For the second time in a month, city council last week batted
around funding figures for the proposed $147 million Eastside streetcar
extension, which will bring the trolley over the Broadway Bridge and
down MLK to OMSI.
The hearing, on Thursday, September 6, was crucial—the
following day was the deadline to submit a funding plan to the Federal
Transit Administration to qualify for $75 million in federal grants. In
order to get the feds to pay for more than half of the project, City
Commissioner Sam Adams’ office had to draft a plan that would convince
the agency that Portland is really, truly serious about paying for the
other half.
The biggest question is how the line will be operated once it’s up
and running. There’s already a built-in $2.45 million subsidy required
to run the streetcar, split evenly between the City of Portland and
TriMet, but TriMet has only officially agreed to chip in $1 million.
Another $510,000 is planned to come out of “reallocation of bus
service”—specifically, the proposal is to shorten the popular #6
bus line, which runs down MLK and into downtown, forcing passengers to
transfer to the streetcar.
That possibility concerned Commissioners Dan Saltzman and Erik Sten,
among others—Saltzman called it an “awkward impediment” to
getting Northeast Portlanders to jobs downtown.
Adams’ response was that the figures are “low confidence” and were
put together in order to get federal funding. Since the engineering
phase won’t begin until early next year, “we’ve got three months to
figure this out,” Adams said. He assured council that he’d direct the
planners to come up with a plan that doesn’t cut the #6 line.
Others, though, are worried that because so much effort and money
has already gone into the proposal, there’s little chance that major
amendments will be possible. “It’s a good thing these are
low-confidence numbers,” one city hall staffer said, “because my
confidence in them is pretty low.”