page_title: TriMet
section_title: General information
hierarchical_section_title: TriMet / General information
caption_attribution_description: English: Tri-Met (now TriMet) bus 1091, built in 1976 by AM General, southbound on 5th Avenue at Morrison Street in downtown Portland, Oregon. It is operating on route 14-Hawthorne. The last of Tri-Met's 100 AM General buses were retired in 1989.
context_page_description: TriMet, formally known as the Tri-County Metropolitan Transportation District of Oregon, is a public agency that operates mass transit in a region that spans most of the Portland metropolitan area in the U.S. state of Oregon. Created in 1969 by the Oregon legislature, the district replaced five private bus companies that operated in the three counties: Multnomah, Washington, and Clackamas. TriMet started operating a light rail system, MAX, in 1986, which has since been expanded to 5 lines that now cover 59.7 miles, as well as the WES Commuter Rail line in 2009. It also provides the operators and maintenance personnel for the City of Portland-owned Portland Streetcar system.
  In addition to rail lines, TriMet provides the region's bus system, as well as LIFT paratransit service. There are 688 buses in TriMet's fleet that operate on 85 lines. In 2018, the entire system averaged 310,000 rides per weekday and operates buses and trains between the hours of approximately 5 a.m. and 2 a.m. TriMet's annual budget for FY 2018 is $525.8 million, with 30% of resources coming from a district-wide payroll tax and 10% from fares.
context_section_description: TriMet is "a municipal corporation of the State of Oregon", with powers to tax, issue bonds, and enact police ordinances and is governed by a seven-member board of directors appointed by the Governor of Oregon. It has its own boundary, which currently encompasses an area of about 533 square miles (1,380 km²).  The TriMet district serves portions of the counties of Multnomah, Washington, and Clackamas; it extends from Troutdale to Forest Grove east to west, and from Sauvie Island to Oregon City and Estacada north to south.
  For more than 30 years the agency called itself Tri-Met, but it formally dropped the hyphen from its name in 2002, as part of a new corporate identity strategy involving a redesigned logo and new color scheme for its vehicles and other media.
  TriMet was formed in 1969 after disputes between the Portland city council and Rose City Transit Company, the private company that previously operated the bus system serving the city (but not its suburbs). The new public agency was created by an ordinance of the Portland city council, under provisions of a law enacted by the 1969 Oregon Legislature, and took over all of Rose City Transit's service and fleet effective December 1, 1969. Bus service in the suburban portions of the metropolitan area was operated by four smaller private companies which had a common union and were collectively known as the "Blue Bus" lines: Portland Stages, Tualatin Valley Buses, Intercity Buses and Estacada-Molalla Stages.  These were taken over by TriMet on September 6, 1970.  Eighty-eight buses owned by the four suburban companies were transferred to TriMet, but many were found to be in poor condition and the TriMet board soon took action to replace them with new buses.
  As of July 2018, TriMet operates a total of 688 buses on 85 routes, 145 MAX light rail cars on five lines, and 253 LIFT paratransit vehicles. Each of the five MAX and 12 of the bus lines are designated as "Frequent Service" lines, scheduled to operate at headways of 15 minutes or less for most of the service day (service is less frequent in the early morning and late evening).
  TriMet connects to several other mass transit systems:
  C-Tran, the public transit district for Vancouver and Clark County, Washington
  Canby Area Transit, the public transit service for Canby and rural areas south of Oregon City along Highway 99E (formerly within the TriMet district)
  Cherriots, the public transit service for Salem and Keizer.  This connection is at the Wilsonville Station of TriMet's WES Commuter Rail rail line.
  Columbia County Rider, the public transit service for Scappoose, St. Helens, and Columbia County
  Portland Streetcar, a circulator streetcar service in downtown Portland and neighborhoods near downtown
  Sandy Area Metro, the public transit service for Sandy (formerly within the TriMet district)
  SMART, the public transit service for Wilsonville (formerly within the TriMet district)
  South Clackamas Transportation District, the public transit service for Molalla and rural areas south of Oregon City along Highway 213 (formerly within the TriMet district)
  Tillamook County Transportation District, the public transit service for Tillamook and Tillamook County
  Yamhill County Transit Area, the public transit service for McMinnville, Newberg and Yamhill County
  TriMet also links to various local shuttle services operated by the following: Ride Connection, which serves Banks, Gaston, King City and North Plains; the Swan Island Transportation Management Association; the Tualatin Transportation Management Association; Intel; Nike; and Oregon Health & Science University, including the Portland Aerial Tram.
  Long-range transportation planning for the metropolitan area is provided by Metro, an elected regional government. Metro also has statutory authority to take over the day-to-day operations of TriMet, but has never exercised that power, as past studies of such a merger have found it to be problematic.
caption: TriMet's first paint scheme was this orange and white, worn by all vehicles from 1971 until 1980 and by a portion of the fleet (the oldest buses) until 1991.
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