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The Sourcebook

Different services, different boundaries

Compare police districts, fire management areas, and the city boundary.

By Kaitlin QuinnPublished Page updated 1 min read
Photo by Jon Lanzieri / Unsplash

Do police and fire use the same geography?

Compare police districts, fire management areas, and the city boundary.

Open the map →

What this can tell you

Compare the lines used to organize police and fire services. Turn layers on together to see where they differ. These boundaries do not tell us which unit will respond or how long a response will take.

Sources and limits

Creator

Kaitlin Quinn

Provenance

Built by Kaitlin

Data owner

City of Portland

Coverage

Portland, Oregon; source-specific coverage may differ

Data date

Not established; see the source

Last source check

2026-09-17

Updates

Dated snapshot, reviewed and republished with the atlas. This is not a live service feed.

Limits

Administrative areas do not establish response times, available units, travel-time areas, or the full BOEC service boundary.

Authority

Independent research using agency-published sources

Reuse

Underlying data retain their source terms; no blanket reuse license is granted here.

City of Portland · Public Safety Boundaries →

A source check is a check of access and metadata. It does not establish that every feature is current.

Send a correction →

The city overview

Different Services, Different Lines

Portland / The living atlas

Loading the city overview…

A place to begin

One City, Many Overlapping Systems

The neighborhood you call home, the route you ride, and the district that represents you do not follow the same lines. Choose a neighborhood to see how they meet.

01 / Find a place

Choose a neighborhood above. Its routes and civic connections appear here, even when those map layers are off.

02 / Follow a connection

Use the layers to compare different parts of city life. Open an original source when you need an exact address or a travel plan.

03 / Ask what’s missing

A service boundary does not tell us how well a service works. That is where the project investigations begin.

About this map · sources, dates & limits

A City Overview, Not a Live Service

A dated snapshot of public geography. Routes are published alignments, not live arrivals or detours. Police and fire areas do not show response times, available units or safety.

Source dates load with the atlas.

What a Neighborhood Means Here

These are the City’s neighborhood-association outlines. Some overlap; some places have no association boundary. Your own sense of neighborhood can be different.

City neighborhood directory ↗
Neighborhood district offices ↗

Go to the Original Source

TriMet route data ↗
PortlandMaps: look up an address ↗
City Council districts ↗
Porch sources and methods →

Place summaries describe geographic overlaps, not address-level eligibility. Route proximity does not establish a nearby stop or a useful trip.

Back to the sourcebook →