And now, the beginning of a series of posts detailing our recent exploratory trip to Portland, Oregon – it’s Part One of “Fort Worthology goes to Portland.”

In today’s installment, we’ll be taking a look at Portland’s transit systems, including the much-talked-about Portland Streetcar.

We’ve been big supporters of the Fort Worth Streetcar proposal since Day One, and now having spent over a week living with the system that serves as a model for our own plan, we are pleased to be able to type the following sentence from first-hand experience:

The Portland Streetcar is awesome.

It doesn’t really quite hit until you’ve spent time around a modern streetcar just how much it has defined and shaped the built environment. The Portland Streetcar has helped enable the creation of some incredible, incredible places. It serves as a popular and reliable circulator and “pedestrian accelerator,” attracting a diverse range of riders crossing socioeconomic barriers. It ties Downtown Portland and its Portland State University district, the Pearl District, the Northwest/Nob Hill neighborhoods, Riverplace, and the South Waterfront/OHSU neighborhoods into one pretty cohesive urban space. It extends the practical walking distance across a good majority of the central city.

Developments and neighborhoods come to be defined at least in part by their streetcar proximity. Businesses feature it on their logos. Diners feature “streetcar specials” for riders getting off in front of their establishments. It becomes tightly knit into the very fabric of the neighborhoods it passes through in a way that no bus ever has or could. Streetcars are about mobility, yes, and development – but no less real is their incredible power in placemaking.

First, the basics. The Portland Streetcar currently runs on a circulator loop through urban Portland on the west side of the Willamette river. I say “currently” because an extension to the east side of the Willamette has just been approved which will radically increase the system’s reach, but construction has not yet started on that new segment.

At its northernmost, the streetcar runs from the Northwest district into the Pearl District, a former industrial expanse that is now one of the most impressive urban districts in the entire United States. Turning south in the Pearl, the streetcar then passes into Downtown Portland, and then into the heart of Portland State University. It passes from there through the Riverplace district into the new South Waterfront district, another impressive infill project on former industrial land.

Along the way, the streetcar allows easy transfers to TriMet buses, the MAX light rail system, and the Portland Aerial Tram.

Streetcar stops are simple affairs – a wide sidewalk, a slight raise in height to meet the streetcar’s floor, a shelter and a sign. They’re not that different from a bus stop – in fact, some streetcar stops are shared with bus lines.

The streetcars run roughly every 12-15 minutes at each stop (though as seen above, sometimes it’s more often), giving frequent service and helping to attract more riders. One of the most impressive bits about the stops are these, the real-time arrival information signs. Each streetcar has GPS and this information is piped to stops to show exactly when each streetcar will be arriving. From our experience, the times shown on the stop are bang-on accurate.

What’s also extremely cool is the real-time arrival map which allows riders to see exactly where each streetcar is on the network. Hovering your mouse over each streetcar allows you to see what its next stop is, and hovering over each stop shows the approximate time until the next streetcar arrives. It’s all a part of making transit more efficient and easy to use, which in turn increases ridership.

The Portland Streetcar uses these Skoda-Inekon cars made in Europe. They are comfortable, smooth, fast to accelerate, fully climate-controlled, and extremely quiet in operation. The only real noise during operation is a high, quiet whirring/whistle as their electric motors sing them along the tracks. In terms of ridership experience, they are nothing at all like either buses or even vintage streetcar systems like the Dallas McKinney Avenue line. They are the very definition of sleek, modern transportation.

Now, there’s even a group in Oregon building American-made streetcars for the system off the Skoda-Inekon design: United Streetcar

On-board, the streetcars are simple and easy to use. The front and rear cars have higher floors and many seats, along with rails and straps for standing. The middle segments have low floors for easy boarding, including physically challenged riders, with fewer seats and more standing room.

If you don’t already have a TriMet pass, passes can be purchased on-board the streetcar using these simple fare boxes.

Riding a modern streetcar is very comfortable and pleasant. There’s none of the lurching and bouncing of a bus – it really does glide quite smoothly over the rails.

The streetcar operates in mixed traffic with cars on most of its route. Despite some naysayers who blast the streetcar for “getting bogged down” in traffic, in practice this was not our experience. In riding the streetcar extensively during all hours of the day, we never experienced a delay of more than a few seconds – nearly always due to, say, somebody opening a door for too long on a parked car on the street side. A quick ring of the streetcar’s bell or blast of its horn cleared these up and we were quickly back on the way.

It’s certainly possible for traffic to impact a streetcar, just like a bus – but in practice, these instances seem pretty rare.

The streetcars integrate perfectly into the urban environment. Even though they’re longer than a bus, they still feel right at home in tight spaces. The overhead wires simply aren’t an issue, in terms of aesthetics – here, we’re seeing as many wires as you will ever seen on a streetscape, as the streetcar crosses the MAX light rail line here. The wires are negligible in their impact on the scenery.

Even in crowds, the streetcar operates well. Pedestrians feel comfortable walking around it, even in motion, as its tracks create predictable travel paths. In many places in Portland, the streetcar runs right past sidewalk cafes, and in fact in Portland State University it runs right through a pedestrian plaza in the center of campus. It passes no more than a few feet from a popular outdoor cafe on the college plaza, and never disturbs diners.

Here, a typical scene at a busy streetcar stop, showing the volume and range of riders and the simple stop setup.

Here, a streetcar headed into Downtown Portland passes by one headed to the South Waterfront. Seen on the sides of streetcars and at stops, a variety of advertising & sponsorship opportunities provide another example of business/streetcar integration. Sponsored stops are announced as such.

Much has been written about the development around the streetcar line, and “impressive” doesn’t begin to describe it. The Pearl District alone is a sea of extremely impressive development, both in adaptive re-use of historic buildings and in new construction. The streetcar has helped shape this development by encouraging an active streetscape, increased pedestrian activity, and by allowing developers to build far higher density and far less parking than would otherwise have been feasible. Without nearly as much parking to worry about paying for, developers can concentrate more on design, detailing, finishes, retail, and other aspects of their developments. Along the streetcar, you simply do not see the kind of massive parking garages common in infill here in Texas, such as those along West 7th Street. Here, the streetcar passes a former armory turned live stage theater.

Here, the streetcar passes a large residential building with ground-floor retail in the “Brewery Blocks” segment of the Pearl.

The streetcar in the Pearl. New infill can be seen rising in the background.

More Pearl District streetcar line infill.

More streetcar infill. The streetcar also stops at both of the Pearl’s major public spaces – here, we’re at Jamison Square (on the right).

Still more Pearl District streetcar infill. If you think the West 7th projects here in Fort Worth are impressive, the Pearl is on an entirely other level – and they’re lacking the huge parking structures that have accompanied the West 7th projects. The Pearl is block after block after block of extremely high-quality infill – far larger than the West 7th projects.

Here, more Pearl streetcar infill – including the famed “Streetcar Lofts” with accompanying neon sign.

Still more huge infill along the streetcar line, this time near Tanner Springs Park.

Everywhere you turn in the Pearl, you see block after block of attractive infill along the streetcar line, and bleeding into the blocks surrounding the line as well. Because Portland has very small 200′ by 200′ blocks, just like those in Downtown Fort Worth, walking a few blocks to catch the streetcar is seen as perfectly normal.

Still more streetcar infill in the Pearl, this time around Tanner Springs Park, the other major public space in the Pearl. We’ll be talking more specifically about Portland’s architecture and parks/plazas in later posts.

And still more streetcar infill around Tanner Springs Park.

Even more streetcar infill in the Pearl. The feel as one moves through the Pearl is of a more European than American city in some ways.

And – why not – some more streetcar infill in the Pearl.

And still more. This building was especially impressive – a very Streamline Moderne industrial feel, but built in 2000.

And more – this building was just about to open.

Some adaptive reuse of historic structures nearby.

And more.

And more – these are townhomes in an old building, right on the line.

More Pearl infill – and yes, that’s a Whole Foods.

Also right on the line, this incredibly impressive Safeway.

We could go on, but we’ll talk more about the Pearl’s architecture and Portland’s awesome urban grocery stores in other posts.

Another major infill development on the streetcar line is the South Waterfront, at the current southern terminus of the circulator loop. Here, formerly abandoned industrial land is being reclaimed as a dense neighborhood of residential, office, and retail space, and the streetcar links to OHSU via the Portland Aerial Tram.

More South Waterfront streetcar infill.

Still more of this epic infill project.

Still more transit operating in Portland are the MAX light rail lines. These are Portland’s equivalent of the Dallas DART light rail trains, in that they make stops in the city center but also run on dedicated right-of-way to outlying areas in more of a commuting fashion, like Beaverton, Gresham, and Portland International Airport. It’s a good example of rail transit covering the whole spectrum – MAX providing longer-distance trips and linking with the streetcar for the “last mile” connections.

TriMet passes work on MAX, buses, the streetcar, the WES commuter train (which we did not have a chance to see), and the Portland Aerial Tram, allowing seamless transfers between modes.

Here, MAX passes through the Old Town district of Downtown Portland.

And here, it passes through Downtown on its way to the Goose Hollow neighborhood.

Another transit system in Portland, and by far one of the most unique, is the Portland Aerial Tram, linking the Streetcar and South Waterfront with the OHSU campus on a hill high above the waterfront. The tram runs constantly through the day, ferrying workers and students up and down from the campus to a lower office building & cafe in the South Waterfront and an adjacent streetcar stop & major bike commuter parking area. The trip takes about three minutes each direction.

The aerial tram uses two of these futuristic silver pods running back and forth along cables between the South Waterfront and OHSU.

Here, we pass a South Waterfront-bound tram on our way to OHSU.

Looking up at the OHSU tram station from inside the pod.

The tram gives some truly spectacular views of the surrounding neighborhoods.

Entering OHSU station.

The tram takes on passengers at OHSU station.

Preparing to depart from OHSU to head back to South Waterfront.

The view from OHSU station – on a clearer day with a view of Mt. Hood, it would be even more spectacular.

South Waterfront from OHSU station.

The pod departs OHSU, while the other pod starts its climb back up the hill.

On-board the pod headed back to OHSU.

The view of Downtown from the pod.

Arriving back at South Waterfront station.

The pod heads back to OHSU.

The pod passes the system’s support tower.

Transit in Portland is extremely easy and efficient. It is not only possible to live car-free there, but downright pleasant to do so. When one combines the streetcar, MAX, the tram, and TriMet’s extensive bus network (many of which run every 12-15 minutes like the streetcar, in contrast to The T’s 30-minute to 1-hour scheduling so often seen here in Fort Worth) with a bicycle, one can get around very easily indeed.

We were particularly impressed with the Portland Streetcar, and it gives us even more enthusiasm to get our system built. The streetcar helped revitalize several areas of central Portland, and has become a tightly-knit part of life for residents as well as visitors. Often times the streetcars were standing-room-only, a testament to their ease of use and attractiveness to riders. The sheer amount and quality of infill seen along the line was very impressive.

This is our initial post in our series on Portland. In future posts, we’ll talk about:

Bicycling
Parks & Plazas
Architecture
Residential Development
Local Businesses
The retail scene in urban Portland
The brewpub culture
The vegan/vegetarian culture
The Ira Keller Fountain, a beautifully restored plaza space designed by Lawrence Halprin, in stark contrast to our own decaying Halprin space, Heritage Park
Food Carts (seriously)

And more. We will, of course, post about Fort Worth stuff at the same time, but looking at other cities which serve as models for our own development can be helpful in learning about techniques that can work here in Fort Worth as we urbanize. So, there’s more Portland to come.