Start digging in your pockets for quarters—TriMet's 19 percent citywide fare increase kicks in next week. The so-called "Go Anywhere Fare" ups the cost of a two-hour ticket on MAX and bus lines to $2.50 (making a transit ticket perhaps the only thing that costs more in Portland than in New York, where a subway ride will set you back $2.25). Saturday, September 1, also marks the death of the Free Rail Zone, the no-MAX-ticket-required downtown area that replaced Fareless Square, the reconfiguration of 17 bus lines (including reducing service on eight lines, adding some service to seven, and tweaking two others). Those changes should patch nearly $10 million of TriMet's $12 million budget hole. SARAH MIRK

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Standing in Northeast Portland alongside some of the state legislators who made it possible, on Friday, August 24, Mayor Sam Adams unveiled Portland's first 20 MPH speed limit sign. The fanfare came two days after Portland City Council formally approved a bureau of transportation plan to lower speed limits from 25 MPH to 20 MPH on some 70 miles of eligible "greenway" streets—local routes favored by cyclists and pedestrians—slicing through neighborhoods all over town. Permission to pursue the reduced limits was high on the city's wish list during the 2011 legislative session in Salem. According to city figures, a pedestrian hit by a car moving 20 MPH is 95 percent likely to live—compared to a 60 percent chance if struck by a car moving 30 MPH. DENIS C. THERIAULT