“Images of Rail: Portland’s Streetcar Lines”

Richard Thompson

This was a fun little thing to flip through. I actually didn’t realize when I grabbed it at the book store (Powell’s, if I can be a little more Portland) that it was a photo book – the “Images of Rail” bit in the title is in a much smaller print than the “Portland’s Streetcar Lines” bit. Several thoughts I had on the way through:

I live by one of the new streetcar lines, and quite appreciate it, but the new streetcars don’t have the same aesthetic appeal as the old ones.

I never knew about the origin of the Montavilla neighborhood’s name: Mount Tabor Villa, which was shortened (per the book, on the streetcar signs) first to “Mt. Ta. Villa” and then “Monta.Villa”

Lastly, page 73 features the schedule, from 1891, for the Portland-Vancouver streetcar line. It is infuriating.1

So many of the photos mention being in areas that I think of as very built-up, but in the backgrounds there’s… nothing. A single building, maybe. It was fascinating to see the amount of change that’s happened in the century and a half. And, aside from my little transportation-policy rant that accounts for about half of this book review, I quite enjoyed it. Check it out.2

There were departures from Portland every 20 minutes from 6:00 AM to 7:00 PM, at which point it dropped to every 30 minutes until midnight. Leaving Vancouver, on the other hand, required a bit more planning—departures were every 40 minutes from 6:45 AM to 11:15 PM. Seven days a week, though on Sunday mornings they didn’t start until 7:40 AM.
That’s a pretty robust amount of service, especially considering that as of the 1890 census, Portland’s population came in at just over 46,000, whereas Vancouver had had a massive amount of growth since 1880, and now boasted 3,500 residents!
Compare that to the current populations – Portland at 630,000 or so, and Vancouver at 190,000. With that sort of population growth, surely the public transit options between the cities have gotten even better! Let me just check my notes here…
Ah. There’s no rail infrastructure at all. The interstate bridge replacement program is going to extend the light-rail network over the river any time now—as of this writing, they’re only a couple years behind schedule and a couple billion dollars over budget, having… yet to establish a “start of construction” date.
That’s fine, maybe the busses are better?
Ah. “Busses” was the wrong word; it seems I meant “bus”. On weekdays, you can catch a bus, once every 40 minutes, to get between the downtown cores of these two neighboring cities. And on the weekends, you can… walk, I guess?
Thanks, America. ↩