| Andrew |
Apr 25th, 2009 05:36 PM |
(Sorry, Randy, didn't mean for my reply above to come off quite so snarky.)
As a transit advocate and lover of trains, I have mixed feelings about light rail. Portland's MAX light rail system is often hailed as a model system for the nation, but I think MAX is seriously flawed: it has limited capacity (our MAX trains can be two cars maximum in length - the size of one city block), and the stops are far too close together downtown (like every other block sometimes), making the train extremely slow to get through Portland's tiny downtown. In a larger city, the MAX would have maybe 2-3 stops total in an area the size of our downtown, instead of the 10+ we have. Plus, our system has no ability for express trains - every train is a "local." So if you are in any sort of a hurry, forget it; travel time seems to have been lowest on the list of constraints when designing our MAX system.
These flaws seem almost inexcusable given the hundreds of millions of dollars we've now spent on this system. I hope Seattle avoids some of the problems our system has!
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