The train is coming. Is the town ready?

Plans are rolling ahead with a proposal to study an alternative route bringing the train right through downtown Milwaukie

By Patrick Sherman

The Clackamas Review, Jul 4, 2007, Updated Oct 30, 2009 (3 Reader comments)

photo illustration by patrick sherman / clackamas review

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A study to determine whether or not to study an alternative route for light rail through downtown Milwaukie is itself a work in progress, but the preliminary answer is: “Yes.”

For more than five years, plans have called for a MAX light rail line serving the area to follow the Tillamook Branch – the existing Southern Pacific railroad right-of-way that runs behind the Portland Waldorf School.

On May 15, a group of about 30 parents, teachers and students from the school descended on city hall, calling for an alternative route to be studied. In response to their concerns – principally that frequent traffic on the line would be disruptive and a hazard to students at Waldorf and other local schools – Mayor Jim Bernard sent a letter to the South Corridor Phase II Steering Committee.

In his letter, he requested a delay to the start of the Supplemental Draft Environmental Impact Study, a detailed, year-long analysis of the project that is itself expected to cost $4 million. Bernard sits on the committee, which is chaired by Metro Councilor Brian Newman, himself a former member of the Milwaukie city council.

“We’re certainly open to studying different options, but we don’t want to study something that we know from the get-go is a non-starter with the city council or the community,” said Newman. “If there are indications that the alternative won’t work, we want to find that out before we spend several hundred thousand dollars studying it.”

Bernard charged the members of the city’s planning commission with finding answers to two questions: First, does a large cross-section of the community support the study of an alignment along McLoughlin or Main Street? Second, do those alternatives have merit, given future plans for the downtown area?

Addressing itself to these questions, the planning commission held a pair of public meetings on June 12 and 14. It received testimony from more than 130 concerned citizens during the two sessions. The commission also met with the Riverfront Board and members of the downtown business community.

Afterwards, it gave a mixed response to Bernard’s first question, about whether a “large cross-section” supports the study of an alternative, with the commissioners evenly split in their sense of the community’s sentiment. However, five of the six voting commissioners said that further study of an alternate alignment through downtown would be worthwhile.

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