Portland Streetcars on the five-month-old eastside extension over the Broadway Bridge.

With

opening this weekend, it’s as good a time as any to test the validity of one of Portland’s biggest commuting canards.

Urban myth:

You can walk faster than the

to your destination.

Finding:

Confirmed. It’s no myth.

Results may vary depending on the time of day, congestion, gait, distance and weather.

But after lacing up my $50 sneakers and going toe-to-track with the $8.5 million-a-year Portland Streetcar, I’m thinking the city’s oh-so-generically named trolley system should be rebranded the Stumptown Slug.

(That’s right! I’m trash talking.)

The route:

The wait between streetcars ranges from 15 to 18 minutes. So, it’s easy to walk 20 blocks without ever seeing one of the Life Saver-colored people movers.

“You need to go quite a distance -- maybe a couple miles -- to test this idea,” said

Portland-based author of transit-geek bible

So, Joe vs. The Streetcar started, appropriately, at the OMSI station on the recently opened

. The finish line: Across the river at the Northwest 11th Avenue and Couch Street station outside Powell’s City of Books.

My circuit: 1.7 miles over the Hawthorne Bridge, west on Madison Street and north through the Park Blocks. The streetcar traveled 3.7 miles, hitting 19 stops as it rolled along Grand Avenue, over the Broadway Bridge and into the Pearl District.

Methodology:

I showed up at OMSI with Kraig Scattarella, one of The Oregonian’s videographers, shortly after noon, outside peak traffic hours.

Kraig was the umpire. He would ride the streetcar with a stopwatch, disembarking at Powell’s station and, ultimately, calling the winner.

The rules:

No running and obey every crosswalk signal.

“Desires to travel arise when they do,” Walker said. In other words, the average person leaves his destination when ready.

But feeling cocky, I gave the streetcar what amounted to a head start.

I waited 12 minutes for the streetcar at the OMSI platform with Kraig.

, we would start at the same time.

Hard Drive

Joseph Rose

covers commuting for The Oregonian and writes

.

The race: Before departing, "Earl," the orange streetcar's operator, overheard me and Kraig throwing out playful bets on our contest. "I might have a couple tricks up my sleeve," he said, grinning.

Seriously? I imagined Earl madly flipping a switch in the cockpit, turning red lights to green, hot-rodding along Grand at 30 mph.

There's no such thing, said Peter Koonce, the Portland Bureau of Transportation's traffic signal manager. Mingling with traffic, downtown-bound streetcars get "pre-emption priority" at only one signal on the eastside route, so they're facing the same congestion as motorists. The streetcar's average speed on the east side is 8 mph.

"The signals are timed for cars going 30 mph," Koonce said. "We'd like the streetcars to get from station to station without stopping. But they have to stop at every station, even if there aren't riders."

In the end -- averaging 3.25 miles per hour, a typical speed for a 43-year-old, 6-foot-1 man, according to an iPhone walking app -- I arrived at the Powell's platform in 31 minutes and 26 seconds. The streetcar with Kraig on board pulled up 58 seconds after that.

Give me back the 12 minutes that I waited for the streetcar at the start, and I beat the streetcar by a good 13 minutes.

Of course, when you're PBOT, trying to counter critics who call the $148.3 million eastside extension a "ghost line," you tend to be a little sensitive. Or, in the case of this race, you accuse the winner of cheating.

“The route you traveled on foot is less than half as long as the route the streetcar took,” said PBOT spokesman Dan Anderson.

Really? That’s all they’ve got? Of course a pedestrian is going to take the most direct route rather than following the streetcar tracks through town. Oh, and again, I was competing against a machine designed to move people.

Ultimately, however, it's clear that the streetcar’s frequency is a greater hindrance than its speed.

“With frequency, transit is always competing with a personal vehicle, even if it's just walking,” Walker said.

When it comes to the streetcar, he said, “the big question is, ‘Do we want transit to compete mainly with the car or mainly with walking?’”

--