
Bridge management defends TriMet’s excessive demands for project
Nineteen light rail vehicles at triple the price not a concern for IBR team
John Ley
For Clark County Today
The Interstate Bridge Replacement Program (IBR) defends TriMet’s demands for 19 new light rail vehicles as part of the $2 billion, 1.9-mile MAX light rail extension into Vancouver. Furthermore, IBR officials defend TriMet seeking triple the cost of each of those vehicles.
Add to this the fact that on a “per mile” basis, this project is the world’s most expensive rail project at just over $1 billion per mile. Furthermore, the cost of the entire project has exploded in the past four years.
IBR officials said they could build the project for $3.2 – $4.8 billion in 2020. It jumped to a range of $5 – $7.5 billion two years later. A year ago Program Administrator Greg Johnson told the community costs will increase again, but he won’t tell citizens until the summer of 2025, after the DSEIS has been submitted.
These should be red flags to both citizens and federal officials overseeing the project.

Buried in the 10,000-plus pages of the Draft Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement (DSEIS) released by the IBR, are many details related to the light rail extension into Vancouver. The program recommends the project include “high capacity” transit, and chose the TriMet light rail over Bus Rapid Transit (BRT). C-TRAN has built three BRT lines for about $50 million each in the last decade.
TriMet’s Board of Directors is demanding $21.6 million in new taxes from both Oregon and Washington in order to pay for the operations and maintenance of the 1.9 mile extension of the Yellow Line. They are demanding 19 new light rail vehicles, or 10 vehicles per mile, a seemingly ridiculous number considering two-car trains only run four times an hour during peak periods and every 30 minutes at other times of the day.
Additionally, TriMet is asking the program to pay between $190 million and $290 million for the light rail vehicles, or $10 – $15 million per vehicle. TriMet recently paid just $4.5 million for four new vehicles as part of their 10 mile “Better Red” light rail extension from Beaverton to Hillsboro. On top of that, Trimet officials are asking for the program to expand their Gresham maintenance facility.
The Federal Transit Administration (FTA) rules only allow federal funding to cover half the capital cost of a new mass transit project. That means Oregon and Washington taxpayers should each pick up one quarter of the remaining capital cost, or $500 million each.
Southwest Washington citizens should recall that C-TRAN offers the only transit service across the Columbia River. Oregon has never paid for the capital cost of new buses, nor anything towards the operations and maintenance of the C-TRAN buses that cross the Columbia River on both the I-5 and I-205 bridges.
Light rail a chronic under-performer
“Light rail has been a chronic under-performer in Portland for 38 years, and it always will be,” stated John Charles of the Cascade Policy Institute (CPI). “But results never seem to matter for TriMet.”
The CPI has documented a long history of broken promises by TriMet regarding its MAX light rail service. In 2019, multiple failures to deliver were reported, including eight departures an hour on the Yellow Line by 2020. The report included a brief history of the Yellow Line.
The Yellow Line originated in 1988 as a 21-mile project connecting Vancouver, Washingt