Oregon’s largest transit agency announced a large service reduction and more staff layoffs this week as part of an effort to bridge a $300 million dollar budget shortfall. The shortfall is caused by rising expenses and falling revenue.

TriMet said its average cost of providing service has gone up 56% between 2019 and 2025. Roberta Altstadt, TriMet’s director of communications, said “It is truly a challenge in providing public transit, and that is why we must bring our spending down.”

The new schedule will start on August 23 and will reduce or streamline service on 31 bus routes and cut two lines entirely due to low ridership. Several bus lines will be combined with nearby routes. These broad cuts come after smaller reductions in services were made in fall 2025 and spring 2026.

TriMet had an extensive public engagement process asking riders to rank nine cost-saving measures in order to help plug the budget gap. Almost all of those measures are in this fiscal year’s budget, including reducing route duplication and shortening the MAX Green Line to run only between the Clackamas Town Center transit station and the Gateway/NE 99th transit station.

Altstadt said they heard from their riders to “focus on efficiencies [and] reduce where lines are running on the same route or close together.”

The agency also announced 400 additional staffing cuts, which is projected to reduce labor costs by about $28.8 million. Combined with another round of layoffs last fall, TriMet will have reduced its workforce by more than 500 positions since July 2025, about 13% of total personnel.

Transit ridership around the country significantly dropped during the COVID-19 pandemic. TriMet, like many other agencies, hasn’t returned to its pre-pandemic ridership. TriMet had 60 million boardings between July 2025 through May of 2026, about one-third less than 2019 levels for the same period.

TriMet officials said the agency’s financial challenges extend beyond lower ridership. Payroll tax revenue — the transit agency’s largest source of funding — has not kept pace with rising operating costs because of slower economic growth in the Portland metropolitan area and across Oregon. Oregon’s unemployment rate of 5.5% is one of the highest in the country.

The agency also said it has received less state and federal funding than it had anticipated. TriMet had backed a proposal during the 2025 legislative session to increase transit funding through a comprehensive transportation package.

While lawmakers approved a temporary 2-year, 0.1% increase in the employee payroll tax during a special session in September 2025, voters overwhelmingly rejected the measure in May 2026, leaving the agency without an expected source of additional revenue.

“The cuts will not be enough,” said Altstadt. “We need to increase our revenue, and that really does mean identifying with our state and regional partners, sustainable revenue sources for public transit.”

LIFT paratransit service, which serves people with disabilities, has seen an 80% increase in labor costs since 2019.

“Paratransit service is one of the costliest services that public transit agencies provide,” Aldstadt said. The demand for LIFT is growing compared to other TriMet services.

“LIFT ridership is nearly at pre-pandemic levels today and is expected to exceed 2019 LIFT ridership next year,” she said.

Paratransit service is required under the Americans with Disabilities Act for riders who are unable to use regularly scheduled transit. TriMet will make small changes to the LIFT service area to match the fixed route changes. The agency said these adjustments will affect fewer than 0.3% of trips on LIFT.

The biggest change is ceasing TriMet-provided additional hand-to-hand LIFT paratransit services, which assist riders with significant cognitive disabilities by having the transit operator hand them off to a person who helps navigate them to a specific office or internal room.

Hand-to-hand services ended on July 1, but many riders will still be eligible for assistance through their county’s developmental disabilities program.

“LIFT staff has been contacting riders, caretakers and the contacts at their destination if they had previously used hand-to-hand service to direct them how to continue the service if needed going forward,” Aldstadt said.

TriMet estimates that by reducing the service, the agency will free up $5 million dollars to use on other LIFT paratransit trips.

Disability advocacy groups are concerned about those changes. Jake Cornett, executive director of Disability Rights Oregon, said these cuts will isolate people with disabilities or force them to use more expensive non-emergency medical transport services for routine appointments.

“These are the people who need public services the most in order to live in the community,” Cornett said.

TriMet believes that these cuts are consistent with the Americans with Disabilities Act, as hand-to-hand paratransit services are not offered by every transit agency. Cornett said that Disability Rights Oregon is conducting a legal review to determine if they believe the cuts are permissible.

“We’re not ready to declare that this is allowed under federal and state disability law,” he said.

TriMet is hoping to fully balance its budget by 2028. This year’s budget draws down $187.4 million from agency reserves to close the gap between revenues and expenditures. The agency said more changes are required with additional service cuts coming next year. Another option on the table is fare increases beginning in 2028. The agency last raised fares by 12% in January 2024.

In recent years, many transit agencies in Oregon have reduced service and laid off staff as they’ve faced ongoing funding issues and rising expenses. Cascades East Transit in Central Oregon reintroduced fares earlier this year for regular service to offset rising costs without significant cuts to routes.

News Source : https://www.opb.org/article/2026/07/03/trimet-cut-over-400-positions-bus-service/