Railway can't escape the zoo

Metro lets Oregon Zoo dictate route of Washington Park Railway

Portland’s favorite railroad has been confined to the Oregon Zoo for 11 years, all escape routes facing uphill political climbs filled with switchbacks and false summits.

Unlike in the children’s classic “The Little Engine That Could,” the Washington Park and Zoo Railway needs all the help it can get from its friends, and that still may not be enough.

Petitions to Restore the Rose Garden Loop signed by more than 42,000 citizens have been collected by Friends of Washington Park and Zoo Railway, a nonprofit given a boost last year by a merger with a task force of the Arlington Heights Neighborhood Association.

Kathy Goeddel, who chairs the organization, takes a long-term approach, working behind the scenes to educate elected officials while gradually ramping up public outreach.

The popular railway hit a bump in 2013 that turned into something far more drastic.

“In 2013, the historic railway connecting the Oregon Zoo to Washington Park closed so that the zoo could do some remodeling,” Goeddel said. “It didn't reopen.”

The remodeling led to a finding that the winding track through the forest was no longer safe due to erosion under the rail bed. There were no funds to repair it.

In 2018, the Portland City Council offered a permanent “solution”—replace the track with a multi-use path—and formalized it as part of the Washington Park Master Plan.

Friends of the railway overcame that obstacle by gaining state support on the way to having the railway listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2020.

The historic designation makes it exceedingly difficult to remove the tracks, but it does nothing to repair them. An agency already cool to the idea of bringing back the whole railway offered large estimates for the costs to do so.

“We're looking at less than $2 million to fix all the grid walls and everything that needs to be done,” Goeddel said. “Shannon & Wilson, the premier rail geotech firm in the Northwest, did a really comprehensive study. We know it can be fixed. It's not a big project.”

Rick Franklin, who heads a railroad construction company based in the Willamette Valley, said, “On a scale of difficulty from one to 10, this is a zero.”

A longer loop would be more expensive to operate, but might attract more riders paying higher ticket prices.

A Metro study took those and other factors into consideration and concluded that the longer loop would make money, just not quite as much as the short route. The difference would be about 3 percent or $170,000 per year.

“As we fully expected, their own analysis showed the repairs could be completed, and the railway would still be profitable,” she said.

Goeddel questioned assumptions embedded in the study, but even if a longer train ride is less profitable, she believes the public would gladly make up the difference, noting that her group’s campaign for track repairs collected $10,500 in donations in a week.

The money required to revive the full loop is controlled by Metro, which operates the zoo, which in turn is happy to keep the train entirely within its grounds, a six-minute taster ride instead of the full 27-minute loop through the park.

“Back in May of 2023, after we took Metro President Lynn Peterson and Zoo Director Heidi Rahn on a walk of the railway with geotechnical and railway engineers, they let us know that the zoo had made the decision not to work with us to restore the railway to Washington Park,” Goeddel said.

“We got the bad news in May that we weren't going to be a part of the next zoo bond measure. We had been told that it would be done or could be done. So we've been disappointed,” she said.

But the railway’s friends regrouped.

“We are meeting monthly with Metro Councilor Christine Lewis and Lynn Peterson’s chief of staff, Kristin Dennis,” Goeddel said. “They are pushing to create a task force to explore options for the train.”

City Commissioner Dan Ryan is on board, sending Metro a letter of support for restoration.

Goeddel was optimistic at her organization’s first public event last month, Zoo Railway Day at the Oregon Rail Heritage Center. About 1,000 people signed petitions and 400 took historic train rides, accompanied by youths in wild animal costumes cementing the train’s connection to the zoo.

The mission has been joined by former public officials, such as Andy Cutugno, director of planning at Metro for 37 years, and Steve Dotterer, who retired as the city’s chief transportation planner.

Metro Councilor Mary Nolan was thought to be supportive after spending an evening with key supporters.

That turned out to be a mirage. Nolan told the NW Examiner that restoring the loop is not her priority, and she opposes even a proposed task force to explore future funding for the railway.

“If a task force looks only at one topic,” she said, “that distorts the decision-making process.”

Other Metro leaders did not return calls from the Examiner.

A Metro spokesperson said, “Councilor Lewis has proposed a budget note for the coming fiscal year to provide resources for studying the Washington Park railroad. No task force has been assembled yet.”

The budget item is scheduled to be voted on by the Metro Council in early June.

Dotterer said the overlapping roles of the city, which owns and manages Washington Park, and Metro, which operates the zoo under a perpetual lease with the city, are at the root of the inaction.

“Two governments aren’t talking to each other much,” he said.

“Is it a zoo railroad or is it a Washington Park railroad?” Cutugno asked. “It’s some of both.”

To the zoo, the railway is “an incidental responsibility,” he said. “They are laser-like focused on the animals.”

Still, he said, “the public attitude about the zoo train is overwhelmingly positive” and is filled with family memories and deep feelings.

The short loop “produces dissatisfaction rather than enjoyment.”

He has advice for the people running the agency where he spent his career.

“If you don’t embrace the extension, you’ve got a [losing issue] on your hands,” he said.

Friends of the Railway will hold another public event in Washington Park on Thursday, June 20. Details to be announced.

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“The zoo’s position is that it’s a very complicated issue! The Washington Park portion of the train ride holds fond memories for longtime residents…. But restoring that section of the train ride is a huge and expensive undertaking, involving many stakeholders and partners — a full cost-benefit analysis is needed, with involvement from all parties. And, as you correctly point out, we’d also need to determine costs for operating (as well as maintenance/upkeep) along the longer route — costs have gone up considerably since it was last in operation.”

Hova Najarian <Hova.Najarian@oregonzoo.org>