All showtimes are makeable.
Oregon is inventing better. And as usual, America is watching. Enviously. Roll on, future city.
Presented by the Bicycle Transportation Alliance
Video by North
Portland Streetcar 10th Anniversary Celebration (12-August-2011)
The Portland Streetcar celebrates 10 years of service this summer.
The modern Portland Streetcar debuted on July 20, 2001, carrying passengers between the Good Samaritan Hospital in Northwest Portland to Portland State University in Southwest.
Annual ridership in that first year was almost 1.5 million. Now the streetcar averages about 4 million rides a year. Service was extended to Riverplace in 2005, SW Gibbs in 2006, and SW Lowell in 2007. In 2012 the 3.3 mile streetcar loop project is scheduled to be completed, connecting the east side of the river with the west.
Join Congressman Earl Blumenauer, Mayor Sam Adams, and PSI Board Chair Michael Powell, and others this Friday, August 12, 2011 at Jamison Square (NW 10th & Johnson) for a special 10th anniversary celebration.
But it’s not just speeches! From 10am until 4pm local vendors and entertainers (including Boka Marimba from 10:15am to 12:45pm). Food purveyors will be on hand, and there will be activities for the kids, face painting, and more.
This is a free, all ages, celebration open to everyone!
And enjoy FREE RIDES on the streetcar all weekend, August 12-14!
August 9, 1912: Steel Bridge Opens
Shortly after midnight on the morning of August 9, 1912 the old Steel Bridge was closed with much ceremony, while the new Steel Bridge (i.e. the Steel Bridge still in use today) opened . . . to little fanfare (Morning Oregonian, 10-August-1912).
Two bottles of champagne, the christener of the elite of the navigating world, were broken across the bulk of the old bridge, a cornet duet, “Auld Lang Syne,” said farewell from the workers on the old structure, and all the ceremonies of the night centered around the 21-year-old steel way across the river.
The new, paint-shiny Harriman bridge, with its expensive lift towers and its two decks, got none of the ceremonies of the occasion. “Taffy,” a gatekeeper, stumbled across a pile of lumber on the new bridge, and swore – that is all the benediction it got.
Built over two years by the Oregon Railway and Navigation Company and the Union Pacific Railroad, the new Steel Bridge is a Pratt through truss, vertical lift bridge. When it opened it was the largest telescoping bridge in the world, and it is now believed to be the world’s only double-lift span that can raise its lower deck independently of the upper deck (“Willamette River (Steel) Bridge” [doc] – Oregon Department of Transportation).
July 25, 1986: Banfield Light Rail Line Named MAX
MAX, an acronym for Metropolitan Area eXpress, was announced by TriMet on July 25, 1986 as the name selected for the Banfield Light Rail Project trains. MAX’s first line, from Gresham to downtown, officially opened on September 5 of that same year.
In 1985 TriMet set up a contest for employees to suggest names, with the public voting on a list of finalists. Jeff Frane, a typesetter at TriMet at the time, suggested the name MAX, which was inspired by his son Alex.
“I used to read him these picture books and there was a character – I think he’s a rabbit – his name was Max,” Frane says. “The ad agency had a list of criteria. The name had to be simple, had to be friendly. I was playing around with acronyms. Max just seemed like a really friendly name.”
For suggesting the winning name Frane won the cash equivalent of an annual pass. Tri-county residents got a friendly sounding train name!
Photo credit: An eastbound train on the MAX light rail system in Portland, Oregon, next to the Banfield Freeway (Interstate 84) by Wikimedia Commons contributor Cacophony. Used here under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.
July 20, 2001: Portland Streetcar Service Begins
Portland’s first streetcar, horse-drawn, glided along First Street in 1872 (The Oregonian, 20-July-2011). For the next several decades streetcars thrived. Streetcars became ubiquitous in, and necessary to, the city’s expansion – neighborhoods like Council Crest, Hawthorne, and Irvington began as streetcar suburbs. But you know the rest of the story. Cars and buses took over, and in 1950 Portland’s last streetcars ceased operation.
That is, until July 20, 2001, when the new Portland Streetcar debuted, carrying passengers between the Good Samaritan Hospital in Northwest Portland to Portland State University in Southwest.