Portland ‘BRT Light’ Line Shows Promise

In a Human Transit blog post, Jarrett Walker outlines some positive results from Portland, Oregon’s ‘light bus rapid transit’ project, which employs some elements of traditional BRT while adjusting the system to streets that are too narrow for bus lanes.

The project extended stop spacing to half a mile in some cases, increased frequency to every 12 minutes, and added signal priority for buses along the line, among other changes. “But it’s still in mixed traffic on the narrow and congested inner segment,” Walker adds. 

Despite that, “Overall travel times are up to 20% shorter.” According to Walker, “Ridership is up dramatically as a result, almost 40% for the first year of operation (September 2022 – August 2023) compared to the year before.”