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PORTLAND LIGHT RAIL VERSUS FREEWAY

Light rail proponents, particularly in Portland, Oregon, state that light rail carries more riders than a six lane freeway. The following is a comparison of light rail ridership (load) measured in the morning peak period (6:00 AM to 9:00 AM) and Banfield (I-84) ridership.

The light rail ridership was taken from Tri Met’s last census in 1994. It accumulates all of the passengers on all of the trains entering the "central city" ( coming to the Lloyd Center station).

The freeway ridership was derived by multiplying the number of vehicles, counted by the Oregon Department of Transportation’s permanent counter at the same place and at the time as the light rail loads, by 1.1, a conservative estimate of the number of riders per vehicle.

The freeway carries:

• 7.7 times more riders than light rail in the peak direction.
• 11.6 times more riders than light rail in both directions.
• 90.8 times more riders than light rail going away from the central city in the morning.

• One freeway lane carries 2.6 times as many riders as light rail in the peak direction.

Can light rail’s peak period ridership be significantly increased?

No. Light rail was designed for two car trains. To add more cars would mean lengthening stations and blocking intersections in the central business district.

Moreover, more trains per hour is not feasible. Tri Met tried this and found that the trains merely backed-up.

Note: In 1995, the Oregon Transportation Institute (OTI) counted the number of people leaving the Gateway Transit Center to go to the Portland central business district in the 6:00 AM to 9:00 AM peak period. The 1995 OTI count was 2,838. The Tri Met 1994 census reported 2,864 leaving Gateway during the same period. One explanation for the small drop in light rail ridership may be that, in 1995, more people were using the C Trans(Clark County transit agency) bus that came from Clark County to Gateway and, then, traveled express on the freeway to the downtown transit mall. In 1990, the US Census reported that 2,506 people identified themselves as using rail to get to work. 

It appears that peak period usage is stagnant. Any increases in ridership reported by Tri Met appear to be due to increases in nonpeak periods when there is no "congestion" of the roads.