The
Portland Transit Mall is a set of
public transit corridors through the center of
downtown Portland, Oregon, United States. More specifically, it is a
pair of one-way streets—one for northbound traffic, the other for southbound—along which two of the three lanes are restricted to transit vehicles only. The
transit mall opened in 1977 and until 2009,
buses were the only transit vehicles using it, but in 2009
light rail was added. Between 2007 and 2009 the mall was rebuilt and extended southwards, and it reopened for buses on May 24, 2009. Light rail service on the mall was introduced on August 30, 2009, with the shifting of the
MAX Yellow Line to the mall from its original routing in downtown, and a second
MAX line, the
Green Line, began serving the mall on September 12, 2009. From fall 2009 to July 2014, the
Portland Vintage Trolley also served the transit mall on certain Sundays. Although the mall's transit stops are mainly served by
TriMet vehicles, on weekdays buses on express routes operated by
C-Tran and the Columbia County Rider also serve the mall.