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TriMet Routes

All existing bus and rail lines. 200 LineString features covering the TriMet service district in the Portland, Oregon metropolitan area, published by TriMet as tm_routes and last updated at the source on July 13, 2026.

Every fixed-route alignment TriMet operates, bus and rail together, as one line per route and direction. 200 features covering 179 bus, 13 MAX, 4 streetcar, 2 commuter rail and 2 aerial tram segments.

The frequent flag marks TriMet's Frequent Service network — 51 of the 200 route-directions — which is the set of lines scheduled often enough that riders are told not to consult a timetable.

Agents: see AGENTS.md for join keys, verified query recipes and the caveats that will otherwise cost you a wrong answer.

🗺️ Open this collection in the data browser →

Preview it on a map, inspect the schema and license, and download the GeoParquet or PMTiles directly.

Quick start

Read it straight from object storage — DuckDB fetches only the byte ranges it needs, so there is nothing to download first:

Or with GeoPandas:

Suggested uses

Drawing the network. This is the layer behind TriMet's own system maps, and styles/default.json reproduces the line weights and colors from TriMet's published trimet-routes MapLibre style.
Measuring route-miles by mode or by jurisdiction.
Corridor analysis: buffering alignments to find what lies within a given distance of transit.

Limitations and inappropriate uses

rte is not a primary key. 87 route numbers appear twice, once per direction. The key is (rte, dir). A GROUP BY rte that forgets this double-counts every two-way route.
These are alignments, not schedules. Nothing here says how often a bus runs, when it runs, or whether it runs today. frequent is the only service-level hint, and it is a flag rather than a frequency. Use the GTFS feed for anything time-based.
Geometry type is mixed. 91 features are LINESTRING and 109 are MULTILINESTRING, so a route can be several disconnected pieces. Functions that assume a single linestring will silently misbehave — see the quirks.
Not a rail cartography layer. For drawing rail specifically, rail-lines is generalized for display and carries per-line colors; the MAX geometry here is the operational alignment.

Schema

Column	Type	Description
`rte`	int32	Route number.
`dir`	int32	Direction of route. Values: `0` Direction 0; `1` Direction 1.
`rte_desc`	string	Route name.
`public_rte`	string	Public route number.
`dir_desc`	string	Description of route direction.
`frequent`	string	Indicates whether a route or route segment has frequent service. Values: `True` Route segment has frequent service; `False` Route segment does not have frequent service.
`type`	string	Type of service. Values: `AT` Aerial Tram; `BUS` Bus; `CR` Commuter rail; `MAX` Light rail; `SC` Streetcar.

Column descriptions are TriMet's own, taken verbatim from meta_tm_routes.shtml. The same text is carried in table:columns in collection.json.

Visualization

Style	What it shows
`default.json`	Every fixed-route alignment colored by TYPE, following TriMet's own `trimet-routes` MapLibre style: bus lines thin and blue, MAX heaviest, streetcar thin, commuter rail gray. Colors are TriMet's GTFS route_color values, which is what that style resolves at draw time.
`by-direction.json`	Colors the two DIR values apart. Each route appears twice in this layer, once per direction, and the two alignments are rarely identical because of one-way streets — this style makes those divergences visible. Offsetting the two directions by a couple of pixels keeps coincident segments from hiding each other.
`frequent-service.json`	Splits the network on the FREQUENT flag. The 51 route-direction segments flagged True are drawn heavy in TriMet's FX green; the remaining 149 recede to a thin gray, so the frequent-service spine stands out against the rest of the system.
`labeled.json`	The service-type styling with PUBLIC_RTE drawn along each alignment. Use PUBLIC_RTE rather than RTE for display: it is the number riders see, and it is where lettered services such as FX2 appear.

The PMTiles layer is named routes. Styles reference it as ../routes.pmtiles, so they load unmodified against this directory.

Files

File	Size	What it is
`routes.parquet`	794.0 KB	GeoParquet 1.1, 200 rows in 1 row group(s), zstd, Hilbert-ordered, bbox covering column
`routes.pmtiles`	830.3 KB	Vector tiles for display, every feature kept at every zoom
`thumbnail.webp`	48.4 KB	Rendered from `styles/default.json` over a light basemap
`collection.json`	—	STAC Collection metadata

Provenance

Produced by TriMet GIS (4012 SE 17th Ave, GIS3, Portland, OR 97202, gis@trimet.org) and distributed at developer.trimet.org/gis as tm_routes.

The originals are linked as assets and are the authoritative copy: Shapefile · KML · Metadata

This collection was produced by converting TriMet's Shapefile to GeoParquet, keeping its native EPSG:2913 (NAD83(HARN) / Oregon North (ft)), and to PMTiles in WGS84 for display. No features were added, removed or edited. The exact commands are in tools/convert.py.

Contributing

This catalog is generated, and both halves are open source: the catalog at cholmes/portolan-catalog-trimet and the data browser at cholmes/trimet-data-browser. If something here is wrong or could be better — a description, a column definition, a query, a style — open an issue or send a pull request. Corrections to the underlying data go to TriMet at gis@trimet.org.

License, and a warning

TriMet distributes these datasets free of charge, but the terms of use do not grant redistribution rights. Section 4 of TriMet's Terms of Use reserves reproduction, modification, distribution and republication of site Content without written consent; the redistribution license in section 5 covers the Web Services API, not these GIS downloads. The collections therefore declare "license": "other" with a link to those terms, rather than claiming an open license the source does not offer.

Practically: use the data, and contact gis@trimet.org before redistributing it or building a product on it. If you need transit data under clear open terms, TriMet's GTFS feed is the better starting point.

TriMet Routes

The frequent flag marks TriMet's Frequent Service network — 51 of the 200 route-directions — which is the set of lines scheduled often enough that riders are told not to consult a timetable.

Agents: see AGENTS.md for join keys, verified query recipes and the caveats that will otherwise cost you a wrong answer.

🗺️ Open this collection in the data browser →

Preview it on a map, inspect the schema and license, and download the GeoParquet or PMTiles directly.

Quick start

Read it straight from object storage — DuckDB fetches only the byte ranges it needs, so there is nothing to download first:

Or with GeoPandas:

Suggested uses

Drawing the network. This is the layer behind TriMet's own system maps, and styles/default.json reproduces the line weights and colors from TriMet's published trimet-routes MapLibre style.
Measuring route-miles by mode or by jurisdiction.
Corridor analysis: buffering alignments to find what lies within a given distance of transit.

Limitations and inappropriate uses

rte is not a primary key. 87 route numbers appear twice, once per direction. The key is (rte, dir). A GROUP BY rte that forgets this double-counts every two-way route.
These are alignments, not schedules. Nothing here says how often a bus runs, when it runs, or whether it runs today. frequent is the only service-level hint, and it is a flag rather than a frequency. Use the GTFS feed for anything time-based.
Geometry type is mixed. 91 features are LINESTRING and 109 are MULTILINESTRING, so a route can be several disconnected pieces. Functions that assume a single linestring will silently misbehave — see the quirks.
Not a rail cartography layer. For drawing rail specifically, rail-lines is generalized for display and carries per-line colors; the MAX geometry here is the operational alignment.

Schema

Column	Type	Description
`rte`	int32	Route number.
`dir`	int32	Direction of route. Values: `0` Direction 0; `1` Direction 1.
`rte_desc`	string	Route name.
`public_rte`	string	Public route number.
`dir_desc`	string	Description of route direction.
`frequent`	string	Indicates whether a route or route segment has frequent service. Values: `True` Route segment has frequent service; `False` Route segment does not have frequent service.
`type`	string	Type of service. Values: `AT` Aerial Tram; `BUS` Bus; `CR` Commuter rail; `MAX` Light rail; `SC` Streetcar.

Column descriptions are TriMet's own, taken verbatim from meta_tm_routes.shtml. The same text is carried in table:columns in collection.json.

Visualization

Style	What it shows
`default.json`	Every fixed-route alignment colored by TYPE, following TriMet's own `trimet-routes` MapLibre style: bus lines thin and blue, MAX heaviest, streetcar thin, commuter rail gray. Colors are TriMet's GTFS route_color values, which is what that style resolves at draw time.
`by-direction.json`	Colors the two DIR values apart. Each route appears twice in this layer, once per direction, and the two alignments are rarely identical because of one-way streets — this style makes those divergences visible. Offsetting the two directions by a couple of pixels keeps coincident segments from hiding each other.
`frequent-service.json`	Splits the network on the FREQUENT flag. The 51 route-direction segments flagged True are drawn heavy in TriMet's FX green; the remaining 149 recede to a thin gray, so the frequent-service spine stands out against the rest of the system.
`labeled.json`	The service-type styling with PUBLIC_RTE drawn along each alignment. Use PUBLIC_RTE rather than RTE for display: it is the number riders see, and it is where lettered services such as FX2 appear.

The PMTiles layer is named routes. Styles reference it as ../routes.pmtiles, so they load unmodified against this directory.

Files

File	Size	What it is
`routes.parquet`	794.0 KB	GeoParquet 1.1, 200 rows in 1 row group(s), zstd, Hilbert-ordered, bbox covering column
`routes.pmtiles`	830.3 KB	Vector tiles for display, every feature kept at every zoom
`thumbnail.webp`	48.4 KB	Rendered from `styles/default.json` over a light basemap
`collection.json`	—	STAC Collection metadata

Provenance

Produced by TriMet GIS (4012 SE 17th Ave, GIS3, Portland, OR 97202, gis@trimet.org) and distributed at developer.trimet.org/gis as tm_routes.

The originals are linked as assets and are the authoritative copy: Shapefile · KML · Metadata

Portland Trimet Portolan Data Catalog (Mirror)

Portland Trimet Portolan Data Catalog (Mirror)

TriMet Routes

🗺️ Open this collection in the data browser →

Quick start

Suggested uses

Limitations and inappropriate uses

Schema

Visualization

Files

Provenance

Contributing

License, and a warning

TriMet Routes

🗺️ Open this collection in the data browser →

Quick start

Suggested uses

Limitations and inappropriate uses

Schema

Visualization

Files

Provenance

Contributing

License, and a warning