History
Adopted in 1975 to combat limited parking and air pollution, Fareless Square initially encompassed the area of downtown Portland between Hoyt Street and Market Street, and from the Willamette River west to I-405. On April 3, 1977, it was expanded southward from Market Street to the point where I-405 meets the river at the Marquam Bridge. A minor adjustment of Fareless Square occurred during the 1990s in order to include the stops for Union Station (Amtrak), by extending the northern limits of the area by one block to Northwest Irving Street.
In 2001, Fareless Square was extended again, this time across the river to the Lloyd District. Included were MAX stations along Holladay Street and bus stops on NE Multnomah Street from the Rose Quarter, past the Oregon Convention Center to the Lloyd Center shopping mall. This was a panhandle-shaped addition to the original free-fare zone, and consequently Fareless Square was, strictly speaking, no longer square-shaped but retained its name. In 2007, a pair of stops directly in front of Union Station, added with Portland Mall construction and north of Hoyt Street, were added to the zone . In its last years, the free-service area covered 1.35 square miles (3.5 km2).
Read more about this topic: Free Rail Zone
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“Most events recorded in history are more remarkable than important, like eclipses of the sun and moon, by which all are attracted, but whose effects no one takes the trouble to calculate.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“We have need of history in its entirety, not to fall back into it, but to see if we can escape from it.”
—José Ortega Y Gasset (1883–1955)
“We are told that men protect us; that they are generous, even chivalric in their protection. Gentlemen, if your protectors were women, and they took all your property and your children, and paid you half as much for your work, though as well or better done than your own, would you think much of the chivalry which permitted you to sit in street-cars and picked up your pocket- handkerchief?”
—Mary B. Clay, U.S. suffragist. As quoted in History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 4, ch. 3, by Susan B. Anthony and Ida Husted Harper (1902)