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Charles Wall of Southwest Portland didn't expect to get caught in traffic on Grand Avenue just before President Barack Obama left the Oregon Convention Center in 2012, but he took it in stride. "That's cool" he said. "It's not the end of the world." President Obama spoke at the Convention Center in 2012 for a private fundraiser.

(The Oregonian/2012)

Get ready for Obama Jam 2015.

President Barack Obama's visits to Portland in recent years have created epic traffic jams, some of which they'll still be talking about during Justin Bieber's second term in the White House. (Who saw that political movement coming?)

Well, Obama's trip to the Portland area this Thursday and Friday could wind up creating not just one but two days of nightmarish gridlock for commuters.

Here are 10 things motorists and transit riders should consider before hitting the roads while the president is in town for a Democratic fundraiser and a trade event at Nike's campus near Beaverton.

1. Work from home if you can.

2. For obvious security reasons (Obama receives more daily deaths threats than any president in history), the Secret Service is maintaining its silence about the president's exact schedule and route for his fifth visit to the Rose City. But conventional wisdom says President Obama will land sometime during the Thursday evening commute in order to make the ritzy fundraiser at downtown Portland's Sentinel Hotel.

3. Stay off Interstate 84 and I-205 late Thursday afternoon and early evening if you can. In the past, the Secret Service has moved the president "the wrong way" on freeways, closing eastbound I-84, for example, to allow the 20-vehicle presidential motorcade to go west in the empty lanes.

So, if you're headed to the airport on Thursday, give yourself an extra hour.

4. Traffic in the immediate area around the Sentinel Hotel will likely be disrupted from about 2 p.m. to 8 p.m. Pedestrian and bicycle access around the hotel will be limited throughout the day.

The area from Southwest Morrison Street to Washington Street, and Ninth to 12th avenues, will be closed to all traffic, including the Portland Streetcar during that period.

The Portland Streetcar will run a modified service, with Central Loop trains connecting Northwest 23rd Avenue to the Lloyd District and OMSI via the Broadway Bridge. The North/South line will operate between South Waterfront and Portland State University. There will be no Streetcar Service on 10th and 11th Avenues from 2 p.m. to 8 p.m.

5. If the president does land during the evening commute, expect a longer than usual stop-and-go ride on TriMet. The Secret Service typically requires Oregon's largest transit agency to halt all light-rail trains when the commander-in-chief is on the move. During his last visit, MAX delays stretched beyond an hour.

TriMet released this statement late Wednesday:

TriMet encourages riders to please plan extra time for their commutes this afternoon/evening and Friday as the Portland area welcomes President Obama to town. Delays may be significant this afternoon/evening and Friday morning as police will instruct MAX trains to hold for an indefinite period of time whenever the President or his motorcade is nearby. Buses will be instructed to detour or hold at times as well. Delays could be significant - 30 minutes or more - for both trains and buses systemwide as all traffic will be impacted causing heavy congestion in the Portland City Center and other locations.

MAX Green and Yellow lines will be disrupted during a portion of the President's visit. From about 6:30 p.m. Thursday through about 9 a.m. Friday, the Green and Yellow lines will run on the Blue/Red tracks on 1st Ave and Morrison/Yamhill in Portland City Center. Riders can connect with shuttle buses on Yamhill at 4th or 5th avenues or catch regular service buses. Shuttle buses will serve all Green/Yellow Line stations on the Transit Mall on 5th and 6thavenues except for Pioneer Courthouse Station. All bus lines will be detoured off the Transit Mall between SW Yamhill and Oak streets during the same period of time.

6. The exact time of Obama's appearance at Nike in Beaverton is still a mystery. But it's a good bet that the motorcade will roll near the tail end of the Friday morning commute, requiring parts of U.S. 26 and Oregon 217 to be shut down.

7. Don't count on using the Oregon Department of Transportation "live traffic cameras" to keep track of the motorcade. During past presidential visits, it looked like ODOT fed a loop of old traffic video into the online camera feeds. Some of the Secret Service's best life-and-death security tricks are apparently inspired by Keanu Reeves in "Speed." However, Don Hamilton, an ODOT spokesman, said the agency doesn't have the capability to feed old footage into the traffic-cam feeds.

All I know is that Obama once landed in stumptown on a rainy day and ODOT's I-84 cameras were either blacked out or showing images of a sunny day with the wrong date. Hmmm.

8. Why doesn't the president travel by helicopter? I covered this in a 2012 column. For decades, the Secret Service has been perfecting the mode of presidential travel. The motorcade is a known entity. "It provides the most protection," Ronald Kessler, author of the best-selling "In the President's Secret Service," told me, "and the best way to take evasive action if there is an attack."

9. Even if you see the president's limo, it may not be the president's limo.

The motorcade travels from city to city in giant military cargo planes. Obama (code name: Renegade) is ferried around in a Cadillac limo known as "the Beast." Besides defensive and offensive capabilities, the armor-plated first ride is outfitted with a direct phone line to the Pentagon. It also carries bottles of the president's blood in case he needs an emergency transfusion.

Meanwhile, the long line of vehicles contains up to two decoy limos, traveling staff, the president's physician, press vans, an ambulance and agents carrying some serious fire power.

10. The president should be up in the air and on the way to his next destination before the Friday evening commute.

If you missed my 2012 column "Why President Obama traveled by traffic-jamming motorcade instead of helicopter or 'special MAX train' in Portland," here it is in its entirety:

I imagine U.S. presidents have been disrupting traffic since George Washington halted the carriage to retrieve a stray barrel of his coiffure powder from a Philadelphia street.

OK. Historians will probably quibble with that.

But we can hold this truth to be self-evident, President Barack Obama's visit to Portland on Tuesday left a lot of evening commuters feeling as if their freedom of movement was seriously violated.

When the 20-vehicle presidential motorcade was on the move, traffic locked up like Congress in an election year. Just as the P.M. rush hour heated up, authorities closed Interstate 84 eastbound for nearly 30 minutes.

For many drivers who contacted me about the Obamajam, the main question was: Isn't there a way to transport the leader of the free world without shutting down highways?

"How about a helicopter?" asked Patrick McGough of Gresham, a construction worker whose commute home Tuesday was an hour longer because of the I-84 closure. "They could have used Paul Allen's helipad at the Rose Garden."

Robert Baird of Wilsonville suggested an empty "special MAX train" for Obama from Portland International Airport and back. "Logistically, it makes sense," said Baird, a retired funeral and cemetery trust administrator. "That's door-to-door service to his event at the Oregon Convention Center."

Neither mode would have probably allowed Obama to make his cheese-sandwich stop at the Gateway Breakfast House. Still, these are legitimate questions.

The Secret Service, charged by Congress with keeping the president alive, declined to discuss the planning of Obama's Portland visit.

So, I turned to a former agent and experts on the agency for help.

Here's some dark context: Obama faces more death threats than any other president. More than 30 a day, according to Ronald Kessler, author of the best-selling "In the President's Secret Service."

In the shadow of that constant threat, the Secret Service prefers to use the motorcade whenever possible, Kessler said. For decades, the agency has been perfecting the mode of presidential travel. It's a known entity.

"It provides the most protection," Kessler said, "and the best way to take evasive action if there is an attack."

The motorcade travels city to city in giant military cargo planes. Obama (code name: Renegade) is ferried around in a Cadillac limo known as "the Beast." Besides defensive and offensive capabilities, the armor-plated first ride is outfitted with a direct phone line to the Pentagon. It also carries bottles of the president's blood in case he needs an emergency transfusion.

Meanwhile, the long line of vehicles contains up to two decoy limos, traveling staff, the president's physician, press vans, an ambulance and agents carrying some serious fire power.

It helps that Portland's traffic, when compared to other cities, is fairly manageable and the airport is only 12 miles from downtown, said Jeffrey Robinson, co-author of "Standing Next to History: An Agent's Life in the Secret Service."

"I've been to Portland," Robinson said. "It's easy enough to get around, especially when you can turn off all the red lights for the motorcade."

Yes, presidents have used Marine One as an alternative to the motorcade. And the 40-by-40-foot heliport atop a Rose Garden parking garage is only a couple blocks from the convention center.

But that landing zone likely can't handle Marine One's weight and size, said Dan Emmett, a retired Secret Service special agent and author of the excellent "Within Arm's Length: The Extraordinary Life and Career of a Special Agent in the United States Secret Service." What's more, the location could come with too many security vulnerabilities.

"Just because a helo pad exists in proximity to his final destination does not mean it is suitable," Emmett said.

Chris Oxley, the Rose Quarter's general manager, said the Secret Service has never contacted him about using the heliport.

So what about that special MAX train?

"Won't happen," Kessler said. The Secret Service would never put the living, breathing embodiment of our democracy on a regular vehicle or light-rail train, he said.

The security challenges would be mind-boggling, the experts said. For example, if something happened between stations, the president would be stuck on the tracks with no direct route to the nearest hospital.

And talk about disruptions. Regular bomb sweeps of the tracks would also require the Blue, Green and Red lines to be shut down for the day, TriMet officials told me.

In his book "Presidential Travels: The Journey from George Washington to George W. Bush," Willamette University professor Richard J. Ellis writes of a time when anyone could physically strike the president. In fact, that's exactly what Lt. Robert Beverly Randolph did to Andrew Jackson on a riverboat in 1833.

Unfortunately, these are crueler times. The closest most citizens get to our president these days is the exhaust and exhaustion of traffic snarls left in his wake.

-- Joseph Rose

503-221-8029

jrose@oregonian.com

@josephjrose