September 5, 1986
A new light rail public transit system in the Portland metropolitan area in Oregon was officially opened. The launch of the Metropolitan Area Express (MAX) Light Rail, which is owned and operated by the Tri-County Metropolitan Transportation District of Oregon (TriMet), signified the return of a type of transportation network that had been missing in the Beaver State’s most populous city since the 1950s.
“MAXimum Crowds Ride Inaugural Trains,” proclaimed a headline in the next day’s edition of the Oregonian. Stan Federman, a reporter for this newspaper, recounted the overall enthusiasm for this new transit service and in particular the free travel being offered that day. He noted, “When TriMet’s new $214 million light rail system opened to the public Friday afternoon, it was almost immediately besieged by hordes of people all along the 15-mile [24.1-kilometer] route, anxious to hop aboard for a free ride.”
All of this was readily confirmed by Cindy Callis-Oberg, a volunteer who handed out information to the public and performed various other duties on behalf of TriMet that afternoon. She said, “The first couple of hours were unbelievable; we had people waiting nearly an hour to get a ride.” Callis-Oberg added, however, that most of those people “were pretty good-natured about it.” This debut of MAX Light Rail kicked off a three-day celebration that included festivities such as public parties and concerts.
MAX Light Rail now covers 59.7 miles (96.1 kilometers) altogether and serves a total of 94 stations in the Portland region. (The accompanying photo of one of this system’s trains was taken in 2015.)
Photo Credit: Steve Morgan (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Steve_Morgan) – licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en
For more information on MAX Light Rail, please check out https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MAX_Light_Rail
Transportation History 
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