NORTHWEST
East Oregonian
A2
Friday, March 8, 2019
Commuter rail could run all the way to Salem
By MARK MILLER
Oregon Capital Bureau
SALEM — Ten years
ago, the Westside Express
Service began running
between Beaverton on Port-
land’s west side and Wilson-
ville to the city’s south.
State Rep. Mitch Green-
lick hopes that in another
15 years, it will run all the
way south to Oregon’s cap-
ital city.
House Bill 2219 would
commission a 17-mem-
ber task force to study the
concept of extending WES
commuter rail to Salem,
determining whether it
would be feasible or ben-
eficial. The bill received
an initial public hearing
before the Legislature’s
Joint Transportation Com-
mittee on Monday, March 4.
No committee vote has yet
been scheduled to advance
the legislation.
“It would make WES
much more viable,” Green-
lick said before the hear-
ing. “I think WES would
be much more effective if
it had the riders that would
come from … the north
Salem area.”
WES is part of the TriMet
system, which treats bus,
light rail and commuter rail
fares as interchangeable.
The typical fare is $2.50 for
Pamplin Media Group, File
A TriMet WES train arrives at the Beaverton Transit Center. A bill introduced in the Legisla-
ture could extend WES trains south to Salem.
two and a half hours, or $5
for a full day.
Like nearly all commuter
rail systems, WES oper-
ates at a loss, meaning a trip
costs more than what the
rider pays for it. An aver-
age commuter trip costs
TriMet $18.14. That makes
WES considerably more
expensive to operate, rela-
tive to the number of riders,
than TriMet’s bus and light
rail services. MAX’s aver-
age operating cost per ride
is $2.95.
Ridership on WES has
also been decreasing year
over year, which TriMet
spokeswoman Roberta Alt-
stadt attributes to business
closures along the com-
muter route. Last fiscal year,
WES provided 265,668
rides — on average, 5,109
trips per week.
“Those who do ride
WES often call it the best
kept secret as it provides a
quick, reliable and comfort-
able ride between Wilson-
ville and Beaverton,” Alt-
stadt said.
A 2010 state study con-
Forecast for Pendleton Area
cluded that extending WES
to Salem was “technically
feasible,” but it would be a
complex project that would
cost up to $387 million to
build. The amount TriMet
must spend for WES oper-
ations every year would
likely triple, the study
added. It made no recom-
mendation on how to pro-
ceed, and the idea got little
further public attention.
Greenlick is restarting
the conversation.
Shelley Snow, Oregon
Department of Transporta-
SATURDAY
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TUESDAY
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By ANDREW SELSKY
Associated Press
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SALEM — Days before
last November’s elections,
members of a political
action committee in Oregon
went door-to-door in Port-
land and its suburbs and col-
lected filled-in ballots from
voters, saying they would
send them in.
But the committee deliv-
ered about 100 of those bal-
lots to an elections office a
day after the election. They
were not counted, disen-
franchising those voters.
The secretary of state fined
the committee $94,750.
As doubts arise in the
nation about security of
election systems that can be
hacked and about reliance
on aging or inadequate vot-
ing machines, more atten-
tion is being paid to voting
by mail. After Oregon pio-
neered the all-mail vote in
2000, Colorado and Wash-
ington state followed suit.
The incident in Oregon
exposed a potential elec-
tion vulnerability. An orga-
nization collecting ballots
might mishandle ballots, as
happened last year, or even
dump them to try to sway an
election.
No one knows how many
groups in Oregon collect
ballots to turn in because
state government officials
in charge of elections don’t
track the groups.
News about the Ore-
gon ballots being rejected
and the fine on the PAC
last month comes as there’s
renewed scrutiny of ballot
collection efforts. A political
operative working on behalf
of a GOP candidate in North
Carolina was arrested after
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OREGON FORECAST
ALMANAC
Shown is today’s weather. Temperatures are today’s highs and tonight’s lows.
PENDLETON
through 3 p.m. yest.
HIGH
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Seattle
Olympia
46/29
31/14
38/16
Longview
Kennewick Walla Walla
35/20
Lewiston
43/32
37/21
Astoria
45/30
Pullman
Yakima 35/20
44/25
36/18
Portland
Hermiston
43/32
The Dalles 38/22
Salem
Corvallis
44/32
Yesterday
Normals
Records
La Grande
36/21
PRECIPITATION
John Day
Eugene
Bend
44/32
34/19
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Ontario
47/29
Caldwell
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44°
22°
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Albany
44/31
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Pendleton 33/16
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HERMISTON
Enterprise
36/21
37/24
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PRECIPITATION
Moses
Lake
44/26
Aberdeen
33/18
34/17
Tacoma
Yesterday
Normals
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Wenatchee
45/32
Today
Boardman
Pendleton
Medford
48/32
Sat.
SW 4-8
WSW 6-12
NE 4-8
NNW 4-8
SUN AND MOON
Klamath Falls
37/25
Forecasts and graphics provided by AccuWeather, Inc. ©2019
Sunrise today
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5:51 p.m.
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AP Photo/Gillian Flaccus, File
In this Nov. 6, 2018, file photo, a voter in Lake Oswego places
her ballot in a designated drop box outside City Hall.
being accused of illegally
collecting mail-in absentee
ballots. That November race
will be redone.
There is no indication
that Oregon’s voter sys-
tem has been penetrated by
fraud by use of go-betweens
to collect ballots.
And from the governor
on down to county clerks,
officials praise a system
allowing voters to cast bal-
lots at their leisure through
the post office or at official
drop boxes because the vot-
ers don’t have to leave work
on election day or travel long
distances to crowded polling
stations. They also say the
system has the added benefit
of leaving a paper trail and
presents fewer opportunities
for hacking.
But the recent incident
showed that state and county
election officials in Ore-
gon do not keep records on
which groups collect com-
pleted ballots from voters,
or how often this happens.
“Organizations
might
keep track but we don’t ask
for that information,” said
Debra Royal, chief of staff
to the secretary of state, Ore-
gon’s top elections official.
A study last year by
Northern Illinois University
ranked Oregon as the easiest
state for voting in the coun-
try, analyzing 33 variables
dealing with registration
and voting laws. In Oregon,
citizens are automatically
registered to vote when
they go to the motor vehi-
cles department for drivers’
licenses, IDs or permits.
The incident last Novem-
ber involved a PAC called
Defend Oregon, which was
registered with the state
elections division last May
and works “to protect Ore-
gon from extremist groups
with dangerous agendas.”
The group said one of its
canvassers removed 97 com-
pleted ballots from a lock
box on election night, Nov.
6, checked them against a
spreadsheet, and put them
into a box to be delivered to
the elections office or to an
official drop box.
CORRECTION: Most addiction to tobacco starts in adolescence, where 90 percent
of adults who smoke started before they were 18 and almost 100 percent started before
turning 26. The East Oregonian provided inaccurate figures for when people start
smoking in Thursday’s story, “Tobacco licensing plan finds support foothold.”
The East Oregonian works hard to be accurate and sincerely regrets any errors. If
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52 weeks
26 weeks
13 weeks
other unserviced areas
if WES was extended to
Salem.
Officials in Tigard and
Tualatin are watching as
well. Sherilyn Lombos,
Tualatin city manager, said
her city council supports
extending WES.
“Anything that adds ser-
vice to Tualatin, we’re inter-
ested in,” Lombos said.
Interstate 5 runs through
Tualatin and Wilsonville,
and during peak commute
hours, the freeway can
become choked with vehi-
cles. Lombos and Knapp
see a WES extension as
potential congestion relief.
“If existing commuters
from the south to Tualatin
used this new WES exten-
sion, it would reduce the
number of vehicles com-
ing to Tualatin and using
the roads,” Lombos said. “I
would think that the same
would be true for commut-
ers going south.”
“As the Portland metro
region increases in popu-
lation and jobs, the area’s
freeway arterials are reach-
ing peak traffic-handling
capacity,” Knapp wrote.
“And as housing costs esca-
late in the Portland area,
more workers are living out-
side the metro region, lead-
ing to increased commuting
on highways.”
Uncounted Oregon votes
expose election vulnerability
TODAY
PENDLETON TEMPERATURE FORECAST
tion spokeswoman, said in
an emailed statement, “We
understand the goal of the
bill’s sponsor and should the
bill pass, we look forward
to participating in the task
force and/or in any other
way that would be helpful.”
Express transit between
Wilsonville and Salem
exists today in the form of
bus line 1X, which runs
as a partnership between
Wilsonville’s bus service
SMART and Salem-area
transit operator Cherriots.
Cherriots did not respond
to a request for comment,
but SMART transit direc-
tor Dwight Brashear praised
Greenlick’s bill at Monday’s
committee hearing.
“I think this is an oppor-
tunity for us to study some-
thing that will benefit future
generations to come,”
Brashear testified.
SMART and Cherri-
ots track ridership for all of
their routes, including bus
line 1X. Last fiscal year,
the route averaged 1,386
boardings per week, with
SMART serving the major-
ity of them.
Officials from Beaver-
ton and Wilsonville testified
in favor of Greenlick’s bill.
In a letter of support, Wil-
sonville Mayor Tim Knapp
suggested SMART could
“redeploy assets” to cover
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