The wheels are coming off

Of all the things falling apart these days, Portland's mass transit systerm, Tri-Met, may be the worst basket case. They're being forced to slash service, again, after decades of bad luck and even worse decisions have led to their running out of cash.

One of the most notable proposed cuts is major surgery on the MAX light-rail green line, which currently runs from downtown Portland to the Clackamas Town Center mall. If the planned changes take effect late this summer, the line will run only between the mall and the ever-scarier Gateway Transit Center. A trip from downtown to anywhere on the green line will now require you to make a connection, enjoying the unique ambience that is Gateway. Bring your mace.

As one observer noted, this truncation of service calls into question whether the green line should have ever been built. It was constructed in the late 2000's at a cost in today's dollars of about $870 million.

Not slated for any such cuts is the even more ridiculous MAX orange line, the Mystery Train to Nowhere, which takes the few and the proud from downtown Portland to Milwaukie-With-an-I. When that pork barrel was oozing in the early 2010's, at a tab of about $1.8 billion in today's dollars, the "projection" was that the line would carry about 17,000 riders on an average weekday. The last time I checked, the actual figure was 5300.

While it's milldly satisfying to see that my predictions about the orange line boondoggle were correct, the dire pronouncements from Tri-Met are profoundly sad. For example, there will no longer be a bus going to Providence Hospital. The Tri-sters are telling the patients to take the train, get off at the often-terrifying Hollywood station, and walk over the freeway bridge to the hospital. It's about an 18-minute walk... and that's if you're healthy.

And for folks in my neck of the woods, it's the strongest rumor yet that the no. 17 bus, formerly the 9 Broadway, is finally moving from 24th Avenue to 33rd Avenue, which for some adds an unworkable nine-block walk to and from the bus. Not that anybody around here rides the thing much. Every night you can see absolutely empty 17's running up and down 24th. We're talking literally zero riders.

But for sure, the one thing that won't be cut are the life-sucking taxes that keep the Tri-Met suits in their jobs. The transit district's hideous payroll and self-employment taxes, once set at 0.6 percent, are now at 0.8237 percent. So if you're making $100,000 a year around here, the buses and trains nick you or your boss for $823.70, which works out to $69 a month in taxes. If you want to actually ride, that's extra. 

Then there's the equally hideous statewide wage tax for transit. It's currently 0.1 percent of employees' wages, and set to double if a November ballot measure doesn't, well, derail the increase. All the more reason not to open a business here, or to move out the one you have. And so the tax base declines, in the perfect example of a doom loop.

But there's no use crying about the inevitable. Tri-Met management has been inept for decades, and that isn't going to change any time soon. Their system was built for downtown, and downtown is dead. People are reluctant to go there, especially on a bus or a train with fentanyl smokers and untreated mentally ill people, of which Portland is now replete. And unfortunately, the decision was made, at the behest of the apartment industry crowd and the construction heavies, to lay down light rail and streetcar tracks that don't go where people need to go, and that can't be moved.

Pay more, get less – it's where we are with Tri-Met and are likely to stay until the whole system is ripped up and reworked. Don't hold your breath. More likely they'll build another mystery train, to Tualatin, as soon as the blue team gets the reins of the federal government back in hand.