TriMet

The Tri-County Metropolitan Transportation District of Oregon, branded as TriMet, is a transit agency that serves most of the Oregon part of the Portland metropolitan area. 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 began operating a light rail system, MAX, in 1986, which has since been expanded to five lines that now cover 59.7 miles (96.1 km). It also operates the WES Commuter Rail line since 2009. It also provides the operators and maintenance personnel for the city of Portland-owned Portland Streetcar system. In 2024, the system had a ridership of 66,876,200, or about 208,800 per weekday as of the second quarter of 2025.

In addition to rail lines, TriMet provides the region's bus system, as well as LIFT paratransit service. There are over 650 buses on 79 lines as of September 2025. 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. The district is overseen by a seven-person board of directors appointed by the state's governor. As of 2022^[update], the agency has around 3,428 employees.

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 the 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 January 2024, TriMet operates a total of 695 buses on 84 routes,^{[citation needed]} 145 MAX light rail cars on five lines, and 253 LIFT paratransit vehicles. Each of the five MAX and 17 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 public transit systems:

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.