The boundary of the westside portion of Fareless Square (and later the Free Rail Zone) started at the west foot of the Marquam Bridge, ran northwest along Interstate 405 to Northwest Irving Street, east to the Steel Bridge, then southward along the western shore of the Willamette River.
A minor adjustment of Fareless Square occurred during the 1990s in order to include the stops for Union Station (Amtrak), by extending the northern limits of the area by one block to Northwest Irving Street.
This was a panhandle-shaped addition to the original free-fare zone, and consequently Fareless Square was, strictly speaking, no longer square-shaped, but it retained its name.
[5] In January 2009, TriMet again raised the idea of reducing the validity of Fareless Square or possibly imposing a discounted fare, of $1, in the area concerned, this time in conjunction with a need to trim its budget in response to a regional economic downturn.
[citation needed] In addition, bus drivers complained about passengers boarding buses for rides lasting only a few stops within the fareless area, slowing down longer distance riders.
[9] In August 2009, the TriMet board approved an ordinance to discontinue the fareless zone on buses but retain it for MAX and the Portland Streetcar.
In late 2007, a series of attacks against TriMet passengers, particularly on the MAX Blue Line in Gresham, led to increased public scrutiny of the security of the Portland transit system as a whole.
TriMet's general manager proposed limiting the hours of Fareless Square to 7 a.m. to 7 p.m.[15] However, others questioned the logic of linking incidents of crime in Gresham with the existence of a free transit zone located several miles away, in downtown Portland, and TriMet's own statistics showed that in 2007 the agency received very few complaints about activities such as drug dealing and panhandling in Fareless Square.