Linking Town & Regional Centers with Educational Institutions Along High-Capacity Transit Routes

 

This is the Metro 2040 Growth Concept Map, showing all the "Regional Centers" and "Town Centers" that Metro has proposed as areas of concentrated current and future development. These areas are envisioned to become "15-minute neighborhoods" with neighborhood completeness that allows nearby residents to accomplish most of their daily tasks within a 15-minute walkshed/bikeshed. The regional/town centers concept is a solid idea for tailoring urban development into forms that lend themselves to the most economically and environmentally sustainable forms of transportation. However, with the local and regional job market the way it is, many people - particularly lower-income service industry workers - don't often have the luxury of living near where they earn a living. Community and commuter college students - who tend to be lower-income and more ethnically and racially diverse than the region as a whole - also often lack the luxury of living near where they study. Colleges and universities also provide a high concentration of job opportunities and therefore trip generation, so providing linkages between town and regional centers as well as higher education institutions was also a priority. 

My idea to enhance this growth concept map was to envision a high-capacity transit map (whether light rail or BRT or medium/heavy subway) that provides easily accessible transportation links between all of Metro's identified town centers and regional centers with interconnecting routes. From Vancouver and Camas/Washougal to Forest Grove, Damascus, Oregon City, Sherwood, and Wilsonville, and everywhere in between, I wanted to put a transportation network together that - even if logistically challenging and prohibitively expensive to construct - would show what linking these vital centers of regional growth would look like. I also wanted to link the region's colleges and universities to one another to make improved public transportation access to higher education a reality for more people.

I started with the region's current MAX light rail routes, expanding them to link to more regional and town centers where it made sense. I pulled the Red Line up past the northernmost regional center on the map (Salmon Creek, WA) to begin at the WSU-Vancouver campus, and turned it south after Beaverton TC to serve Wilsonville. I expanded the Blue Line to Troutdale in the east and Forest Grove in the west, linking Mt. Hood Community College and Pacific University to the system. The Orange Line links Vancouver Mall, Clark College, Oregon City, and Clackamas Community College. Yellow starts at the Sunlight Supply Amphitheater in Vancouver, links Salmon Creek, Hazel Dell, and Downtown Vancouver, and shifts to a route similar to the SW Corridor proposal south of Downtown Portland, linking PCC Sylvania and Sherwood. I then added other color-based lines, linking PCC Southeast, PCC Rock Creek, and PCC Cascades, as well as OHSU, University of Portland, and Lewis & Clark College to the system and its town and regional centers. 

With this vision, every regional center, town center, and higher education institution has accessible high-capacity mass transit, to give people throughout the region viable mode alternatives to the single-occupancy vehicle.

Metro 2040 Growth Concept Map Source: www.portlandonline.com/portlandplan/?a=288082&