TriMet's MAX used to be Portland's crown jewel — now every other week there's a new reason people say they've given up on it. Are the problems fixable or is the whole system just cooked?
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Add your commentI rode MAX every day for 11 years. Stopped in 2022. It's not even a safety thing, it's just... unpredictable. Miss my train, wait 20 minutes, it shows up with the doors not opening properly. No thanks.
counterpoint: MAX carries like 100,000 trips on a good day. That's 100,000 cars NOT on the Sunset Highway. everyone screaming about it online still benefits from it whether they ride or not
Hot take: the real problem is that Portland built light rail before it had the density to support light rail. The urbanism came second. Now we're trying to retrofit both at the same time and it's chaos.
The investment TriMet put into the SW Corridor planning that never happened could have fixed half the actual problems on the existing lines. Priorities are completely upside down.
The Green Line extension cost $575 million. FIVE HUNDRED AND SEVENTY FIVE MILLION DOLLARS. And they still can't run trains on time to the airport. That's actually a crime against taxpayers.
My husband proposed to me on the MAX in 2003 (it was the Blue Line toward Hillsboro, we were going to a Trail Blazers game). I still love the idea of it. I just wish the reality matched the idea.
The Westside tunnels are an engineering marvel and I will die on this hill. The actual infrastructure is incredible. The operations? Whole other conversation.
I moved here from Chicago two years ago and honestly the hand-wringing about MAX is hilarious. You want to see a broken transit system? Spend a month on the CTA Red Line at 2am.
Abolish fare enforcement entirely OR enforce it consistently. The current half-measure where an inspector shows up once a month is just theater at this point.
i dont even own a car so i literally have no choice but to ride it. id love to hear from the people complaining from their ford f-150s what exactly their plan is for the rest of us
people act like MAX was always paradise. it wasn't. the blue line through Gresham has been sketchy since like 2009 lol
Anyone who says MAX is unfixable hasn't looked at what Denver did with their RTD in five years. It's a management problem, not a rail problem. Solvable if there's will.
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