Here’s a map from a rarely-seen era of Portland, Oregon’s transit history – the period of time between the end of the streetcar era and the emergence of the current transit operator, TriMet in 1969. The Rose City Transit Company (with their lovely casual script logo and friendly “Rosy” nickname) operated bus service within the Portland city limits from 1956 until TriMet was formed.

Under RTC’s watch, the last of Portland’s trolleybuses were phased out and bus routes were consolidated considerably – many routes linked into crosstown pairs through downtown instead of terminating there (some routes like the 4 and 35 still act like this even today!). The numbering of routes on the map is somewhat misleading, as these numbers only act as keys to the actual route names listed below the map – Rose City Transit never used route numbers on headboards, only destination names. The pairing of routes is not made clear by the map, despite the blurb to the left implying that it does.

The map itself is fairly rudimentary, with thick black lines overlaid on an idealised five-block grid with some general neighbourhoods and points of interest named. The dense grid of downtown routes is almost impossible to make sense of, but it’s fairly easy to follow them in the outer areas. One thing that’s obvious to see is just how much the bus routes still follow the old streetcar lines – there’s still even a “Bridge Transfer” route that runs between the major Willamette River bridges on the east side!

One final thing to note is Rose City Transit’s business address at 4100 SE 17th Avenue – the site of Portland’s main streetcar shops before Rose City Transit, and still in use as TriMet’s Center Street shops today.

Our final word: Nice to see a something from a neglected part of Portland’s transit history, though the map itself isn’t anything special. Some fun mid-century design flourishes with the little rose and bus icons, though!

Source: Multnomah County Library