The word "excitement" is not often associated with public transit. Communities rarely erupt in fever-pitch jubilation over the arrival of a few new passenger buses.
But the opening of an 18-mile extension to one of the country's most acclaimed light-rail mass-transit systems is another thing entirely.The long-anticipated western arm of Portland's Metropolitan Area Express (MAX) carried its first passengers Saturday. More than 250,000 Oregonians were expected to hop aboard west-side MAX cars during a two-day weekend festival. The event had such national significance even Vice President Al Gore showed up, although perhaps he was just happy to get out of Washington.
Several Utah Transit Authority officials flew in Saturday, too, to experience the event for themselves.
"We're getting a lot of good ideas and I think it's been a real fun thing . . . like a party, " said UTA board member Monta Rae Jeppson of Orem, part of a UTA contingent that included General Manager John Inglish and Director of Transit Development Mike Allegra.
Jeppson seemed invigorated by all the positive feedback she got from Portland riders.
"The people here are very enthused about light rail. They just love it. They said they ride it all the time," she said. "They say that's why they don't have the smog like they could, because of the mass transit."
The first day of the elaborate grand opening featured speeches, music, dancing, magic shows, trained birds, a variety of food and free light-rail rides for everybody. Separate mini-celebrations were held at each of the 20 westside passenger stations. Larger main-stage events were held at four stations - in downtown Portland, Beaverton and Hillsboro, and at Portland's Washington Park Zoo. The station parties were designed to introduce MAX users to the businesses and communities around each of the westside stops.
By Sunday night, the festivities will have run up a bill of $500,000, paid for by contributions from businesses and private donors to the Tri-County Metropolitan Transportation District (Tri-Met), which operates the now 33-mile-long MAX system.
One reason UTA officials are here is for tips and pointers on how to get a community energized about light-rail service. The next new U.S. light-rail system to make its debut will be UTA's Transit Express (TRAX), which could be carrying passengers as soon as December of next year. Even the president himself may be invited to the TRAX grand opening, which UTA officials say might also attract upwards of 250,000 riders.
"We want it to be a real community thing," said Coralie Alder, a UTA community relations specialist who volunteered Saturday at MAX's Pioneer Square station in downtown Portland. "We're going to have celebrations at each station. It's going to be really fun."
UTA and Wasatch Front municipal officials also will be here Sunday through Wednesday for the Rail-Volution transit development conference, an annual think-tank focused on building livable communities through regional transit systems. UTA spent $10,000 to co-sponsor the event along with 15 other transit agencies and organizations, and another $4,800 on registration fees for staff members and about a dozen municipal officials from Utah.
Representatives from Salt Lake City, South Salt Lake, Midvale, Sandy, West Valley City, Roy and Provo were scheduled to attend the conference.
Saturday, all attention was focused on MAX and its sparkling $963 million extension from downtown Portland through suburban Beaverton and Hillsboro.
Inglish noted that MAX has had a significant influence on what the TRAX system will look like. On a visit to Portland, Sandy officials liked the brick station platforms and shelters of eastside MAX so much they insisted that the two TRAX stations in their city be upgraded to a similar style.
Other TRAX cities agreed, and now just about every station outside of Salt Lake City will look like those on the original Portland-to-Gresham line, Inglish said.
The visiting Utahns noticed heavy mid-afternoon traffic slowed to a crawl on Highway 26, which parallels the westside line, heading into Portland.
"This new line bypasses some major congestion. This is very convenient. It goes right through the mountain which creates the congestion," Inglish said. "They (residents and community leaders) were very insistent about getting the line extended to Hillsboro."
Saturday's start-up ended a long struggle for some businesses which, like their counterparts on Salt Lake City's Main Street, were seriously inconvenienced by light-rail construction. One lawsuit was filed by a group of businesses impacted by the work but was rejected by the courts. In Utah, UTA is facing its own legal battle with Main Street businesses.
For Bill Wilkerson, a former Tri-Met planning engineer who began working for UTA in June, the parallels between Portland's MAX and UTA's future system are many, but particularly where businesses along the rail corridor are concerned.
"It's a pretty severe case of deja vu when I listen to what's going on (in Salt Lake City)," said Wilkerson, who still lives in Portland and attended Saturday's activities.
Wilkerson thinks UTA has done its best, too, and predicts a surge in business activity along Main Street and the rest of the TRAX corridor similar to what occurred along the eastside MAX line after it opened 12 years ago.
Paul Bay, a former Salt Lake City traffic engineer who supervised construction of the eastside MAX for Tri-Met, is confident downtown Salt Lake City will recover just as downtown Portland did more than a decade ago.
"In the year immediately after light rail opened, the revenue of downtown stores increased 20 (percent) to 25 percent. (MAX) strengthened downtown as a shopping destination," said Bay, now director of light-rail transit for Sound Transit in Seattle.
In Portland, the new light-rail extension is already more popular than expected. The eastside MAX line carries 34,000 passengers a day, well above the 28,300 Tri-Met officials had projected for the year 2005. Ridership for the newly expanded system is projected at 50,000 for an average day in the first year.
"This is what we keep telling people: `Wait till it gets in. You say you won't ride it but you will.' They do everywhere you go," Jeppson said.
UTA projects the 15-mile, north-south TRAX line will carry 14,000 people a day when it opens and 23,000 a day by 2010.