Sorry PDXRAILTRANSIT,

But that article is dead on. I love rail just as much anyone else here, but the fact is Max is nothing more than a limited but many times more expensive bus line. I think it and the trolleys look cool, but they don't justify their costs for our city and regional area. And right now, during the worst economic times in most of our lifetimes, that's more than a serious issue.

Something that would have worked so many times better, but have been far less sexy would have been a bus expressway over where the Max lines run now to improve bus times during heavy traffic periods, but allow them to continue to branch off into the city as needed. It would have cost so much less and served so many more people and if we're worried about how it was powered, it could have been hybrid busses that were powered both by overhead wires and gas engines. Those have existed for years. But I digress.

The fact is, everything tri-met builds is about how sexy it looks. Not about functionality, not about who or how many it serves and certainly not about economics and costs.

Right now as trimet builds that horrifically expensive bridge for that horrifically expensive Milwaukie line that we don't need, bridges that transport tens of thousands of vehicles and people and freight, such as the Sellwood and Ross Island, desperately need to be replaced, but can't find the funding.

The biggest question you and every other Max and trolley supporter need to ask yourself for our future is who's going to pay for all this and how? Historically the vast majority of these projects have been funded by the Federal government with billions of dollars of borrowed money. But much of that money is about to dry up as our Federal Government is on the verge of bankruptcy, in small part, because of wasted money on projects like this.

So who's going to pay for those toys in the future? More importantly, as money gets diverted to projects like the Milwaukie Light Rail in the future, because they were foolishly green lighted during one of our worse economic periods in the last 70 years without being fully funded or even fully designed, who is going to pay for our failing infrastructure and other services that are actually desperately needed and are not just sexy show pieces.

No offense intended to anyone, just my opinion.

Brian