By Maxwell Powers
TriMet has a new “road diet” planned for Portland, this time on 82nd Avenue. Working with Metro, TriMet is proposing a transit corridor entirely dedicated to buses. They plan to dedicate bus-only lanes, up and down both sides of the street, shrinking 82nd from a four-lane avenue down to a two-lane road for up to seven miles—from Clackamas Town Center to Portland’s Cully neighborhood.
The project claims that bus-only lanes are only one of the options as part of ongoing conversations, but the most recent Metro mockup on the future of 82nd Avenue prominently prioritizes “BAT lanes” (Business Access and Transit lanes) as the locally preferred alternative (LPA).
By cutting car lanes in half, the bus-only lanes will increase congestion substantially. According to TriMet’s own estimates, adding these lanes would cause up to 25 percent of drivers to divert from their routes to avoid traffic. Those diversions will put more stress on residential streets and neighborhoods, requiring additional safety features and maintenance. In the same document, TriMet states these new bus-only lanes will save transit riders three or four minutes at most. That’s with seven straight miles of bus lanes.
The purpose of 82nd Avenue—also known as Highway 213—is to move as many people and vehicles as possible from point A to point B. What moves more people: a lane that allows both cars and buses, or a lane that only allows buses?
Metro Council is scheduled to consider bond funding for 82nd avenue and four other projects on July 31. Metro should eliminate bus-only “BAT lanes” from any further consideration as part of the 82nd Avenue Transit Project.
Max Powers is a Research Associate at Cascade Policy Institute, Oregon’s free market, public policy, research organization.
