TriMet Revenue Forecast

For over twenty years, ECONorthwest has provided TriMet—the regional transit service provider for the three-county Portland metro area—with economic and district revenue forecasts on an annual or six-month basis. Using ECONorthwest’s proprietary macroeconomic model of the Portland metro area and data on TriMet’s revenue history, ECONorthwest provides a 4-year forward forecast at a quarterly resolution. The Portland regional macro model uses a specially-modified version of the Fair model of the U.S. economy to represent national forces and trends related to the Portland economy. A payroll tax levied on employers in the TriMet-served counties is the primary local source of TriMet revenues and is a primary output of the TriMet forecasting process. By forecasting regional employment and income and by performing special analyses of future risks to that forecast, the various revenue components are forecast into the future along with forecast error bound studies. Historically, ECONorthwest’s regional economic model and its TriMet forecasts have exhibited errors that are one-quarter of the size of the Oregon state forecast provided by a national vendor.