I wouldn't consider Portland to be a cheaper or more conservative US city, and it's still one of the better US cities at urbanism, sad as that is, but okay.
* The MAX has decent reach, but it's severely handicapped in capacity and speed by running at-grade. The Portland metro cheaped out there, and the result is a train system that's only good by American standards.
* Many of the MAX stops, you can go a block or three and hit single-family homes (mandatory single-family homes, I think). To spend billions on a transit system, and then intentionally handicap its usage by strictly limiting how many people can live nearby around its stations...that's just completely insane. What are they thinking? "Better make sure as few people as possible can actually use this enormous investment"?
* No bus lanes that I'm aware of, or at least few enough that a multiple-time visitor didn't see them, so buses are stuck in general traffic.
* Very few physically protected bike lanes, in spite of its reputation as a bike-friendly city. The sum total value of bike improvements prior to the Orange Line was I believe estimated at around 60m, which is probably like a hundredth of one percent of the value of the roads and other stuff built for cars.
* Despite ostensibly being a major city, most of the residential areas are zoned very low density.
* Those very low density areas also generally have no commercial/retail activity allowed, which particularly hurts walkability: part of walkability is being able to, y'know, walk to things.
Most of what I wrote here, you could apply in some form to nearly every US city.