Portland’s Light Rail at 40
10th September 2026
Portland’s light-rail system was 40 years old last Saturday and naturally TriMet, the region’s transit agency, has a celebratory article all about how Portland managed to escape the evil Robert Moses, who was trying to force everyone to drive cars in the 1950s and 1960s. Needless to say, the article never mentions that the share of the region’s workers who commuted by transit fell from 9.6 percent before light-rail construction began to 6.5 percent when the first line was completed and it has never recovered since.