TriMet - General Information

General Information

TriMet is "a municipal corporation of the State of Oregon", with powers to tax, issue bonds, and enact police ordinances and is governed by a seven-member board of directors appointed by the Governor of Oregon. It has its own boundary, which currently encompasses an area of about 575 square miles (1,490 km2). The TriMet district serves portions of the counties of Multnomah, Washington, and Clackamas; it extends from Troutdale to Forest Grove east to west, and from Sauvie Island to Oregon City and Estacada north to south.

For more than 30 years the agency called itself Tri-Met, but it formally dropped the hyphen from its name in 2002, as part of a new corporate identity strategy involving a redesigned logo and new color scheme for its vehicles and other media.

TriMet was formed in 1969 after disputes between the Portland city council and Rose City Transit Company, the private company that previously operated the bus system serving the city (but not its suburbs). The new public agency was created by an ordinance of the Portland city council, under provisions of a law enacted by the 1969 Oregon Legislature, and took over all of Rose City Transit's service and fleet effective December 1, 1969. Bus service in the suburban portions of the metropolitan area was operated by four smaller private companies which had a common union and were collectively known as the "Blue Bus" lines: Portland Stages, Tualatin Valley Buses, Intercity Buses and Estacada-Molalla Stages. These were taken over by TriMet on September 6, 1970. Eighty-eight buses owned by the four suburban companies were transferred to TriMet, but many were found to be in poor condition and the TriMet board soon took action to replace them with new buses.

Up until August 31, 2012 the TriMet district used to be divided into three fare zones, with fares based on the number of zones in which a passenger travels. Zone 1 consists of the Portland city center out one to two miles (3 km). Zone 2 is a ring around Zone 1 out two to three more miles. Zone 3 wraps around Zone 2 and consists of rest of the system within the suburbs of Portland. Within Zone 1 is the Free Rail Zone, an area in and around downtown Portland within which all rides on light rail and streetcars used to be zero-fare. TriMet tickets and passes are also valid on the Portland Streetcar, which is owned by the City of Portland but operated mostly by TriMet personnel under a contract with the city. From 1975–2010 the area now known as the Free Rail Zone applied also to buses and was known as "Fareless Square".

In Fiscal Year 2009, TriMet operated a total of 654 buses on 81 lines, 105 MAX light rail cars on three lines, and 269 LIFT paratransit vehicles. MAX and 12 of the bus lines are marketed as "Frequent Service" lines, scheduled to operate at headways of 15 minutes or better for most of the service day, seven days a week.

TriMet connects to several other mass transit systems:

• C-Tran, the public transit district for Vancouver and Clark County, Washington
• Canby Area Transit, the public transit service for Canby and rural areas south of Oregon City along Highway 99E (formerly within the TriMet district)
• Cherriots, the public transit service for Salem and Keizer. This connection is at the Wilsonville Station of TriMet's Westside Express Service rail line.
• Columbia County Rider, the public transit service for Scappoose, St. Helens, and Columbia County
• Portland Streetcar, a circulator streetcar service in downtown Portland and neighborhoods near downtown
• Sandy Area Metro, the public transit service for Sandy (formerly within the TriMet district)
• SMART, the public transit service for Wilsonville (formerly within the TriMet district)
• South Clackamas Transportation District, the public transit service for Molalla and rural areas south of Oregon City along Highway 213 (formerly within the TriMet district)
• Tillamook County Transportation District, the public transit service for Tillamook and Tillamook County
• Yamhill County Transit Area, the public transit service for McMinnville, Newberg and Yamhill County

TriMet also links to various local shuttle services operated by the following: Ride Connection, which serves Banks, Gaston, King City and North Plains; the Swan Island Transportation Management Association; the Tualatin Transportation Management Association; Intel; Nike; and Oregon Health & Science University, including the Portland Aerial Tram.

Long-range transportation planning for the metropolitan area is provided by Metro, an elected regional government. Metro also has statutory authority to take over the day-to-day operations of TriMet, but has never exercised that power, as past studies of such a merger have found it to be problematic.