.) blasted to every corner of social media, begging followers to flood and juke the results. You even linked to your blog post about it, come on!
It’s wildly disingenuous to treat that as factual community support, especially when you’ve personally tampered with the response. Naturally if an anti-changes group had done the opposite you’d cry foul.
You owe us all a retraction for making such a claim. And every single follower who jumped in on that lil’ dog pile with no connection to the affected neighborhoods should feel bad. It’s cheating, it’s anti-democratic, and it’s just plain dishonest.
Just say you don’t like public transit dude.
What claim do you think should be retracted? The passage you quote is manifestly accurate.
How much ‘connection’ to 82nd do I need to justify my participation? Do I need to live within some cutoff distance? Or patronize a business with an address on 82nd with some minimum frequency? What do you expect transportation activists to do when such a survey is fielded? “Oh no, I’m not going to respond, because I don’t want my views diluting all the reddit trolls.”
I agree that survey results like this have little information content and are mostly a way for agencies to defend the (unavoidably) arbitrary decisions that will (unavoidably) violate the preferences of some constituents. The dynamic is familiar to anyone who has observed federal agencies trying to manage public land. Your bitterness is shared by many other stakeholders, including bike and transit boosters. Sky put it well in an excellent comment above:
This screed is as incoherent as it is polemic, bellowing for a retraction of a verifiable statement and derisively defining civic engagement as akin to an authoritarian plot.
Let’s break down your assertion that there were poll respondents with “no connection to the affected neighborhoods.”
Can you provide us with the radius by which one’s connection is measured? Does one have to live within a certain number of blocks of 82nd? Do they have to shop at businesses on 82nd a definite number of times a week or month? Does one have to be employed within the radius you’ve determined to validate permission to participate in the survey? Can a Washington resident who doesn’t work within the radius but drives back and forth every weekday on 82nd on their single occupancy commute get to choose an option in the poll?
Clearly, the people who utilize public transit on 82nd have a connection, so they get to participate, right?
How about the folks who view our streets as a collective system in which our city’s roads are an inter-connected network where the design in one part of an urban area has consequence to other parts?
Or was the poll only meant to hear from one voice?
“It’s cheating, it’s anti-democratic, and it’s just plain dishonest.”
Jonathan helping to spread a poll so more people can take part in this “democratic’process is anti-democratic, but buisness owners being given a larger voice than everyone else is democratic?
Jonathan’s statement is correct, in that he described what the “survey” respondents said.
Where the error comes from is generalizing the survey results to the population that did not respond to the survey (i.e. most Portlanders). We have no idea what they think. The reported results are completely compatible with, for example, 80% of Portlanders (or even 80% of folks living near 82nd) thinking that doing anything to improve transit on 82nd would be a disaster.
Online polls mean nothing, and that should always be front-and-center when discussing them. They are a political tool, and nothing else.
I feel there is a compromise to be had here. Why not have BAT lanes be active during peak travel times so the buses can optimally function when they need to and then allow 2 lane travel during non-peak?
Because most drivers aren’t smart enough, don’t care enough, or some combination of the two to observe those rules?
Sit at the crosswalk from the mup to the pedestrian island on the NE corner of 212 & 224 some morning. Then tell me how people will behave in that scenario.
In most cities nationwide, the “peak times” are no longer 2 hours in the morning and one hour in the evening, but are now extending to 4 hours every morning AND evening, as many businesses and other employers are encouraging flex time, part-time work, and so many people work from home. For many transit systems, the peak periods are actually on the weekends rather than on weekdays.
Why would cars need 2 lanes during non-peak times?
They wouldn’t need it. But this is same reasoning/approach as why some HOV lane restrictions only apply during rush hours.
Somoene on reddit pointed out that the Trimet survey was filled out exactly as BikePortland told its readers to fill it out.
It’s too funny.
Funny how none of the options in the TriMet survey were
I’m sure there are many other cost saving measures that were conveniently left off the survey
Lol. 2 HR staff for a company in the thousands?
The general range is 1-2.5 HR FTE per employee, with heavily automated industries nearing 1.0 and compliance heavy/heavily unionized industries approaching 2.5.
We actually run .5 for 40 and sometimes the tasks overflow the hours allotted to handle them.
Trimet has about 3500 people right now IIRC, so you think a 1:17 ratio wouldn’t result in a complete disaster.
Just goes to show how wrong armchair quarterbacks can be.
What sucks about all of this is that BAT lanes are already less than the corridor deserves. 82nd is one of the only corridors in the City that could reasonably support a Van Neas style center running option. While the BAT lane will be an obvious improvement, side running bus lanes on a street with a ton of businesses are still prone to significant delays.
I think it’s indicative that the region essentially does not believe in public transit as a solution to our general urban problems that we will have spent hundreds of millions on an 82nd Ave redesign that will be anything other than a revolution for people actually riding the bus. We’ve already settled for a mediocre solution that will be unlikely to move the needle, the fact that we are apparently considering the “do nothing but stop consolidation and bigger shelters with some new buses” option here is so incredibly disappointing and depressing.
Business Access and Transit
What can we learn from past projects …
What we can lean on from past projects
What this means for a “stroad” with 2×2 lanes at 30 mph (freeway alternative)If you convert the two outside lanes to BAT lanes (keeping right-turn/driveway access), past projects suggest:
Practical guardrails to protect businesses (pulled from case practices)
Thanks for such an informative and detailed post.
I’m sort of generally skeptical that any transit project will reduce business viability, but the Seattle examples are great illustrations of why BAT lanes are a minimally viable transit strategy. The Metro Rapid Ride E has those BAT lanes on Aurora, and is still half the speed of driving from the Shoreline/Seattle city line to Uptown. When the entire corridor is made up of curb-cuts for strip mall oriented businesses, center running rights of way are far, far superior for transit speed at the cost of left turn access to businesses (which may be problematic even in the existing environment). At peak times on busy commercial strips with a lot of car access the turns cause serious delays to a bus. The Rapid Ride E is scheduled ~6 minutes slower during peak hours from Shoreline to Fremont (~25%), despite those BAT lanes. The center-running Van Ness section of the 49 has a 2 minute range between peak and off-peak (presumably because of stop loading time) – about a 12% difference.
In terms of transit ride experience, a center running busway is vastly superior in essentially all circumstances, with a minor tradeoff of always having to cross the street halfway to get to a stop (but given that few trips involve travel on a corridor in only one direction, this doesn’t really matter in practice). What drives me crazy about 82nd, is that Eugene has a great example of a mostly center running BRT (the EmX) that manages to have long sections of single-tracked corridor to get around space constraints, and still maintains 10 minute headways. This is the ideal solution for the 72! But as far as I can tell, it wasn’t ever considered by anyone. And it is also possible to design left turn pockets across median busways (though this can be problematic as well). Oh, and you can have center running busways that have stations on the right side of the bus too – so no need for buses with double sided doors.
Yes, a BAT lane is better than nothing, but it has the serious downside of not being as good for transit riders while having about the same level of anger from the conservative business community who don’t want change on “their” corridor. Outer Division was an even better corridor for center running (it’s wider), and they made a hard median that pissed everyone off. If we’re gonna piss everyone off, we should do at least actually give transit riders a good product at the end of the day too.
I can’t find any documents on median BRT being formally considered for 82nd ave.
I did learn that it’s 56′ to 60′ curb-to-curb, so I did a bit more research and came to the conclusion that we’d likely need a shared lane design at stations in order to give us plenty of room at the stations for a safe place for riders to wait and enable the use of right door buses.
This is a bit crude, but:
https://tinyurl.com/trike-guy-82nd-BRT
It wasn’t as far as I can tell. Which is deeply silly. There is enough room on a 60′ right of way to give space for a 10 minute bidirectional headway bus in a center running busway, left turns in select locations, two through travel lanes, and bus stations. How often the busway can be unidirectional vs. bidirectional is very sensitive to bus travel time, but don’t think it would be impossible to design – especially since 82nd is much less constrained south of the city line.
Anyways, it’s a moot point by now. But it speaks to something that Eugene designed a mostly center running BRT 20 years ago with extensive single tracking on a less busy transit corridor, saw ridership more than double, and we are sitting here acting like the BAT lane stuff on 82nd would be groundbreaking. It’d be better than what we have now, but what we have now is so awful, so I just think we need to dream a little bigger
RE Center running bus lane
Do you really think TriMet didn’t consider this option? It just didn’t occur to them? More likely, they considered it and concluded the tradeoffs to be too impactful for it to be a good fit, considering the entire context.
I see no evidence in any public facing documentation that they ever considered a center running right of way on 82nd. I may have missed something on Metro’s planning document page, or in archived versions of the 2023 open house, but I think it’s fair to put this one in the “wasn’t considered by regional officials” bucket.
I think TriMet saw the FX2 as a fairly successful project that was still politically contentious, and then concluded that a more intensive project like a center-running BRT on 82nd would be infeasible for space reasons. My impression is that at least some of this has to do with assumed width that this option would take, and that it wouldn’t be unreasonable to think the EmX-style partial single track busway idea never really came into serious consideration.
A note about single-track bus ways: they are generally inflexible for service planning. If you design a corridor with set places for buses to pass on say, 10 minute headways, it’s entirely possible that moving to 15 minute headways would create annoying issues. This could be another reason that TriMet would be unwilling to pursue something like this, but I think the benefits to riders far outweigh the difficulties TriMet may potentially have in service planning.
In either case, I think the most likely reason a center running busway was never publicly considered is that it was ruled out for slightly dubious reasons. At a minimum, it should have been studied seriously. But instead, TriMet is doing an “FX Only” new high capacity service planning – regardless of what a corridor needs or could handle. I think it’s fair to say that 82nd avenue is second most important transit corridor in the entire region (behind the transit mall downtown). Good service on 82nd allows for so many transfers! Is 82nd the second most important corridor in the region for any other mode? Clearly not. What tradeoffs would lead TriMet to rule out the fastest and most reliable bus solution for 82nd in the context of what 82nd is for their network?
After reading blumdrews comment I dug pretty deep and found no indication of even a cursory look at a median BRT.
People like fast buses taking them across town to where they need to be. I wonder if BRTs on the highways circling Portland would also be popular. I heard some people who take the bus they would consider getting a car because to some destinations busses are sloooow. We should flip that on its head and make transit the fastest way to get around town, followed by cycling.