Portland Transit Mall - Design and Amenities

Design and Amenities

The 1970s rebuilding of 5th and 6th avenues as transit-priority streets included several changes designed to create an environment that was more attractive and inviting to transit users and other pedestrians. Sidewalks were widened and repaved in brick, many additional trees were planted, new works of public art were commissioned and installed, and amenities such as benches and flower planters were added.

At each bus stop, a large new passenger shelter was installed. In addition to a pay telephone, every shelter was equipped with a closed-circuit television monitor giving riders information as to the next three departures on each bus route serving that particular stop. This particular feature of the Portland Transit Mall was said to be a "first" for urban transit at the time (1977), having previously been used only in intercity transportation terminals, mainly airports. They came into use in January 1978. The monitors were originally black-and-white, but were replaced by color ones in 1988.

Most bus routes serving downtown Portland followed the transit mall, but a few remained on so-called "cross-mall" routings, along east-west streets, originally Morrison and Yamhill streets but shifted to Washington and Salmon Streets with the start of MAX construction in the early 1980s.

With regard to operations, the mall was designed with two bus stops in each block, or about one stop every 100 feet (30 m). However, a bus operating on any given route only stopped at every fourth stop, i.e., every two blocks. TriMet adopted symbols and colors for each grouping of stops, so that bus riders could easily determine which particular stop locations were served by their routes. The colors/symbols, which were marked by large signs at each stop and also shown on public schedules and maps, were as follows: Brown Beaver, Green Leaf, Yellow Rose, Orange Deer, Red Fish, Purple Raindrops and Blue Snowflake. They were also called "sector symbols", as each one corresponded to a particular sector of the city, e.g., the Rose being for routes serving Southwest Portland and the Fish for North Portland routes. When TriMet's first light rail line opened in 1986, use of the Snowflake symbol on the mall was discontinued, as all TriMet routes in that sector were curtailed to terminate at a light rail station, such as the Gateway Transit Center, and no longer traveled to downtown.

This operating configuration for the Portland Mall remained largely unchanged for 29 years, until the mall closed for rebuilding in early 2007. TriMet discontinued use of the distinctive graphic symbols used at mall stops at that time, but the symbols had already been relegated to secondary status in 2002, when they were replaced by purely geographic, letter designations such as N or NE (for North Portland or Northeast Portland) for each grouping. The graphic sector symbols were retained only at a greatly reduced size on the mall signs (much smaller in size than the new letter indications) and were no longer used at all in other TriMet media, such as the covers of bus schedules. They disappeared entirely in January 2007.