Academic Research on the Portland Streetcar


It’s not every day that you get to read a master’s these about your favorite transportation project.

So I settled down over the weekend with a cold beverage and all 210 pages of University of Calgary student Tom Gardiner’s thesis: Understanding Perceptions of the Portland Streetcar System. Even better, Tom’s thesis focuses in on my neighborhood in NW Portland…

It’s not every day that you get to read a master’s these about your favorite transportation project.

So I settled down over the weekend with a cold beverage and all 210 pages of University of Calgary student Tom Gardiner’s thesis: Understanding Perceptions of the Portland Streetcar System. Even better, Tom’s thesis focuses in on my neighborhood in NW Portland (since unlike the Pearl, the NW District was an established neighborhood long before the [modern] Streetcar came along – so perceptions of changes can be assessed).

For those of you who want the Reader’s Digest version, there’s a PowerPoint Presentation (26MB). If you want the deep read, it’s all here in PDF form.

This tome was not a surprise. I visited with Tom on a couple of occasions while he was here in Portland doing the research. He even mentions me in the acknowledgements (I’m blushing).

Tom surveyed both residents and retailers about their impressions of the Streetcar. I’m sure you’ll all be shocked to hear that the overall impressions are very positive.

What I found most interesting is where there were divergent opinions. Here are a few of the highlights:

– Most participants felt that the Streetcar had no impact on traffic. However, some felt that getting stuck behind a Streetcar slowed things down. Others felt that this was useful traffic calming. [We did in fact design the Lovejoy Street flow to use the Streetcar as a traffic calming tool.]

– There were some negative comments about parking, with some respondents complaining of losing a few spaces due to the platforms, and others concerned that the Streetcar exacerbated the ‘park and hide’ behavior of downtown commuters who park the neighborhood.

– Residents were more likely than retailers to believe that Streetcar was impacting the land uses in the neighborhood. There was some belief that new retail on 23rd north of Lovejoy and on Thurman was driven in part by the Streetcar.

– Only a minority of respondents felt that Streetcar was causing an increase in density in the neighborhood (the survey was done before the Vaux Condos were under construction).

Tom suggests a number of recommendations for consideration in future development:

1) Configure tracks with pullouts so that cars can pass Streetcars loading at platforms.

2) Increase speed by spacing stops more widely apart and use signal preemption to get the vehicles through intersections more quickly [we already do the latter at some intersections, including NW 23rd and Lovejoy].

3) More fare monitoring to increase the percentage of passengers who actually pay outside fare-less square.

4) Work on affordable housing to offset gentrification the Streetcar may be promoting.

5) Do a parking study [I won’t even start on that one!]

I wonder what Tom’s PhD research will be about?


9 responses to “Academic Research on the Portland Streetcar”

  1. “There were some negative comments about parking, with some respondents complaining of losing a few spaces due to the platforms, and others concerned that the Streetcar exacerbated the ‘park and hide’ behavior of downtown commuters who park the neighborhood.”

    Isn’t it true that the whole thing was supposed to be free, but a fare was put on because the NWDA(?) has a long history of not being able to agree on a parking plan? I thought I heard that in the PSU siminar.

    As for “park and hide”, that behavior occurs at Parkrose now that MAX goes to the airport.

  2. Having spent 3 years of my life trying to negotiate the NW Parking Plan, I’m a little tender on this subject.

    Yes, there was a discussion of making the Streetcar fareless, but Northwest would not agree to that until on-street parking was regulated, because of the ‘park and hide’ issue.

    Parking regulation has been on the table since the 70’s. Sigh…

  3. Park and Hide is the practice of using a neighborhood with good transit service to downtown as a park and ride lot. For example, driving from Hillsboro to NW Portland, parking for free and hopping a bus or Streetcar to your job downtown.

  4. As a regular streetcar rider, I very much support the idea of signal pre-emption. It need not be at every traffic signal but at a few key intersections. One that stands out is at 11th & Burnside since the traffic can very often back up as far as NW Everett, add several minutes onto a very short trip downtown and backup the entire streetcar system. I would imagine the Burnside couplet project would improve the flow but that is at least 5 years away.

  5. Personally, I suspect the “park and hide” phenomena to be a pernicious urban legend. Before I got rid of my car, I used to occasionally drive to NW to attempt to do things *in* NW, and parking was almost always impossible. IMPOSSIBLE. I remember once circling for 45 minutes trying to find a parking spot within walking distance of Cinema 21 — and ultimately failing to do so.

    In contrast, there is always scads of parking in virtually every other part of town, at either free or very cheap rates, and I soon took to parking downtown and riding the streetcar into NW when I wanted to do something there, which was vastly less hassle than the alternative.

    Given my experience, I honestly have to question the reality of “park and hide”. I suspect that NW residents, understandably driven over the brink by their neighborhood parking hassles, have concocted a myth which blames the problem on scurrilous outsiders, which is easier and more satisfying than facing the real source of the problem — themselves.

    I would love to see a quantitative study which proves me wrong; but until then, this is what I’ll believe.

  6. Nathan, you are correct that there has been no study to determine the extent of ‘park and hide’ behavior in NW. But for those of us who live here, there is no doubt that it exists. I frequently watch people get off a bus or streetcar and walk to their car and drive off.

    The best time to find a parking space in the neighborhood is 7:30-8:30 in the morning as residents are leaving. That’s the perfect time for the park-and-hide set. The victims of this are actually the local retailers and their customers, not residents.

  7. Thanks for defining “Park and Hide”. (clever, maybe?) Whatever…

    Anyway I live in DC, and the way they get around this problem is they require a local neighborhood sticker to park in any of the neighborhoods. It costs 15 bucks for the year, and you have to prove you live in the neighborhood. (this can be tough). NW Portland should try something like this.

    If you don’t have the sticker you can park for up to an hour.

  8. Justin, I’ll warn you that it’s a slippery slope if you get me talking about parking in NW :-)

    The neighborhood association petitioned for a permit system around ’96-97 and it was bitterly opposed by the business association.

    More recently I represented the neighborhood association in a full-blown Citizen Advisory Committee process (25 folks or so) that recommended a combination of paystations (metered parking) and permits. The business association reps on the CAC voted for it and then turned around and had their association refuse to approve it until parking structures were added to the plan. An attempt to negotiate parking structure locations acceptable to the neighborhood resulted in business insistence on one particular location that required changing residential zoning and tearing down a house. We’ve been in court for two years over that…

    I’m trying to stay focused on city-wide and region-wide issues. It’s much less frustrating :-)

Leave a Reply to Chris Smith Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *