PORTLAND, Ore. — A stretch of TriMet's MAX train service is disrupted for the next three weeks until Saturday, May 6 while crews work on track upgrades and maintenance along the Interstate 84 corridor.
All train service is suspended between the Northeast 7th Avenue station and Gateway Transit Center for the duration of the closure, with shuttle buses running on a loop between those two stations and stopping at the Lloyd Center, Hollywood, Northeast 60th Avenue and 82nd Avenue stations in between.
The Yellow and Orange lines are running on their normal schedules, and the west side Blue line is running on its normal schedule from Hillsboro to Northeast 7th Avenue — but there is no west side Red or Green line service, so riders will still see fewer trains than usual between Beaverton and downtown.
"If riders are accustomed to boarding a Red line train in Beaverton and then taking that into downtown Portland or the inner east side, they'll want to board a Blue line train instead," said TriMet public information officer Tyler Graf.
The Red, Blue and Green lines are all running on their normal routes from Gateway to Portland International Airport, Gresham and Clackamas Town Center, but service on all of the three eastern lines is reduced to 20 minute headways.
The shuttle buses are taking longer to go between 7th Avenue and Gateway than trains, Graf said, so riders are being urged to plan for an extra 30 minutes of travel time. The closures have already been programmed into TriMet's online Trip Planner tool.
"Everything is loaded into the system right now," he said, "so now is a good time to go there — make sure you set your date for a time during the three-week disruption — to see the fastest way of getting from point A to point B for you. It might not necessarily be taking a train and using the shuttle buses — there might be an alternative bus route that might be faster for you."
The closure is primarily to give crews space to add new switches and crossover junctions to the tracks north of Gateway, Graf said, but crews will also perform more than a dozen other maintenance and clean-up projects along the I-84 MAX corridor.
"This is the oldest section of our system, dating back to 1986, and much like with roads, occasionally we need to do some maintenance work, so it's really important to take advantage of these types of shutdowns," he said.
Track upgrades at Gateway
The work at Gateway will set the stage for crews to eventually tie in a new section of track as part of TriMet's A Better Red project.
"A Better Red is our comprehensive approach to improving the reliability not only for the MAX Red line, but the entire rail system, in part by improving the way trains move in and out of the Gateway Transit Center," Graf said.
The Red, Blue and Green line tracks all merge just before arriving at Gateway, but the Red line's connection is a bit messy — it shrinks to a single track as it approaches the station, and that single track merges with the eastbound Blue and Green line track.
Eastbound and westbound Red line trains have to take turns using the single track, and westbound Red line trains have to cross the eastbound Blue and Green track to reach the westbound track. This all adds up to a lot of trains waiting for other trains to pass ahead of them.
The Better Red project aims to eliminate most of that waiting game by adding a new track and station platform at Gateway exclusively for westbound Red line trains. That means no more Red line trains sharing one track and no more westbound trains having to cross the eastbound track.
"This will be much more efficient for all train movement, really, not just the Red line," Graf said.
More 'Better Red' improvements
The Gateway upgrades are the most visible part of A Better Red, but the project includes two other major components, the first of which involves adding a new track near Portland International Airport to eliminate another single-track segment on the Red line as it approaches the airport station.
The final part is an upgraded turnout track at the Fair Complex station in Hillsboro, which Red line trains will be able to use to reverse direction.
"That will become the new end of the Red line," Graf said. "Once this project wraps up in 2024, we will have extended the MAX Red line ten station from Beaverton out to Fair Complex Hillsboro Airport."
Work on all three components is expected to be completed in early 2024, with Red line service at the new Gateway North platform expected to begin early in the year and service at the additional west side station expected to begin in the second half of the year, according to the project website.