The Southwest Portland Post. (Portland, Oregon) 2007-current, April 01, 2016, Page 7, Image 7

April 2016
NEWS
The Southwest Portland Post • 7
Steering committee meeting, public forum scheduled for April 6 at SWCC
SOUTHWEST CORRIDOR PLAN
By Erik Vidstrand
The Southwest Portland Post
An upcoming Southwest Corridor
steering committee meeting is scheduled
for Wednesday, April 6 from 6 – 7 p.m.
at the Southwest Community Center
at Gabriel Park located at Southwest
45th Avenue and Vermont Street. This
meeting is open to the public but has
no testimony.
Immediately following is a public
forum from 7 – 8 p.m. featuring a
20-minute panel discussion with
steering committee members. Small
group table discussions will take place
in which to provide input for staff
recommendations and PCC options.
The committee plans to review the
most recent technical report on ways
to serve Portland Community College’s
Sylvania Campus with improved
transit. The college has been pushing
for direct service to the Mt. Sylvania
campus, the largest in its system with
roughly 14,000 students.
Committee members will review
staff recommendation on a tunnel and
decisions between bus rapid transit and
light rail.
“We want people to understand
that this forum will focus primarily on
the mode and PCC (Sylvania) tunnel
decision,” explained Noelle Dobson,
Metro senior public affairs specialist,
“and not every aspect of the project.”
If light rail is chosen, direct service
would need a tunnel beneath residential
areas between Southwest Barbur
Boulevard and the campus.
Residents in that neighborhood have
generally opposed a tunnel which
would also add more than $300 million
to the overall cost of light rail in the
corridor.
Without a tunnel, the closest light
rail to the campus would be a station
a half-mile away at Barbur Boulevard
and 53rd Avenue.
As the leaders prepare to make a
decision this spring, members of the
public have been weighing in with their
thoughts. A month-long online survey
ended in February and attracted more
than 2,400 responses.
“The survey results aren’t necessarily
representative of public opinion
overall,” Dobson said, “but they do
give some insight into the factors
residents think should drive the
mode decision.”
Among people taking the survey,
light rail was a clear preference over
bus rapid transit with two-thirds of
respondents saying they moderately or
strongly prefer light rail.
“This is the last major leg of the
MAX system,” wrote one respondent
who strongly prefers light rail. “Not
completing the system would be unfair
to the thousands of daily (Southwest)
commuters who have so far supported
light rail in every other part of the metro
area.”
Another respondent who strongly
prefers bus rapid transit disagreed.
“Expanding the light rail system is
prohibitively expensive to build and
operate, impractical and inflexible for
changing transportation needs,” he
wrote.
Others commented that the project
must include housing and development
components, and the need for safer
ways to walk and bike to transit.
Growing congestion was a common
theme and a need for better transit
overall. The most frequently selected
factors included shorter travel time,
enough capacity to serve rush hour
This montage shows a bus rapid transit vehicle from Eugene's EmX system (left) and a
more-familiar Portland MAX light rail train. (Photos courtesy of Metro)
demand in the future, higher ridership,
and greater reliability.
By early April, Metro will release
staff recommendations to the steering
committee regarding which mode is
the preferred choice for the corridor
and whether to continue a study of an
underground light rail tunnel to serve
PCC Sylvania.
Assuming the steering committee
moves forward with these two decisions,
then as scheduled on May 9, the shift
moves the conversation back to the
Southwest Corridor Plan as a whole.
In June, the steering committee will
review and confirm the preferred
package of high capacity transit
alignments, terminus, and mode to be
studied in the federal environmental
impact statement.
Editor ’s Note: In addition to an
underground tunnel to PCC Sylvania, a
number of options are being considered.
Among them are driverless cars, shuttle
buses from the light rail station and an ariel
tram, much like the OHSU Tram. More
information can always be found at http://
www.swcorridorplan.org.
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