Desperation creates strange bedfellows. Who knows why local governments are adverse to the Federal Transportation grants generally? It must be material, because we have never shied away from Federal grants in the past.
The NW Examiner’s latest piece on Frog Ferry captures the project’s surface appeal—“cute,” “defiant,” and aligned with Portland’s self-image—but it misdiagnoses the central question. The issue is not whether local jurisdictions are irrationally refusing free federal money. It is whether the Frog Ferry proposal, as actually constituted over the past decade, has earned the institutional confidence required to justify public sponsorship.
The historical record suggests it has not.
From the beginning, Frog Ferry has depended on a structural premise that has never been resolved: the project cannot access federal funding without a public-sector sponsor, yet no public agency has been willing to assume that role. That is not an incidental political impasse. It is the decisive fact of the project’s history. As early as 2020, feasibility work—funded in part by state and local dollars—projected roughly $40 million in capital costs, ongoing operating subsidies in the millions, and ridership of about 3,000 passengers per day.
That ridership figure is particularly important. It is not negligible, but it is modest relative to the scale of capital investment and operating subsidy required—especially in a metropolitan area where commuting patterns are diffuse and not strongly oriented along the river corridor. In that light, the proposal demands a high degree of institutional confidence to move forward.
Many transit systems require subsidy. But that reality places a premium on governance clarity, financial discipline, and demonstrated demand. It is precisely in those areas that Frog Ferry faltered in 2022, when its relationship with TriMet broke down publicly.
The dispute was not merely bureaucratic friction. TriMet documented concerns about inconsistent billing, unsupported reimbursement requests, and retroactive changes to compensation structures. The nonprofit, for its part, accused TriMet of withholding funds and imposing shifting requirements. What matters is not which side one finds more sympathetic; it is that the conflict destroyed the level of confidence necessary for a public agency to front a federally funded capital project.
Portland City Council’s response at the time is telling. Commissioners did not reject the concept of a ferry outright. Instead, they declined to provide additional funds in the absence of clarity and accountability. That distinction matters. It indicates that the barrier was not ideological hostility to river transit, but skepticism about this particular proposal under these particular management conditions.
By September 2022, the consequences were clear. Frog Ferry missed a key federal funding deadline because no public agency would partner with it. The project was described, even by its own backers, as effectively stalled without public support.
This history is essential context for evaluating the current framing. The suggestion that local governments are behaving like states that rejected Affordable Care Act funds is rhetorically clever but substantively misleading. In the ACA case, states declined funding for programs that were already fully designed, administered, and accountable at the federal level. In the Frog Ferry case, local agencies are being asked to underwrite—and implicitly validate—a project whose governance, financial controls, and demand projections have been contested and, at times, unstable.
That is not ideological refusal. It is risk management.
The project’s latest iteration reinforces this concern rather than resolving it. The proposed “community ownership” model, inspired by the Green Bay Packers, is an imaginative attempt to generate capital, but it does not address the core requirements of a transportation system: reliable ridership, integration with existing networks, and sustained operating subsidies. Even under the new plan, tens of millions in capital costs remain, and public funding is still assumed to be necessary at later stages.
In other words, the model shifts the optics of early funding without altering the underlying dependency on institutional partners who have already declined to participate.
None of this is to say that river-based transit is inherently misguided. In regions with dense waterfront employment, constrained corridors, and established maritime infrastructure, ferries can play a meaningful role. But Portland’s geography, commuting patterns, and existing transit network present a more ambiguous case—one that demands especially rigorous justification.
After nearly a decade of advocacy, multiple feasibility efforts, and a highly public breakdown with the region’s primary transit agency, Frog Ferry has yet to provide that justification in a form that persuades the institutions whose participation it requires.
Until that changes, the question is not why local governments refuse to apply for federal funds. The question is why, given the project’s history—and its modest projected ridership—they would be expected to.
Incredibly valuable context. We have already made poor public transportation choices that we are on the hook for, no reason to add more because it's "cute and defiant" no matter how good that makes some elites feel.
Desperation creates strange bedfellows. Who knows why local governments are adverse to the Federal Transportation grants generally? It must be material, because we have never shied away from Federal grants in the past.
It's control by TriMet. They do not want to share it.
Frog Ferry is not a bad idea, and from ridership data a better idea than the WES line.
The NW Examiner’s latest piece on Frog Ferry captures the project’s surface appeal—“cute,” “defiant,” and aligned with Portland’s self-image—but it misdiagnoses the central question. The issue is not whether local jurisdictions are irrationally refusing free federal money. It is whether the Frog Ferry proposal, as actually constituted over the past decade, has earned the institutional confidence required to justify public sponsorship.
The historical record suggests it has not.
From the beginning, Frog Ferry has depended on a structural premise that has never been resolved: the project cannot access federal funding without a public-sector sponsor, yet no public agency has been willing to assume that role. That is not an incidental political impasse. It is the decisive fact of the project’s history. As early as 2020, feasibility work—funded in part by state and local dollars—projected roughly $40 million in capital costs, ongoing operating subsidies in the millions, and ridership of about 3,000 passengers per day.
That ridership figure is particularly important. It is not negligible, but it is modest relative to the scale of capital investment and operating subsidy required—especially in a metropolitan area where commuting patterns are diffuse and not strongly oriented along the river corridor. In that light, the proposal demands a high degree of institutional confidence to move forward.
Many transit systems require subsidy. But that reality places a premium on governance clarity, financial discipline, and demonstrated demand. It is precisely in those areas that Frog Ferry faltered in 2022, when its relationship with TriMet broke down publicly.
The dispute was not merely bureaucratic friction. TriMet documented concerns about inconsistent billing, unsupported reimbursement requests, and retroactive changes to compensation structures. The nonprofit, for its part, accused TriMet of withholding funds and imposing shifting requirements. What matters is not which side one finds more sympathetic; it is that the conflict destroyed the level of confidence necessary for a public agency to front a federally funded capital project.
Portland City Council’s response at the time is telling. Commissioners did not reject the concept of a ferry outright. Instead, they declined to provide additional funds in the absence of clarity and accountability. That distinction matters. It indicates that the barrier was not ideological hostility to river transit, but skepticism about this particular proposal under these particular management conditions.
By September 2022, the consequences were clear. Frog Ferry missed a key federal funding deadline because no public agency would partner with it. The project was described, even by its own backers, as effectively stalled without public support.
This history is essential context for evaluating the current framing. The suggestion that local governments are behaving like states that rejected Affordable Care Act funds is rhetorically clever but substantively misleading. In the ACA case, states declined funding for programs that were already fully designed, administered, and accountable at the federal level. In the Frog Ferry case, local agencies are being asked to underwrite—and implicitly validate—a project whose governance, financial controls, and demand projections have been contested and, at times, unstable.
That is not ideological refusal. It is risk management.
The project’s latest iteration reinforces this concern rather than resolving it. The proposed “community ownership” model, inspired by the Green Bay Packers, is an imaginative attempt to generate capital, but it does not address the core requirements of a transportation system: reliable ridership, integration with existing networks, and sustained operating subsidies. Even under the new plan, tens of millions in capital costs remain, and public funding is still assumed to be necessary at later stages.
In other words, the model shifts the optics of early funding without altering the underlying dependency on institutional partners who have already declined to participate.
None of this is to say that river-based transit is inherently misguided. In regions with dense waterfront employment, constrained corridors, and established maritime infrastructure, ferries can play a meaningful role. But Portland’s geography, commuting patterns, and existing transit network present a more ambiguous case—one that demands especially rigorous justification.
After nearly a decade of advocacy, multiple feasibility efforts, and a highly public breakdown with the region’s primary transit agency, Frog Ferry has yet to provide that justification in a form that persuades the institutions whose participation it requires.
Until that changes, the question is not why local governments refuse to apply for federal funds. The question is why, given the project’s history—and its modest projected ridership—they would be expected to.
Thank you for that well-informed analysis!
Incredibly valuable context. We have already made poor public transportation choices that we are on the hook for, no reason to add more because it's "cute and defiant" no matter how good that makes some elites feel.