By Randal O’Toole
March 2026
Executive Summary
In 2024, the Oregon legislature Senate Bill 4701 (Section 503) directed Metro to study the Portland area’s 200 miles of freight rail corridors as potential regional passenger or commuter-rail lines.
Metro’s study found that regional rail has “high operating costs,” would often require “significant infrastructure improvements,” that many of the rail lines are already congested with more than 30 trains a day, less than 20 percent of the land in the corridors has “high ridership generating land uses,” and that “some corridors” are not going to attract many riders.
Despite these negative findings, Metro didn’t rule out regional passenger rail, instead calling the rail lines “a potentially underutilized passenger mobility resource.” Metro recommended that policy makers “consider connections to areas outside of the Portland region” such as Salem, “prioritize projects with key near-term opportunities,” and “build ridership . . . to prepare for passenger rail.” Metro also recommended that the region consider “a MAX tunnel through downtown,” “replacing the Steel Bridge,” and “increasing density” along potential rail corridors.
Metro appears to be recommending against regional passenger rail at the moment but proposes activities aimed at creating a future when such rail lines will make more sense. In doing so, Metro betrays a flawed understanding of the characteristics of rail transportation as applied to a modern urban area such as Portland.
Randal O’Toole is an Adjunct Scholar at Cascade Policy Institute, Oregon’s free market public policy research organization. He is a transportation and land-use policy analyst and the author of several books, including American Nightmare: How Government Undermines the Dream of Homeownership and Romance of the Rails: Why the Passenger Trains We Love Are Not the Transportation We Need. He writes from Central Oregon.
