TriMet Division bus

A TriMet bus heads east on Southeast Division Street between 20th and 21st avenues.

(Staff)

Rapid-bus service proposed for Division Street and Powell Boulevard in Southeast Portland might move ahead -- but without Powell.

After learning in March that the Powell-Division proposal would be slower for many riders than the bus it would replace, a Metro committee is now considering the service solely along Division Street.

Eliminating the detour to Powell, planners for the regional government say, would likely provide faster service than the existing Line 4 bus.

That would come in part by reducing the number of stops from 26 to 11 between 82nd Avenue and 8th Avenue. Some riders, therefore, would have to walk farther to reach their stop. It would also gain time through faster boarding and traffic signal prioritization, possibly including intersections where the buses would jump ahead of traffic.

Craig Beebe, a Metro spokesman, said the work done to this point is preliminary, but "promising."

The redesigned route would serve somewhat fewer low-income and minority residents, who the project was intended to reach. It would also force extra-long buses to snake through narrow, congested sections of Division Street, though planners said the rapid-bus line would work "mostly" within the existing street width.

"Nobody wants to forget inner Powell," Beebe said. "We're going to continue to talk about that going forward, what kind of improvements can be made on inner Powell."

Metro originally planned for service to begin by 2020. Now TriMet hopes to start operating the new line in 2021.

"Bus rapid transit" uses high-capacity buses to carry more passengers, and it boards through multiple doors (like light rail) to reduce time at stops. It can also use traffic signal priority to skip past traffic backups at intersections.

In its most intensive form, the buses operate in exclusive lanes so they don't have to contend with traffic at all. The Division Street project, however, would mostly operate in mixed traffic.

The project would be the first bus rapid transit project within Metro and TriMet's jurisdiction, but the transit agency serving Clark County, C-Tran, is building a bus rapid transit line it's calling The Vine.

-- Elliot Njus

enjus@oregonian.com

503-294-5034

@enjus