The Proposed Oregon Department of Rail and Transit
SB1202 proposes to create a state agency dedicated to passenger rail and public transit
Okay, as promised last week, here’s the deeper dive into the proposed “Oregon Department of Rail and Transit (ODRT)” bill and its upcoming hearing. First off, it now has an official designation number SB1202. In a brief summary, this is a bi-partisan sponsored bill from members of the Joint Committee on Transportation that effectively creates a new department to manage public transit and passenger rail operations. This would break the Public Transit Division and it’s current responsibilities and authorities off from ODOT and place them in this new ODRT. A similar thing was done with aviation and ports in Oregon (Oregon Department of Aviation and Oregon Public Ports Association) in the past. Also, Virginia has created a public transit authority separate from their DOT in a similar fashion. Below I dive into why we need this, what funding it could look like or mean, what success might look like and possible risks with something like this. But it you don’t have time for all of that and you’re already on board with the idea, as always, the last segment will cover how you can spend 5 or 10 minutes right now to support this by submitting testimony in support of the bill. So feel free to skip down to the How To Support It And Submit Testimony segment if you don’t feel the need to read my perspective in favor of this.
What Would an ODRT Actually Do?
For the last year and a half, and especially at the JCT road show event I attended last fall in Ontario, we have heard a lot from ODOT about how underfunded they are and how unable they are to just keep up with road maintenance of the road infrastructure that they have. The message was apparently leading into this session that ODOT needed to raise it’s funding just to keep up with the roads we have. Four months after that JCT meeting Ontario, Flix/Greyhound closed their last route on the I-84 through NE Oregon. Also, in recent months we have learned that STIF funding, that supports regional transit services like Community Connections in Baker and Union County, is also financially threatened. There was never any discussion or acknowledgment that public transportation in in Oregon was suffering. ODOT gave no warning of this and it feels to me as though it was their responsibility to do so. We need an entity that is dedicated to monitoring, advocating for, and prioritizing these transit services. Such an entity would have a mandate to seek federal funding for transit, organize and coordinate regional bus services, and create statewide services that can tie those regional services together.
Having an entire state department dedicated to the coordination and planing of a statewide public transit system would ensure that it is functional and optimized to reach a maximum amount of Oregonians with the smallest overhead possible. It would give Oregon the focus, skills and energy needed to plan long-term, phased projects to improve our public transit system. What we have now in rural Oregon are small regionally operated transit services, such as the Breeze in central Oregon or Community Connections in NE Oregon, that were generated through grant funding applications by communities in those regions and operate solely in there region. They do no overlap, or connect with one another in any sort of practically usable way. This is because they were not designed with any big picture in mind and there is no coordination between these services. OPB covered this in great detail last fall in their Stop Requested series.
What This Department Could Bring To Oregon
Specifically for us in northeast Oregon, it would provide a government agency that would have been watching the decline of the Greyhound/Flix bus service and designing a solution to ensure our communities could still be supported with this service. It would be an agency that would take it upon itself, as its mandate, to apply for CID funding to study the restoration of the Amtrak Pioneer route, which ODOT has thus far slept on, even when indirectly told by the JCT to explore as a result of citizen outreach in our area.
There is now NO OTHER OPTION than to own and drive a personal vehicle to get to or from Boise or Portland (or any other major center) for people in our region. This means that anyone who can't drive for whatever reason, essentially cannot live here. If a person is just driving through on I-84 and their car breaks down, hitchhiking or waiting potentially days for your car to be repaired is the only option to continue their journey. If you are elderly or disabled and need to access medical services outside of our county, you will likely need to find someone to drive you a significant distance to receive care. If you are a student at EoU that is not originally from La Grande you must take on the financial burden of owning a car to visit home. Inter-city public transit would allow all of these situations a convenient, economic and practical form of mobility, that does not require the financial burden or the physical capacity to drive long distances.
As an example, this department could expand the POINT bus system to be a statewide network system that ties together the other transit services we have around the state. That might look something like the following map, which would tie NE Oregon to the rest of the state and allow us to access the rest of this state without the need for a car.
The last thing I’ll say on this is that public transit service woven throughout a region have been proven to produce economic dynamism and knit rural and urban communities together, both culturally and socially. Something that I believe most people in the NW west in general could benefit from right now.
Where’s the money coming from?
Okay okay, that’s all well and good, but where does the money for all this come from? This is the major question for this project. It is also the major question for the entire transportation package. First and foremost there is already revenue dedicated to public transit and passenger rail operations that gets appropriated by ODOT. Things like the Railroad Fund and the State Rail Rehabilitation Fund would get transferred into the new department. There is also funding generated from the State Transportation Improvement Fund(STIF) that goes to regional transit services, like Community Connections, that might be brought under the new departments management.
However, there is still a huge gap in the amount of funding dedicated to rail and transit service and what is needed to actually have an efficient and effective system in NE Oregon. We need to ensure that any new department that is created be created with the resources to actually achieve the thing it was created to do. To create this new department and then deprive it of the resources it needs would likely lead to continued degradation and lack of transit options for Oregonians.
The Oregon Transit Association (OTA) has advocated for an increase in the payroll transit tax that funds STIF from 0.1% to 0.5%, and have gone on to say that anything less than 0.3% would amount to funding cuts due to inflation and budget requirements. Senator Gorsek has proposed a “tire tax” (HB3362) to direct revenue towards passenger rail and public transit, which has made it into the current draft of the 2025 transportation package. And I have heard ideas about adding a tax on to “jet setters” (people who fly when passenger rail is otherwise a perfectly good option, such as PDX to SeaTac), though currently there is no proposal for such a fee, even though it makes a lot of sense to me. All of these have the potential to be excellent sources of funding for these services, but none of them are yet real. Any advocacy that we do for this new department must be accompanied with an acknowledgment that funding needs to be dedicated to support passenger rail and public transit.
How To Support It And Submit Testimony
First go to the HB1202’s overview page: https://olis.oregonlegislature.gov/liz/2025R1/Measures/Overview/SB1202
Then click on the “Submit Testimony” tab on the right.
That will take you to this page. Fill out the basic info about yourself and then add your testimony to the text box below, unless you want to upload a PDF.
What to say
There are a few things I have been trying to coordinate folks around on how the express their support for this which boil down to these key principles
Paint a vision of how you would like to see this department show up in your life. If you can give an anecdote of how passenger rail or public transit has benefited you in the past and then connect it to what this department might be able to bring to NE Oregon, that’s perfect.
Try to express how this is just practically a good move to accomplish things in government. Talk about how this is good governance or good statecraft.
Hammer home that there is NO PUBLIC TRANSIT OPTION along the I-84 in NE Oregon, which is ridiculous! Our communities would benefit from one and that we consider it part of the state of Oregon’s responsibility to us, as their citizens, to deliver such a service.
Finally, funding. There HAS GOT TO BE DEDICATED FUNDING associated with the creation of this new department. If you support the idea, mention Senator Gorsek’s tire tax. Mention raising funds for STIF. Or mention any cool zany idea that you have to direct sustainable continuous funding to public transit.
It doesn’t need to be long, or masterfully written. It just needs to highlight where you’re coming from and your desire to see a change for the better.
Once you’ve got the wording the way you want it, click the “Submit Testimony” button at the bottom and you’re all done.
And if you’ve gotten this far and submitted testimony, thank you so much for your time and for paying attention and participating in the frustratingly slow and bureaucratic process that is democracy. And most of all thank you for believing that we can build new things and improve the world we have.
Until next time,
Matt for Passenger Rail in Northeast Oregon.