Frequent Express

Frequent Express (FX) is a rapid bus service in Portland, Oregon, United States. Operated by TriMet as FX2–Division, the 15-mile (24 km) route runs east–west from Union Station in downtown Portland to Cleveland Avenue Park and Ride in Gresham via the Portland Transit Mall, Tilikum Crossing, and Division Street. It serves Portland City Center, Portland State University (PSU), South Waterfront, Southeast Portland, and central Gresham and connects with MAX Light Rail and the Portland Streetcar.

FX features bus rapid transit (BRT) design elements such as dedicated lanes, transit signal priority, and articulated buses with all-door boarding, the second such service in the Portland metropolitan area after The Vine in Vancouver, Washington. Fares are collected through the Hop Fastpass payment system.

The Portland metropolitan area's regional government, Metro, adopted the Regional High Capacity Transit System Plan in 2009 and initially identified Powell Boulevard between downtown Portland and Gresham as a priority corridor for public transit investment. Subsequent planning, however, resulted in a bus route alternative farther north along Division Street. Construction of the Division Transit Project began in October 2019, and the FX2–Division route began operating on September 18, 2022.

High-capacity transit (HCT) planning for the Portland metropolitan area, previously evaluated in the 1982 Light Rail System Plan, was updated by Metro, the regional government, when it adopted the Regional High Capacity Transit System Plan on July 9, 2009. The updated plan identified corridors viable for HCT and deemed Powell Boulevard between downtown Portland and the eastern suburb of Gresham a "near-term regional priority". Four years later, Metro and the region's transit agency, TriMet, began studying alignment and mode alternatives for the corridor, as well as for Division Street several blocks farther north, with BRT, light rail, and streetcar under consideration. At the time, Powell and Division were served by bus routes 9–Powell Blvd and 4–Division/Fessenden, respectively, which together carried more than 17,000 riders daily.

In 2014, a steering committee for the Powell–Division Transit and Development Project was formed, whose members voted that September to discontinue studying rail alternatives in favor of bus-only options, citing fewer property and roadway impacts and a shorter construction time. Conceptual design work began two months later. The following year, plans for dedicated bus lanes, a key feature of BRT, were abandoned; planners defended this decision by claiming that reducing car lanes would "likely result in traffic diversion to other streets and significant delay". The system would use transit signal priority to move buses quickly instead.

The steering committee initially wanted a route that would use Powell Boulevard on its westernmost section, head north to Division Street somewhere between 52nd and 92nd avenues, and terminate at Mt. Hood Community College (MHCC) in Gresham. In March 2016, a study conducted by TriMet revealed that this preferred route would take approximately 11 minutes longer to travel than the existing bus service. It was also estimated to exceed $200 million; to ensure federal funding was acquired, a target cost was set at $175 million. The steering committee recommended a locally preferred alternative (LPA) on November 7, 2016. The LPA dropped the Powell segment in favor of a Division Street-only alignment, with a route through the Portland Transit Mall instead of Columbia and Jefferson streets in downtown Portland. The steering committee had remained undecided on whether the route would use the Hawthorne Bridge or Tilikum Crossing to cross the Willamette River, but TriMet planners later opted to use Tilikum Crossing. The LPA had also scaled back the route's eastern end to terminate at Gresham Central Transit Center, rather than at MHCC, to lower cost, but subsequent LPA refinements re-extended the route slightly farther east to the Cleveland Avenue MAX station.

Metro transferred the project to TriMet in December 2016, and TriMet renamed it the "Division Transit Project". The design contract for stations, traffic signals, and civil infrastructure improvements was awarded to WSP USA the following year. In September 2018, scheduled service changes split bus route 4–Division/Fessenden into two lines, and a new 2–Division line took over the Division Transit Project route on the east side. The following month, TriMet unveiled a mock-up station in Gresham with a borrowed articulated bus from C-Tran, the transit agency serving Clark County, Washington, to simulate boarding. In March 2019, TriMet issued a request for proposals (RFP) for the procurement of 60-foot (18 m) articulated buses and received responses from BYD Auto, New Flyer, and Nova Bus. During an initial evaluation process, TriMet noted that the battery electric buses proposed by BYD and New Flyer did not meet the RFP's specifications and eliminated the bus type from further consideration. That August, TriMet selected Nova as the manufacturer and, in the following month, placed an initial order for 31 diesel buses with an option to purchase as many as 159 diesel and hybrid electric bus alternatives.

The Division Transit Project was estimated at $175 million, half of which was anticipated to be funded by the Federal Transit Administration (FTA) under the Small Starts program. In August 2018, the Portland City Council authorized $17.7 million to cover its share of local funding, sourced through developer fees, and Gresham allocated $500,000 the following month. The project received tentative approval from the FTA for $87.4 million in April 2019, and was formally awarded the grant on January 23, 2020. Federal Highway Administration funds contributed another $27.9 million, while $40.7 million from TriMet, $240,000 from Metro, $150,000 from the Oregon Department of Transportation, and $130,000 from Multnomah County covered the remaining local share.