Charles Stookey Wrote:
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> I do wonder though why the Portland area
> has three incompatible rail-based transit systems.

No different than Los Angeles with having MetroLink (commuter rail), Red Line (subway), Blue Line (heavy rail) and Gold Line (light rail), on top of multiple bus systems.

Or New York, with its multiple and disconnected subway and commuter rail systems, or Chicago with its multiple commuter rail, interurban and elevated systems.

At least in Portland, the same ticket (even an all-day ticket) will work on all systems. I was in Los Angeles a month ago and had to purchase two separate tickets to ride the subway and Metrolink, and my Metrolink ticket was only good on one route, between two stations.

So, WES is totally different than MAX/Streetcar because it is a commuter rail system, that will operate "weekday rush hours" only, operates on track shared with freight trains, goes suburb to suburb (Beaverton, Tigard, Tualatin, Wilsonville) without going to downtown Portland...

MAX and the Portland Streetcar, on the other hand, are "similar but different"...MAX from Lloyd Center to Goose Hollow isn't much different than the Streetcar (which is legally a "light rail" system; there's no such distinction for a "streetcar" but it's generally described to be a car that is smaller than a LRV, can't be coupled to additional cars, has a top speed of about 40 MPH...) For example, Tacoma LINK "Light Rail" uses the same identical cars that Portland and Seattle uses for their "Streetcars". In downtown, the only real difference between the Streetcar and MAX is that MAX usually gets a dedicated lane whereas the Streetcar does not. But they both stop every couple of blocks and don't travel very fast.