Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 thre…
MAX is not that handicapped by being at grade because it has dedicated roads/lanes everywhere it goes. Portland will eventually ban cars downtown anyway (they are close). Zoning laws are changing and have changed to allow infill. Plus, there is an urban growth boundary which will force higher density. The bottlenecks in Portland are the bridges and there is at least one bridge that cars can't drive on, only busses an…
Yes it is. It limits how long the train can be, because it can't block traffic downtown, which limits its capacity.
It also limits how fast it can travel. Having its own lanes is better than not, of course, but not as good as being completely physically separated. For an example of this that I'm particularly familiar with, a big part of Caltrain's unreliability comes from it having so many at-grade crossings.
> Zoning laws are changing and have changed to allow infill.
Yes, but very slowly. The current state is that they're extremely bad. Less extremely bad than the US average, probably, but still extremely bad nonetheless.
> There are entire streets where vehicle through traffic has been blocked in favor of bicycles.
Yes, and that's a good move. Would love to see more of those across the city. The way Portland has done it isn't as good as, say, Munich, but it's still a nice thing.
> There are still bike lanes on the major roads a block away too which is why you probably didn't notice the dedicated streets.
Eh, I mean the neighborhood greenways are good, don't get me wrong, but there should still be more off-street paths and physically protected lanes on arterials.
> look at any major street west of 82nd and you will see new apartment buildings on almost every block.
I'm aware of the steady upzoning in Portland, and that's good. It's still true that they're decades away from the kind of urbanism that many cities in, say, Western Europe take for granted as the norm, where "only single family home" areas do not really exist in major cities.