Metro says geography and data helped shape this proposal. I wanted to see what the geography says too.
Oregon already has a live statewide vanpool service. Metro is developing a five-year regional roadmap for finding riders, targeting outreach, measuring results, and deciding who will keep the service operating after the initial state subsidy ends.
Those are related projects, but they are not the same thing. This page is my independent attempt to separate them, explain how the service actually works, and test whether the publicly available commute geography supports the idea.
Start with the map
Use the filters to change the minimum number of workers and commute distance. Turn the layers on and off. Select a flow, destination, origin, or reference point to inspect the evidence behind it.
Commute data: 2023 · Transit data downloaded: . Data and method →
What is a vanpool here?
Under Oregon's current Get There by Vanpool program, Commute with Enterprise arranges a monthly rental and provides the vehicle, insurance, maintenance, roadside assistance, billing, and driver onboarding.
Riders organize around a shared commute. At least one participant qualifies as a driver and keeps the vehicle at home. An employer can help recruit riders or pay part of the remaining fare, but the public program says an employer is not required to own the van or manage the daily operation.
The current federal subsidy pays up to half of the monthly vehicle cost, capped at $550 for a vehicle with up to eight seats and $750 for a vehicle with nine to fourteen seats. Riders, an employer, or a combination of them pay the balance.
That is the live statewide service. Metro's Regional Vanpool Action Plan is the regional strategy being built around it.
The first public test
I used 2023 Census LEHD LODES origin-destination data to look at workers living in Oregon or Washington and working in Clackamas, Multnomah, or Washington County.
The first screening rule is intentionally simple:
- At least 20 workers share the same home census tract and work census tract.
- Their worker-weighted straight-line distance is at least 20 miles.
That produces:
- 527 shared commute flows
- 15,581 workers represented in those flows
- 418 destination tracts
- 2,694 residential origin tracts
- 159 TriMet route-direction features for transit context
These are candidate signals. They are not 527 proposed vanpool routes.
A shared tract pair does not prove that the workers share an employer, shift, pickup point, willingness to participate, or a schedule that would survive overtime, call-outs, turnover, and missed connections.
What the map can help us test
The map lets us ask better questions than a destination-only suitability score:
- Are there visible concentrations of workers traveling long distances toward the same employment areas?
- Do the strongest flows cross county or state lines?
- Are the destinations already near substantial scheduled transit service?
- Which places deserve a closer road-network and schedule analysis?
- How sensitive is the result when the worker or distance threshold changes?
It cannot yet tell us:
- actual drive time or congestion;
- door-to-door transit time;
- whether workers share a shift;
- whether an employer will participate;
- rider interest or affordability;
- accessibility accommodations;
- whether a group will remain viable after the subsidy changes.
What I can say so far
The public data show that shared long-distance commute patterns exist across the region. Some are concentrated enough to justify closer investigation.
The public data do not yet prove that Metro's proposed targeting method will form durable vanpools. Metro's published analysis emphasizes employment destinations and uses proprietary Replica and Data Axle inputs. The public-facing materials do not provide a reproducible origin-to-destination model, network travel times, group-formation feasibility, or sensitivity testing.
That is the space this project is meant to fill.
The larger accountability question
The most important question is not only whether a van can be formed. It is whether the region can learn from every attempt.
Metro's earlier vanpool program ended subsidies and National Transit Database reporting in 2012 after declining ridership, limited funding, and administrative burden. A new program should document starts, attempted starts, cancellations, group lifespan, reasons for failure, administrative effort, and what happens when a subsidy or major employer contribution disappears.
Each individual explanation can be reasonable. The combined outcome can still fail the public.
Data and method
Analysis version: PP-VANPOOL-LODES-0.1
LODES year: 2023
Geography: Oregon and Washington residences; jobs in Clackamas, Multnomah, and Washington counties
Distance: Worker-weighted straight-line distance, not road or transit travel time
Privacy: Aggregate census-tract geography only; no individual home, household, worker, or employer record is published
Transit context: TriMet GTFS downloaded September 17, 2026. C-TRAN and SMART are not yet included.
The ArcGIS-hosted evidence layers are public:
- Shared commute flows
- Job destinations
- Residential origins
- TriMet route context
- Metro reference clusters
Primary sources
- Oregon Get There by Vanpool for commuters
- Oregon Get There by Vanpool for employers
- Metro Regional Vanpool Action Plan
- Metro agenda item COM 26-1166
- U.S. Census Bureau LEHD LODES
- TriMet developer resources
- FTA National Transit Database reporting guidance
Project status
Active. This is the beginning of the documentation and research record, not the end of the analysis.
Next steps include road-network travel times, C-TRAN and SMART schedules, shift-window testing, threshold sensitivity, employer and rider questions, and tracking the public decisions that determine who will operate, fund, measure, and remain accountable for the service.
A source check confirms that a source and its metadata were accessible on the stated date. It does not establish that every feature or program detail remains current.