Everything is Light Rail (but that's fine)
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 8 ธ.ค. 2023
- I recently took a trip to a hotbed for American urbanists - Portland, Oregon. It's almost the epitome of American obsession with light rail, but what are my thoughts on the MAX system?
4:22 A good thing to note is that in Seattle we have exact level boarding at every station (except for Commuter Rail and T Line in Tacoma)
As a former resident, I have a lot of issues with Portland overall. Still, I'm surprised you found the Red Line service to the airport lacking. While the travel speed from city center is held back by the slow street running segments, the airport side of the Red Line is almost perfect. It takes maybe 3 minutes to walk from the Max stop to almost any airlines check-in counter and less than 5 to get to the TSA checkpoints. No shuttle bus, annoying people mover or, as in Seattle, a seemingly endless walk from many hundreds of feet away.
Overall I think transit service to PDX is better than the equivalent at Seattle's airport or even SFO with the bizarrely placed BART station and people movers.
Have you gone to check out Salt Lake City and its vast Trax lines? It is also working to possibly bring rail service back to a historic depot called the Rio Grande Plan!
Portlander here
This is a great review, you are right about so many things. But I don't believe Portland is an example of a good light rail city anymore.
After a visit to Seattle with my friends last year, my opinion completely flipped upside down. The link is a far superior system to the Max, and we should build every new extension in the same style as the link
Full grade separation, 8 minute frequency, and 4 length trains is the current absolute gold standard of light rail.
Damn you Seattle... Y'all just have to be better at everything...
I know there is an at grade section south of downtown on MLKJr Way, but everything else in Seattle is just perfect
Muni doesn't fit all of their light rail lines into a single tunnel anymore. The T now runs in the Central Subway and they seem to want to redirect the J onto the current Market Street surface alignment that the streetcars use.
bro if your only mission in life is to write a comment with the smallest of nitpicks on every single video from a tiny creator then idk what to tell you
@@tomo-tawa-linja Lol, if you don't want your work discussed then why are you posting it publicly? Maybe your ego is a little too fragile for this line of work.
And how about at least acknowledging that my comment was accurate. As a transit afficionado wouldn't you know about the Central Subway opening? The Muni Metro only has six lines. Don't you think that when someone says "all the lines go into a single tunnel" that is not the same " 5 out of 6 lines go into the same tunnel"?
I would love to have the J-Church turn onto Market from Church, but I've had it explained to me that the J's wires and the F-Market's wires won't allow that. I hope they can figure that out.
If they could make that work, I think it would also make sense to have the N-Judah run above-ground behind the Safeway and onto Market. It seems to me there's plenty of capacity on the surface-level Market Street rails, and it'd make the downtown tunnel's operations so much smoother.
@@tomo-tawa-linja All Engagement is Good Engagement
@@dwc1964 Someone told me that they actually prototyped how that could work and that the wires on Market St have special mounts that allow for the catenary to slip through, or something like that. Not really sure what the details are on this though.
But either way, they could either outfit the J S200s with trolley poles or buy low-floor trams specifically for the J. This would also open up more S200s for the other routes. It's not really a problem that can't be solved.
The yellow line extension to Vancouver sounds great in a vacuum, but it’s been held back by the old bridge. Clark county torpedoed plans to build a new bridge 10yrs ago to stop light rail. IMO, the current design for a new bridge bundles a massive freeway expansion and the MAX stops will be very unpleasant and unwalkable. I personally oppose the current design of the IBR as it does not actually have transit riders best interests at heart.
Solid editing, with a little more attention to audio these videos would be right up there with RMTransit
I would say it is not too fair to compare the airport ride with the difference in system, one being heavy rail and one with light rail. When you compare portland with nearby seattle, the travel time to airport is pretty similar
Key thing with Seattle is that the airport is actually further, and the travel time is improved by having more grade separation
Love your videos, keep them coming! It’s always fun to see the diverse transit the US has to offer. Greetings from Germany!
I don’t think Portland is a good example. There’s track and stations - sure - but from an overall useage POV, it’s not used by a lot of people. Head north to Vancouver. That’s an example of a city that’s built a highly successful mass and rapid transit system.
Despite its flaws, even Seattle gets a higher ridership than Portland, and that’s with just 1 line. Of course Seattle is a much more populated city, but still, with such a large system Portland should be performing better.
Vancouver skytain Q3 2023 daily ridership per mile: 9,030
Seattle Link Q3 2023 daily ridership per mile: 4,142
Portland Max Q3 2023 daily ridership per mile: 1,203