Most “transit railroads” in the United States (and GO Transit, which serves Canada’s Toronto area) provide a full span of service on most or all their lines, although there are a few operations that run almost strictly for commuters, without service at non-commuting times. Even the smallest operations, which run in places like Nashville, Seattle, New Mexico, and northern California (ACE), bring riders to their principal city’s downtown core and take them home from there. But there is one such operation that does not; it runs from a light rail stop eight miles from downtown Portland, Ore.
Oregon’s biggest city has a relatively strong transit system, including five light rail lines called MAX (Metropolitan Area Express) that are run by TriMet (Tri-County Metropolitan Transportation District of Oregon). It also has three streetcar lines operated by the City of Portland. Differences in ownership of those lines, including buses across the Columbia River in Vancouver, Wash., are not apparent to riders because of a comprehensive fare integration policy.
The unique operation in the Portland area is Westside Express Service (WES), which runs trains only during peak-commuting periods on weekdays, originating and terminating at a point outside the city’s core, and uses unusual equipment (see map below).
Going Downtown? Use Light Rail!
The WES terminal is located in Beaverton, a suburb west of downtown Portland. The Beaverton Transit Center is six stops west of Pioneer Courthouse Square, in the heart of the city. That line does not serve Portland’s historic Union Station, where Amtrak trains stop. Riders transferring to or from an Amtrak train must take the MAX Green or Yellow lines four stops, followed by a short walk to catch the MAX Blue or Red lines on the original corridor that runs along Morrison Street. The ride to Beaverton takes 20 minutes. Beaverton is a busy transfer point, served by several TriMet bus routes. The area itself sports a few historic buildings and many post-war houses built around 1950.
WES runs on 14.7 miles of the Portland & Western Railroad (P&W, with reporting mark PNWR; see map below), a 478-mile system now owned by Genesee & Wyoming and formed in 1995 to continue freight service on a number of Southern Pacific branches in Oregon; primarily on a north-south orientation from north of Portland and southward to Eugene, roughly parallel to the SP main. That main, now part of Union Pacific (UP), hosts Amtrak’s Cascades trains between Portland (and Seattle) and Eugene, as well as the Coast Starlight to Los Angeles. According to TriMet, it cost $161 million for construction and upgrades on the line for WES service between 2006 and 2008, and WES began operations Feb. 2, 2009.
A Limited Operation, Primarily for Commuters
WES runs on a limited schedule, completely on the P&W, with five morning roundtrips and five more in the late afternoon and early evening. During those times, trains run 45 minutes apart in both directions (they ran every 30 minutes until service was cut during the COVID-19 pandemic). Trains leave Wilsonville from 5:16 a.m. until 8:16 a.m. and again from 3:28 p.m. until 6:28 p.m. They leave Beaverton from 6:08 a.m. until 9:08 a.m. and from 4:20 p.m. to 7:20 p.m. The trains themselves are operated by P&W crews, although TriMet oversees operations and maintenance.
The ride on WES is scheduled to take 27 minutes to the outer end at Wilsonville, south of Portland and north of Salem, the state capital. It has three intermediate stops at Hall/Nimbus, Tigard, and Tualatin, and those are also served by TriMet buses. TriMet’s fare integration includes WES, and Beaverton has standard fare machines. Machines at other stops don’t accept cash, though. That includes Wilsonville, at the line’s southern end. WES also connects with buses operated by other providers: Yamhill County Transit at Tigard, the Tualatin Shuttle in that town, and buses to Salem at Wilsonville.
Unique Equipment
WES trains have always run with unusual equipment, which has given the line some additional appeal to railfans. Four cars on the line, including the ones that run today, came from the Colorado Railcar Company; the last cars the company made before it ceased operations. They were built in 2008 and included three diesel multiple units (DMUs) and one unpowered car with a control cab.
WES was also one of the places where classic Budd Rail Diesel Cars ran in regular service. Two of those cars were an RDC-2 and an RDC-3 that originally operated on the New Haven Railroad in Connecticut and later ran on the Alaska Railroad. The other two were RDC-1s that once ran on VIA Rail in Canada and were later used on Trinity Railway Express between Dallas and Fort Worth, Tex. All were built in the 1950s. At this writing, three of those cars can still be seen in the yard at Wilsonville.
A Route to Salem?
In theory, at least, the WES train can be used as a route between Portland and Salem. In practice, such a journey is only available infrequently, and is not scheduled for convenient connections between the WES train and buses to or from Salem. I made that trip when WES service launched, but it was a one-shot experience, and, if anything, connections have become more difficult since WES service was cut.
Two transit providers run bus service between Wilsonville and Salem: South Metro Area Regional Transit (SMART), which serves Wilsonville, and “Cherriots,” which was named after the region’s cherry crop (Salem is called the “Cherry City”) and officially known as the Salem Area Mass Transit District. The latest combined schedule shows how difficult it is to make the connection. The trip is scheduled to take 45 to 48 minutes. Buses run only on weekdays, from morning to evening peak-commuting times, including at midday, when WES trains do not run.
Looking at Wilsonville connections, in the morning, only the 7:20 a.m. WES arrival has a ten-minute connection to the bus, and the 8:50 a.m. arrival has a 20-minute connection. There is also a perfect misconnect: a bus is scheduled to leave at 8:05 a.m.; the same time a train is due to arrive. Later in the day, trains arriving at 4:47 p.m. and 6:17 p.m. have a 20-minute connection, while only the 5:32 p.m. arrival has a five-minute connection to the bus. For a trip from Salem to Portland, the 5:35 a.m. arrival (leaving Salem at 5 a.m.) and the 7:17 a.m. arrival (leaving Salem at 6:25 a.m.) have 16- and 14-minute connections, respectively. After a day in Salem, the 4 p.m. and 5:30 p.m. bus departures have six-minute connections to the train at Wilsonville. The latter (6:22 p.m. bus arrival to 6:28 p.m. train departure) is risky, because that is the last train.
Not Many Options Otherwise
Amtrak offers relatively comprehensive service between Portland and Salem today, with three trains (including the Coast Starlight) and six buses between the two points throughout the service day. One-way fares start at $10 each way and can rise as high as $31 on the Starlight.
Other bus service between Portland and Salem is sparse. FlixBus runs morning and late-afternoon buses from Salem for a $21 fare, and Pacific Crest runs a midday bus for a $26 fare. Leaving Portland, FlixBus has an 8:00 p.m. departure, which makes a day trip from Salem possible. The other buses from Portland leave shortly before noon within 25 minutes of each other, and too late for a day in Salem.
Is a Corridor Feasible?
Within Salem, the local bus terminal and the train station are 9/10 of a mile apart. The State Capitol is between them: 3/10 of a mile from the bus terminal and 6/10 of a mile from the train station. That leads to the conclusion that it would be more convenient for riders to establish transit that serves the local bus terminal, although frequent service to the train station would probably add more convenience to the trip than the location of the station detracts.
It seems unlikely that frequent train service between the two cities will run on the existing UP main (historically SP). The P&W runs through Salem, but we do not know of any proposals to run a full-service corridor south of Wilsonville and into Salem on that line. If it is feasible to run such a corridor without interfering with the P&W’s freight operations, that might induce demand for travel between the two cities, especially since Portland’s transit is strong and having to take the light rail to Beaverton would probably not deter travelers who want to visit the state capital and pay local fares to do so.
It does not seem feasible that local authorities would establish such a corridor on their own. The lack of connectivity between WES trains and Salem buses at Wilsonville demonstrates that difficulty. While the track between Beaverton and Wilsonville appears to be in good condition and the WES train rode well, that does not address how much it might cost to make infrastructure improvements sufficient to host frequent service further south on the P&W. In theory, if the P&W route runs in the right places between Salem and Eugene, it might be possible to establish an “Oregon Corridor” between the Portland area and Eugene. At this writing, that looks like a long shot. When I rode WES on June 17, there were only 27 riders on the trip to Wilsonville and 20 on the trip to Beaverton. Such low ridership could portend trouble for WES, despite (or maybe because of) its unusual features. We called TriMet for a comment about the future of WES but have not heard back at this writing.
