We rode TriMet’s Line 72 to find out if services have suffered and if COVID-19 safety measures are working
“MASKS REQUIRED” reads the orange electronic sign on the side of one of TriMet’s signature blue buses, reminding the riders of Line 72 that even after six months, the pandemic is a serious concern for TriMet and its passengers. That everyone onboard is wearing a face mask — mostly the light blue PPE mask that TriMet has been handing out on its buses for free — provides some relief when boarding the busiest bus line in the city. Whether those masks stay on and the busload remains light is far from guaranteed. In fact, it only took a few minutes before one of the passengers in the back let their mask slide beneath their nose.
In the counties of Multnomah, Washington and Clackamas, TriMet operates 700 buses on 85 bus lines that carried 1.8 million riders in the first week of March. Then the pandemic struck, and riding the bus hasn’t been the same since.
To better understand how using transit has changed since March, Street Roots looked at the line with the greatest ridership in the system: Line 72, which runs nearly the entire length of 82nd Avenue and most of Northeast Killingsworth Street. This investigation included a deep dive into complaints filed against the bus line since the pandemic began, interviewing riders at stops and stations along the line’s route, and a hot September evening spent riding aboard several buses during rush hour.
While many people were laid off from work, thousands of Portlanders kept riding Line 72, which TriMet considers an “equity route.”
Line 72 is significant, but not just because of the number of Portlanders who rely on the bus that comes every 15 minutes to get to work, school or to go shopping — or to access the two dozen other transit lines that intersect it. For decades, 82nd Avenue has been the dividing line between two Portlands. This is highly visible in the Portland Bureau of Transportation’s Equity Matrix. The avenue is also a critical artery for many marginalized residents of the city. To the west lies much of the gentrification that has creeped along popular commercial corridors like Southeast Hawthorne and Division streets. To the east live many of the city’s Asian, Latino, Black and low-income residents. In many ways, it is “Main Street” for these communities, and Line 72 is the neighborhood lifeline.
In the last week of March, TriMet ridership dropped by more than 60% to just below 700,000 riders, a devastating blow to the agency’s operational funds, one-third of which come from fares. On April 5, TriMet reduced service by 20% across the entire system. From May 31 through July 4, the average weekday ridership on Line 72 dropped by more than half to 6,050 rides. Yet while many people were laid off from work, thousands of Portlanders kept riding Line 72, which TriMet considers an “equity route.”
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“Our service planners really did take a hard look at how to maintain our service as much as possible, especially for essential workers,” said TriMet’s spokesperson Roberta Altstadt. “We really looked closely at that to make sure we could maintain the service that was needed to those communities of color and low-income areas.” For these reasons and Line 72’s (relatively) high ridership, TriMet continued offering frequent service on weekdays.
By the first week of August, TriMet ridership was up to 850,000, and by the end of August, capacity was back to 90% of its pre-pandemic flow. But as ridership increases, the coronavirus rages on. What has TriMet done to protect its passengers — and how safe do passengers on the city’s busiest bus line feel?
Since the pandemic’s start, Altstadt said, TriMet has tried to move quickly and be versatile when it comes to keeping its buses safe to ride. Behind the scenes, employees have been disinfecting the surfaces of buses throughout the day and sanitizing them every night. This reporter was surprised by the bracing smell of cleaning products (this was not a common sensation pre-pandemic) when he boarded Line 72 on Northeast Sandy.
To avoid running out during a disinfecting product shortage, TriMet has purchased hand sanitizer in bulk, and employees have been making TriMet’s own disinfecting wipes.
On the public-facing side of operations, TriMet has added sliding glass screens protecting bus operators, which were already being installed pre-pandemic, to 400 of the agency’s 700 buses, and the remaining 300 buses will be outfitted by the end of September. Despite this effort to protect the operators, only one operator Street Roots observed had their screen fully extended.
Riders have been required to wear face coverings since May 20, and the agency has installed two hand sanitizer dispensers on each bus, which were used often under our observation, and it provides PPE masks when needed.
The agency has installed signs in English and Spanish to remind riders to wear masks and stay 3 feet apart from each other, per Gov. Kate Brown and the Oregon Health Authority’s most recent directives. Riders must also stay 6 feet away from TriMet vehicle operators. We found that for the most part, riders obeyed these directives.
But the mask rule (only noted on the outside of the bus), was another story. By the end of Street Roots’ first 10-minute ride, five people had let their masks drop below their noses. One of them, a man sitting toward the front and in view of the driver’s mirror, eventually let his PPE mask dangle from one ear. It seemed that the most popular spot for breaking the mask rule is in the seats directly behind the driver — a space where priority is given to seniors and people with disabilities.
One of the simpler methods TriMet said it has implemented to make riding the bus safer is keeping the windows open, Altstadt said. “We did hear directly from the Oregon Health Authority as well as the (Multnomah County) Health Officer Dr. (Jennifer) Vines that increasing ventilation does help reduce the risk,” she said.
None of the four buses Street Roots rode, however, had all of their windows open, and one had less than half its windows open. While TriMet plans to keep windows open this winter, it is difficult to imagine passengers going along with this policy once the wind and rain start blowing onto the seats.
For Line 72 rider James Dowdell, who was standing at a sheltered bus stop just south of Southeast Powell Boulevard, the biggest problem is bus operators' failing to enforce the new mask and distancing rules. “I wish they did a better job (enforcing the rules), because then it would be fine,” he said. “Those signs, they don’t mean nothing if people are still filling them up.”
While Dowdell understands that more people need to be let on the buses as the city continues to reopen, the additional riders on each bus makes him anxious.
“Sometimes people just get on, and they just be sitting wherever they want to sit, real close to each other, and I walk in and I can’t sit. I feel like I’m breaking the rules,” he said.
He appreciates TriMet is handing out face masks, although he has his own and carries extras. The one he’s wearing reads, “Good Vibes Only.”
“I always keep the faith and keep the blessings going. Trying to keep a good spirit, because everybody is going through this shit,” he said.
For Cat Davilla, who was waiting for Bus 20 at the intersection of 82nd Avenue and East Burnside Street, more rule enforcement might encourage people to keep their masks on, but she has mixed feelings.
“I wish people would wear them correctly. I would like for them to be encouraged to. I also don’t want for people to be treated really harshly for that either,” Davilla said. “I do worry that when a rule becomes too strictly enforced, then it leads to disproportionate enforcement.”
After a six-month break, Davilla has returned to riding the bus three days a week for the past week in order to get to her partner’s home and her job as a private tutor. While her roommate is a little uncomfortable with Davilla riding the bus, she believes the safety measures TriMet has put in place are good, “at least on paper.”
She said most people seem to follow the rules, but she wishes there was more space between passengers. “When it is full, I am tempted to just wait for another one or just call a Lyft and not ride the bus,” she said. “Short story: it’s been fine. I would prefer not to be riding it, but I don’t have another form of transportation unless I use Lyft or something like that, which is too expensive on a regular basis.”
The issue of overcrowding was an immediate challenge for TriMet, and has been an ongoing concern among riders. The current maximum occupancy for buses is 19 individual riders, or 24 riders if there are groups or pairs of people riding together.
At the start of the pandemic, TriMet instituted a 6-foot social distance rule, limiting the number of people who could safely be allowed on, although at the time there was no official maximum occupancy rule was put in place. As a result, many Line 72 buses passed by people waiting at bus stops along the route with only a handful of riders on board a bus that has about 40 seats.
This change correlates with a 70% jump in the number of complaints lodged with TriMet for being passed up while waiting at a bus stop for Line 72. Between March 1 and July 31, among the line’s riders, 53 formally complained for this reason.
One complainant in June said they were passed four times and the bus operators “keep just waving their hands.”
Others alleged buses with far fewer passengers than allowed passed them by, including one filed on July 18, in which a passenger claims to have been passed twice, the second time by a bus with what appeared to be only five passengers.
“If (TriMet buses) have only one-fourth capacity, then they should have four times as many bus(es),” read one complaint. Altstadt said the issue of buses passing riders has been addressed by allowing more riders on each bus. She said when bus operators enforced the 6-foot distancing rule, a bus would drive past riders about 300 times each weekday.
“After we moved to 3-feet physical distancing on board, that’s dropped more to 20 to 30 a day,” she said.
This change was made with the guidance of the governor and Oregon Health Authority, and allows for 19 to 24 people on TriMet buses.
TriMet buses are also no longer accepting cash, and all riders are required to use HOP cards. In order to make this transition easier for riders, TriMet handed out 8,200 free HOP cards at the start of the pandemic. However, the change was still a shock for some Line 72 riders.
One complaint from April 1 recounts a confrontation between a bus operator and a visually impaired 64-year-old passenger who was unaware they needed a HOP pass to board despite being a regular rider. The passenger said the operator was “rude” and the passenger ended up walking a “mile and a half or so to Walmart and back,” according to the complaint, which also stated, “82nd Ave is a dangerous street to walk along, lack of sidewalks, traffic, especially for a person with low vision.”
Another common concern among passengers is other riders and operators failing or refusing to wear their masks. TriMet received 18 formal complaints related to Line 72 that mentioned “mask” in this context from March to July this year, 10 of which referred to operators not wearing masks.
Altstadt encourages anyone who sees a bus operator not wearing a face covering to contact TriMet’s Rider Support team at 503-238-RIDE (7433) by voice call or text, or via direct message to @trimethelp on Twitter.
On a sunny Thursday evening in late August, at the Clackamas Town Center, three Line 72 riders told Street Roots they were more concerned about mask usage than service issues.
Devin, who didn’t want to share his last name, rides Line 72 five days a week to get to his job as a manager at a T-Mobile store in Vancouver, where he also uses C-Tran. While he said C-Tran does a better job roping off seats to enforce social distancing on its vehicles, he thinks TriMet’s service has been good since the pandemic started, although he’d like to see operators strictly enforcing mask wearing.
“A lot of people, even on the bus now, as soon as they get on the bus it’s mask down, wearing it like a chin strap” he said.
Since wrecking her car at the start of the pandemic, Lisa (who also declined to give her last name) has been riding TriMet buses every day, including Line 72 to get to a Fred Meyer. While she has been mostly pleased with the service during the past six months, she does get anxious when other riders challenge the mask rule.
“There’s been fights,” said Lisa. “People have argued with the bus driver, saying, ‘You’re taking away my right, blah, blah, blah' — and just got really adamant.’”
She’s seen operators successfully curb this behavior, primarily by refusing to drive until all passengers put on their masks, she said.
“I do appreciate them. I really do,” Lisa said. “That’s got to be hard on them. Especially dealing with people that are downright rude and say stuff to them.”
Get Moving 2020, a Metro spending measure that would invest $5 billion into the region’s transportation network if passed by voters in November, could address many of the problems passengers have had with Line 72 prior to the pandemic.
The Get Moving 2020 package identifies 82nd Avenue as one of the key corridors in need of substantial transportation investments.
Among the proposed changes are improvements to the sidewalks that line the artery, crosswalks, street lighting, transit stations — and the introduction of bus rapid transit.
The idea of improving transit service in the area was on the minds of advocates serving communities along the corridor well before the coronavirus showed up.
In a discussion focused on Get Moving 2020, Duncan Hwang, associate director of the Asian Pacific Network of Oregon, said a transit dedicated lane or bus rapid transit “would be a great improvement,” for the communities he serves.
Typically, bus rapid transit is a system where a lane of a street is reserved for bus traffic only, and buses are often doubly long. Intersections might also give priority to bus traffic, and people can board the bus more like a MAX, to decrease delays caused with boarding.
It is too soon for representatives from Metro to say what a bus rapid transit service would look like along East 82nd Avenue, and many of the proposed design changes that benefit transit users would require the state transportation department to hand jurisdiction over to the city — a transfer that’s currently under discussion.
This November, voters in the tri-county area will have the opportunity to determine whether Metro can follow through on its plans to address some of the inequalities in Portland’s transportation network that have only become more visible during the pandemic.
UPDATE, Sept. 17: TriMet will resume accepting cash fare payments on buses Oct. 1. To date, TriMet has equipped 600 of its buses with operator safety panels, and installation will continue until the entire fleet has been retrofitted. Crews are able to complete about six installations per day.
CORRECTION: This article originally misstated the date TriMet began requiring face coverings. Street Roots regrets the error.
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