Transportation in the City

Portland has an amazing transportation system!  You are probably asking yourself, why am I writing a blog post on transportation?  The Hubs and I used to live in Southern California, a place where a car is very necessary.  One of the things I was most looking forward to in our move to Portland, is not driving to work on a 5 lane highway for 40 plus minutes every day!  You don't really need a car when you live in this city, you can walk or ride your bike (more on this later).  Or you can use the Trimet Transportation system, which includes the Max (kind of like the Bart in San Fran), the Wes, the streetcar or the bus. 

So for those of you who are not familiar with the city, Portland is split into 4 quadrants - the Northwest, the Southwest, the Northeast and the Southeast.  North and South is split by the street, Burnside and East and West is split by the Willamette River. The Hubs and I live in the Northwest and I work a couple streets past Burnside in the Southwest.  We purposely wanted to live within range of the streetcar.  So for all our friends and family, this is how I get to work!  Be jealous :)

One of the Streetcar/Bus stations.  There is a marker that lets people know which direction they are headed and how much time is left until the next streetcar arrives

The streetcar basically does one big loop throughout the Southwest and Northwest.  If you are heading North, then you would look for a sign that says 23rd, if you are headed South then you are looking for S. Waterfront.  Within the main industrial city limits, there is a free zone where everyone can ride for free!  If you look at the map above, the orange line is the streetcar path and the dotted red line identifies the free zone.  We live a few blocks outside of the free zone area, so many of my neighbors walk to Gilsan and 11th which is the first stop within the free zone.

This is the streetcar station on Gilsan and 11th

A shot of the streetcar heading toward the station

A shot of the inside of the streetcar

The shot of the streetcar above is in the morning, when I take the streetcar home at night it is very densely packed.  I take the streetcar to Alder and 11th aka downtown.  From there I walk 3 blocks to work.

The awning in the distance is the pizza parlor below my office

The streetcars come every 10-15 minutes depending on the time of day.  If you fail to pay and you get caught, then they usually give you a warning and kick you off at the next stop.  This almost happened to me before I received my annual trimet pass.  The fine if you get caught I hear is very large, and I am so very glad that I never found out how much that amount really is.  Getting an annual trimet pass is worth every penny.   My company is awesome and they give their employees annual trimet passes, I think they as a business gets a tax deduction for it.  But the majority of my coworkers use some form of public transportation to get to work.  The annual pass is $968, which may seem like a lot, but I used to fill up my car gas tank once a week in Southern California...  Now my car sits in our complex garage and I don't drive it until my Trader Joe run on the weekend.  

If you are thinking of visiting Portland, you can take the Max directly from the airport into the city (station in baggage claim) and you can get a trimet day pass for the rest of your vacation.

I google mapped the distance between my apartment and my office.  My office is .9 miles, so when it is not raining hard then I try to walk to work as my daily exercise.  I have been here for a month and I have only had to ride the streetcar once in the morning to avoid the rain.  I have come to love my peaceful morning walk in this beautiful city!  Until next time!
~D

The view down 11th... one of the streets that I can walk down in the morning