Oregon’s largest transit agency will reduce bus service on a handful of routes beginning Sunday. This is the first of three service cuts that Portland metro area’s TriMet expects to make over the next 13 months.

The immediate schedule change will reduce frequency on five bus lines after 7 p.m., when passenger loads are at their lowest. The lines affected are FX2, 35, 52, 77 and 81.

“We really just looked at ridership and looked at times when fewer people were riding,” said Tia York, TriMet’s manager of media relations.

Broader service cuts are planned next year. Four additional bus lines will reduce service frequency in March, and even more cuts are planned later in 2026.

“These cuts that we’re dealing with now are just buying us time,” York said. “By the time this is done, we are going to be cutting at least 10% of our service. What’s happening in November will pale in comparison to the cuts that are coming later.”

The service reductions are one strategy the agency is using to bridge its $300 million budget gap over the next two years. The shortfall is predominately caused by rising expenses.

“For an hour of providing bus service, the cost has gone up about 53% in the last several years,” York said. That increase is even higher for TriMet’s LIFT para-transit service, which serves people with disabilities, where York said labor costs have gone up 80% since 2019.

Transit ridership around the country significantly dropped during the COVID-19 pandemic, and TriMet hasn’t bounced back to its pre-pandemic ridership. TriMet had 65 million boardings in its 2024-2025 fiscal year, about two-thirds of 2019 levels.

“With fewer people riding, we are bringing in less money from fares,” York said.

TriMet is considering increasing ticket prices in 2028. The agency’s last fare increase was 12% in January 2024, to $2.80 for a two-and-a-half-hour adult pass, and $5.60 for a day pass. The agency is also looking at ways to increase revenue through its event ticket partnerships.

The agency announced 26 staff layoffs last week.

“We’re leaving no stone unturned,” said York. “We’re open to ideas.”

The agency has launched a public engagement process asking transit users to rank nine possible cost-saving measures. Nearly 5,000 people responded to TriMet’s recent rider survey.

Riders ranked reducing route duplication as their preferred first cut. “If there’s an area of town where maybe two or three bus lines serve riders, reduce those to one,” said York.

Survey respondents ranked second the option of shortening the light rail MAX Green Line to run only between Clackamas Town Center transit station and Gateway/NE 99th transit station.

“Shortening the Green Line will help save a significant amount of money,” York said. The trade-off would be that riders from Clackamas would have to transfer to other MAX lines to reach the airport or downtown, increasing trip times.

If TriMet decides to make this change, it won’t be until some time after March based on gathering more rider feedback. “We’ll have another survey in January as we begin to refine the proposals for those big cuts that are coming up in 2026,” York said.

The least popular options on the recent rider survey included reducing frequent-service bus lines and reducing MAX train frequency.

“We may have to do everything that was on that survey,” York said. “We went to the community to say, ‘what do you want us to do first?’”

This year, many transit agencies in Oregon have reduced service and laid off staff as they’ve faced ongoing funding issues and rising expenses. A lawsuit between the federal government and the state of Oregon delayed key federal funding for rural transit agencies.

Rogue Valley Transportation District in Medford laid off 80 staff members, and cut 60% of its scheduled service, and at least six other transit agencies across the state saw smaller service cuts.

Earlier in the year, political wrangling over Oregon’s transportation bill also threatened a payroll tax that funds public transit and nearly resulted in hundreds of Oregon Department of Transportation workers losing their jobs. That bill was ultimately passed, but only after the state Legislature convened a special session to address transportation funding.

News Source : https://www.opb.org/article/2025/11/30/trimet-service-cuts-budget-gap/