For Tualatin Mayor Frank Bubenik, the time has finally come for the city to seriously consider withdrawing from the TriMet regional transit system in favor of Wilsonville’s SMART service in hopes of getting more locally intensive transit.
Bubenik’s long interest in the idea redoubled in the wake of a Dec. 17 city housing forum, where residents of Tualatin’s new affordable-housing center, Plambeck Gardens, said limited and unreliable TriMet bus service was hobbling them from consistently getting to work, school and appointments on time.
In an interview with Tualatin Life, Bubenik said TriMet’s recent financial strains have heightened city concerns over what he described as its already thin service in Tualatin. Even barring further cutbacks, he said, the city chips in much more value in taxes to TriMet – nearly $9 million a year – than TriMet gives back in service.
“It’s totally out of proportion,” he said. “We’re basically donating money. We’re paying for services we’re not receiving.”
Line extensions from a fleet of 40-foot buses housed in garages located well north into the metro area might no longer serve Tualatin as well as a neighboring service that more typically runs smaller vehicles, he said.
In hosting TriMet representatives at a Tualatin City Council meeting on Feb. 9, Bubenik expects to explore any service curtailment proposals that TriMet might float in step with its $300 million deficit, he said. He also said he expects discussion of a potential TriMet-SMART switch.
City debate over such a changeover has stirred off and on since 1989, when the city of Wilsonville withdrew from TriMet to start SMART (South Metro Area Regional Transit). Since then, Wilsonville’s payroll taxes have financed SMART, instead of TriMet.
Making SMART look more inviting, its riders – unlike TriMet riders, who pay fares – ride for free.
A window for petitioning TriMet to release Tualatin, as Wilsonville did more than 35 years ago, will be open from January through August – then not again for five years, until 2031.
TriMet spokesman Mark Miller said the agency could not comment on hypothetical scenarios. But he wrote: “We value our relationship with the City of Tualatin and our riders, and we’re committed to engaging with our riders and public stakeholders on the best ways to maximize service efficiency across our entire service district.”
Service delays might result from traffic backups surrounding Interstate 5, according to Miller. I-5 is located about a third of a mile east of Plambeck. Some Plambeck residents also might not know that Bus Line 25 is one of the few TriMet lines that runs truncated schedules off-peak.
At the housing forum, Catherine Ball, one of the first residents of Plambeck, voiced concerns about the frequency and dependability of TriMet’s service to and from the development. Ball plans to circulate a petition among fellow residents to present at the Feb. 9 council meeting.
Setting aside transit issues, the 116-unit cluster of buildings is widely considered an affordable-housing win for the city of Tualatin, which, in effect, invested in Plambeck (see sidebar). The contemporary-looking campus was christened in April and full by September.
Yet, Bubenik said, its layout was based on assumptions that comparatively few residents would drive cars, that its parking would need to offer a smaller-than-usual number of spots, and that TriMet would fill transit gaps.
Many residents have reported that the plan has not yet matched reality.
Unpredictable and spotty service within intermittent active-schedule windows for the only bus stopping at Plambeck, Ball said, is leaving residents isolated inside the sparsely developed expanses of land surrounding the site at the southern tip of Tualatin.
Based on the 29-year-old Ball’s income, she pays $995 in monthly rent for her two-bedroom unit, which she shares with her 7-year-old daughter, Klaire. A neurological disorder keeps Catherine from driving around town. To stretch her limited income, she is left to try to rely on TriMet buses, she said.
Her trials in getting to and from Plambeck are most frustrating, Ball said, when she attempts to accompany Klaire on Bus Line 96, then switch to Bus Line 76, to reach Tualatin’s Mitch Charter School. Ball said the school provides exemplary support for Klaire, who has her own disabilities.
Bus Line 96 stops at Plambeck’s station only from 6 to 9:30 a.m. and 3 to 8:30 p.m. on weekdays. Even within those windows, Ball said, the bus sometimes runs up to 30 minutes late, passes without stopping or does not show up at all. Ball estimated that transit glitches bar her from getting Klaire to school on time two or three times a week. The line’s irregularity, she said, sometimes leaves her and others stranded on or off the property – or forced to pay pricier fares for Uber or Lyft rides.
“It just runs oddly,” Ball said. “It’s hit or miss. Many of our people do not drive and so are stuck. When more and more people have moved in, there have been more and more complaints.”
Soon, Ball needs to return to work, she said, but she’s anxious about how she’d get to and from work on a timely basis.
Meantime, TriMet, which recently laid off a couple of dozen administrative employees, plans to release proposals for budget-driven service alterations in early January, followed by a comment period and open houses to gather public feedback.
Bubenik expects further TriMet reductions in Tualatin, where its buses already run only along a few lines. The more TriMet’s service footprint recedes, he said, the more likely Tualatin would get better service from SMART.
“We’ve really got to look into this,” he said.
For TriMet, for all Bubenik knows, such a switch might help shore up TriMet’s finances by closing out its service obligations to Tualatin, he said.
For SMART, Bubenik said, the addition of Tualatin’s annual payroll taxes of about $8.9 million would mark a 144 percent increase over SMART’s $6.2 million annual budget, using state Department of Revenue tax figures. Alternatively, they amount to 1.6 percent of TriMet’s $552.5 million budget.
Dwight Brashear, transit director for the city of Wilsonville, said any decision about whether Tualatin might join SMART would fall on the mayors and city councils of Tualatin and Wilsonville, as well as TriMet. But Brashear pointed out that in principle, SMART worries less about boundaries than meeting service needs, wherever they arise. SMART offers limited service to Tualatin, Canby and Salem and plans to add Woodburn and Clackamas Town Center stop.
Brashear represents Wilsonville in weekly meetings with counterparts from other communities, including Canby and Sandy, that also pulled out of TriMet. They call themselves the Coalition of Small Providers of Clackamas County. (A tiny slice of Tualatin lies within Clackamas County.)
For Ball’s part, she hopes Tualatin’s investment in Plambeck’s success will spur the city to help shore up the development’s access to public transit.
“I don’t like the fact that I can’t leave,” she said. “It makes me feel more isolated from the world around me. I’m looking for things to change.”
High Rents Trigger Study
Though some questions about transit in Tualatin emerged at a city housing forum on Dec. 17, most of the session focused on housing.
Attended by members of the Tigard City Council and several key staff members, the event marked the launch of a comprehensive affordable-housing study, analysis and strategy review that will extend into 2027.
Under Oregon housing law, cities with more than 10,000 residents that exceed a state threshold for “severely rent-burdened households” are periodically required to conduct housing capacity analyses, affordability studies and strategic planning. The state defines severely rent-burdened households as those spending more than half of their income on housing and utilities.
In 2023, 27.5 percent of Tualatin renters fell into that category, placing the city among 31 of the state’s 58 cities over 10,000 residents that exceeded the 25 percent threshold, according to state housing data. The statewide average among those cities was about 26 percent.
Tigard recorded the same rent-burden rate as Tualatin, while Beaverton stood at 24.3 percent, Sherwood at 14.2 percent and Wilsonville at 27.7 percent.
Most of Tualatin lies within Washington County, which has among the highest average rental rates in Oregon. A city of Tualatin slide presentation for the housing forum showed average asking rents in Tualatin, based on listings compiled by the online real estate marketplace Trulia.com, of $1,619 for a studio apartment, $1,775 for a one-bedroom unit, $2,700 for a two-bedroom and $3,448 for a three-bedroom.
Because Tualatin exceeded the 25 percent threshold in 2023, the city is required under state law to complete a housing capacity analysis, adopt updated strategies to expand housing supply and affordability, and make corresponding updates to land-use planning and zoning, said Aquilla Hurd-Ravich, the city’s community development director.
The city’s prior round of analysis in 2019, when Tualatin’s severely rent-burden rate stood at 26 percent, found household incomes were not keeping pace with rising rents, housing diversity and affordability were limited, and high-density land designations were underused.
Since then, the city has taken remedial steps, including adoption of multiple code amendments, a low-income housing tax exemption and its Equitable Housing Funding Plan, and approvals for the Plambeck Gardens affordable-housing development.
For Plambeck Gardens, which opened in April, the city contributed $1 million in federal American Rescue Plan Act funding to extend water and sewer service to the site and granted a land-tax exemption that city staff have estimated to be worth about $10,000 annually.
In the upcoming cycle of assessments, analyses and strategic planning — which Hurd-Ravich said is expected to begin in February and conclude more than a year later — the state will fund Portland-based ECOnorthwest to partner with the city of Tualatin on the work.
— Ben Santarris, Tualatin Life
