The public comment period begins today, March 5, 2025, for TriMet’s proposed budget for the upcoming year. Our fiscal year 2026 begins July 1, 2025, and runs through June 30, 2026. The proposed budget is posted online at trimet.org/budget.
TriMet’s fiscal year 2026 proposed budget outlines $1.94 billion in spending and holds the line—with no increases beyond necessary contractual obligations, such as rising electricity costs. We will continue working toward the adopted budget to be released later this spring for Board consideration. That budget will reflect key priorities, including:
- Mission-critical staffing needs
- Service level requirements
- System and facility maintenance
- State of Good Repair investments
- Capital project planning and construction
We have also updated our financial forecasts, evaluated revenue assumptions, and analyzed multiple funding scenarios to prepare for potential funding cuts. Given the uncertainty at the federal level—where grants have been frozen and FTA staff reductions have occurred—we are increasing the budgeted amount of contingency funds to allow time to adjust, if needed.
Like other public transit agencies across the nation, TriMet is facing financial challenges and has been operating on reduced revenues since the COVID-19 pandemic. The pandemic led to a dramatic drop in ridership with stay-at-home orders followed by an increase in remote work. TriMet’s ridership has also been impacted by community-wide challenges including civil unrest, extreme weather events, crime, open-drug use and the homeless epidemic. TriMet has made considerable investments in response. That includes historic investments in safety and security.
Today, TriMet has more safety and security personnel on our transit system than ever. As we have increased that personnel to almost 500 over the past three years — double the number of personnel we had at the end of 2022. Calls for police services have decreased more than 40% during that same time.
TriMet ridership is increasing with the investments in security, along with other efforts to improve the customer experience and adjust bus service through our Forward Together service plan to bring it closer to more people who rely upon it. Those efforts, combined with more return to in-person work and events, has generally led to year-to-year increases in monthly ridership since 2020. However, TriMet’s ridership remains about 30% below pre-pandemic figures. Lower ridership equals lower passenger fare revenue. We have been using federal pandemic relief funds, which have proved a lifeline for public transit agencies across the nation, to backfill the drop in fare revenue, but those one-time stimulus funds have now been depleted.
TriMet will continue to identify efficiencies to this financial plan as we move forward in the budget process before the TriMet Board adopts a FY2026 budget, which is expected to occur at its May 28, 2025 business meeting.
People can view the proposed budget at trimet.org/budget and submit feedback through Wednesday, March 26, via email to hello@trimet.org or by calling our Customer Service team at 503-238-7433 (RIDE). The public can also provide comment during the public forum period at upcoming TriMet Board meetings on March 26, April 23 and May 28, or during the public hearing on the budget at the Multnomah County Tax and Supervision Conservation Committee (TSCC) meeting on April 23. Meeting details will be posted on trimet.org/meetings/board.
About TriMet
TriMet has provided public transit service in the greater Portland metro area since 1969. At that time, we only ran buses, and there were less than 881,000 living in the tri-county region of Clackamas, Multnomah and Washington.
Over the past 55-plus years, TriMet service has grown from buses only, to also include MAX light rail, WES commuter rail and LIFT paratransit service. Our service district stretches 533-square miles across a tri-county area where 1.7 million people live today. Our safe, reliable, convenient transit service provides millions of trips each month. In fact, the Portland metro area enjoys the 13th-largest transit ridership in the country, even though it is only the 23rd-largest metro area in the country. Among the 60 largest metro areas in the United States, TriMet and the Portland area rank 10th in transit boardings per capita.
