News

One year ago, on September 12, 2015, Portland Streetcar, TriMet, and the community celebrated the Grand Opening of the A & B Loops, the Tilikum Crossing and the TriMet Orange Line.  At the time, east side ridership for Streetcar hovered around 850 riders per day with 3,260 riders on the old Central Loop (CL) line.  Ridership has more than doubled with over 2,000 daily riders on the east side alone and 6,420 riders on the combined A & B Loop streetcar service.  With more buildings opening soon all along the alignment, increased awareness and a focus on reliability, we are excited for what the coming year will bring.  Thank you for taking the ride with us!

Share your Portland Streetcar or Loop stories with us on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram using the hashtag #pdxstreetcar.

Portland Streetcar is proud to partner with Next Adventure on an innovative sponsorship.  To help promote all of the ways to get around town for our school children, Next Adventure has sponsored all K-12 School Field Trips on Portland Streetcar.  This means that all the fares for the students, chaperones, and teachers have been paid for and they ride for free.  To get the word out, Next Adventure owners Deek Heykamp and Bryan Knudsen along with our Executive Director Dan Bower created a video.  The video is available on YouTube and on our Video Gallery.

This summer has been full of celebrations.  Starting with our 15th Anniversary on July 20, the Streetcar Mobile Music Fest on July 23rd, the Art Contest and Open House on August 4th and now, on August 17, 2016 we have another thing to celebrate.  Since first opening in 2001, over 50,000,000 rides have been taken on Portland Streetcar!  We are so grateful to all of our riders and are looking forward to celebrating many more milestones to come!

Shown here is Dan Bower, Portland Streetcar Executive Director, with three of those 50 million Portland Streetcar riders!

From the start of service on Sunday, August 21 through the end of service on Saturday, September 3, our partner TriMet will have crews in the field making improvements to the tracks near the Rose Quarter to improve MAX reliability.  While temporarily disruptive, this work will allow for a more reliable system and a smoother ride through the area.  

With Portland Streetcar's direct connections to all 5 MAX lines and nearly 70% of our riders boarding with a TriMet fare, we wanted to make sure all of our riders were aware of the upcoming disruptions to the regional service.  This may also impact Portland Streetcar service as more people search for alternate ways to get around the Central City.  For more information on all of the MAX service impacts and how to navigate the disruption, visit TriMet's page on the project.

After nearly a week of voting on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram as well as in person in our office, the votes have been tabulated and the winners of the "Inspired by Streetcar" Art Contest have been announced!  

Paint, Pen, Ink, & Other:  

1st Place goes to All Are Welcome by Chris Topper

2nd Place goes to Portland Streetcars by Lynne Leahy

Photography:  

1st Place goes to #pdxstreetcar #favseat by Kevin Cook

2nd Place goes to Loop A-round the Snow by Kelly Cari

Thank you to all who participated!  Thank you also to our prize sponsors Pro Photo Supply, Frame Central & Blick Art Materials.