We also prepared a forecast of ridership for the Eastside MAX in 1989, and forecast a ridership of 30,000 per day in conjunction with the Westside expansion by the year 2005. Actually, MAX's ridership averaged 29,700 a day in December 1996, in other words, about nine years ahead of forecast. That is about the same amount of traffic on a busy urban arterial such as Sandy Boulevard, Canyon Road, or S. E. 82nd Avenue. Transit usage continues to climb relative to population. By any standards of measurement, MAX is a rousing success.
Compact development does improve traffic congestion, contrary to their claims.
The facts show that existing areas of the Portland region with compact, mixed use development patterns and good transit service result in 12.5 miles of auto travel per person, per day, while areas of low density, poor transit and without mixed land uses result in 24 miles of auto travel per day. If the region sprawls in the typical Los Angeles pattern, the Portland region ends up with a lot more traffic to deal with, resulting in significantly more congestion. They made several other statements that are untrue of the Metro area, such as that most job growth is in rural areas. In fact, over 80 percent of regional job grown between 1990 and 1994 has been within the Metro UGB, and 60 percent of that has been in the centers and mixed use areas designated in Metro's 2040 Growth Concept. Only 16 percent has been in industrial and business park settings.