Dozens of people turned out Wednesday to have their say about whether a potential new transit line should use a light rail tunnel to serve Portland Community College's Sylvania campus, as the Southwest Corridor Plan nears major decisions about a rapid transit line from Portland to Bridgeport Village, via Tigard.
The line will run within a mile of the hilltop campus in Southwest Portland. Officials from Metro, TriMet and other project partners have been studying whether to run light rail through a tunnel under the campus.
Earlier this week, planners recommended against the tunnel. It’s now up to elected officials on the project steering committee to decide whether to accept the staff recommendation, or to press forward with the direct access to PCC.
The staff recommendation was part of a larger report to the steering committee. Staff also recommended pressing forward with a light rail line instead of bus rapid transit in the corridor, citing its ability to better meet demand and link up with the region’s six other MAX lines.
The tunnel under PCC's campus should be removed from further consideration, planners said, because it would likely expensive enough to prevent the light rail line from reaching Bridgeport Village at all within the funding levels planners project will be available for this project's construction.
Planners say alternative surface connections could work almost as well to get students and employees to PCC, at a far lower cost and with less impact on nearby neighborhoods.
The steering committee will decide whether to follow those recommendations in May.
At the Southwest Community Center Wednesday, project staff explained their recommendations and invited questions from the committee.
Tualatin Mayor Lou Ogden called the question bluntly: "If we invested the assumed cost to get the tunnel to PCC…what's the anticipated distance that we could extend (light rail) south?"
"Tigard Transit Center," replied Metro project manager Chris Ford.
"What would the total ridership look like doing that versus not doing the tunnel and going all the way to Bridgeport Village?" Ogden asked next.
"It's lower," replied project planner Matt Bihn. "A tunnel to PCC stopping in Tigard Transit Center has less line ridership and system ridership than not having a tunnel and going all the way to Bridgeport." He clarified that models show the potential light rail line would have 11 percent fewer riders while the transit system overall would have 18 percent fewer riders.
While an unscientific online survey on Metro's website in February showed modest support for continuing to study a tunnel, Ford noted that the question wasn't constrained – in other words, it didn't ask people to weigh whether a tunnel's cost would be worth the line not reaching further south.
Read the recommendations
Share your reactions
Couldn't make it Wednesday? Share your reactions to the recommendations with Southwest Corridor staff at [email protected]. Comments will be shared with the steering committee before the May 9 meeting.
More than a dozen members of the public shared their reactions to the recommendations directly with the committee, while others conversed with staff in a public forum after the meeting.
PCC bond program director Linda Degman told the committee that she appreciated the effort to find better ways to bring better transit to the hilltop campus, and said the college is hopeful that some of the surface connections will improve transit access for students and employees.
But she acknowledged a tunnel would have been the college's ideal choice.
"We are clearly disappointed that we won't have a direct access tunnel to our campus, which I think for us would have been a game changer for our campus," Degman said. "The only place we have to build are our parking lots, and unless we can really improve transit access to our campus, we won't be able to grow the campus the way that we would envision."
Degman added that the college has ambitious goals to increase transit ridership to campus, and requiring riders transfer to another line would make it harder to reach those goals.
Evan Lazar, a Southeast Portland resident and self-described transit advocate, shared similar concerns.
"When you're talking about connection options, remember it's not the number of minutes (required for a transfer), it's the idea of a connection that turns people off to transit," he said.
On the other hand, Far Southwest Neighborhood Association chair Marcia Leslie expressed relief at the staff's recommendations to remove the tunnel from further consideration. The neighborhood association has opposed the tunnel because of likely construction impacts to homes.
"It was not an easy decision, but a wise one," Leslie said.
"PCC Sylvania needs and deserves good mass transit service," she added. "We look forward to working with them and other neighborhood associations to identify the best solutions to meet those needs."
While a tunnel supporter, Far Southwest homeowner Paul Thiers said if it came down to either building a tunnel or reaching light rail to Bridgeport Village, he'd prefer no tunnel.
"I was a neighborhood advocate for the tunnel," Thiers said. "But I think it is important to go down to Bridgeport. I think the main goal is to integrate into the existing MAX system from as far south as we can get."
Gerritt Rosenthal, who said he lived in "what you might call the transportation wasteland of south Tualatin," agreed.
"If the choice is either an underground tunnel or go all the way to Bridgeport Village, it makes no sense not to go to Bridgeport Village," Rosenthal told the committee, adding that he hopes the line would be further extended eventually to major job centers in Tualatin and Sherwood.
Compared to the tunnel question, the issue of whether light rail or bus rapid transit is the best mode for rapid transit received relatively little discussion Wednesday, with one commenter raising concerns about light rail's reliability in cold weather but several others saying light rail would be a better choice.
Several attendees submitted written questions to project staff. Planners say they will post answers to those questions online in the coming days.
The committee is scheduled to meet again on May 9 in Tigard, where they are expected to decide on light rail versus bus rapid transit and the PCC tunnel. In June, they are expected to approve a "preferred package" of potential transit alignments for a detailed federal impact review.
Planners will also continue to evaluate transit, roadway, bicycle and pedestrian projects that could go into the review, and will conduct public engagement to determine which projects are most important to improving safe access to stations on the future transit line.
If the committee chooses light rail, the soonest planners expect a Southwest Corridor transit line could open would be 2025, though some related transportation projects would likely be completed before then.