Excellent comment at the Oregonian

MAX service now 'stopping' due to weather

The heyday of electric rail was between its invention by Werner von Siemens, presented at the Berlin Trade Fair in 1879, and the 1950s widespread adoption of asphalt paved streets, which provide a network of options. A few kilograms of stubborn ice hanging on the overhead power wire on the Steel Bridge can cut the Max system in half, as can a blown power transformer on Morrison street, a stalled or derailed train, a wreck or fire of cars on the tracks, etc. Buses with actual chains can steer around obstacles, and replaced by other buses.

Rail is fragile. Single track, single path grade level rail sharing the streets and the power grid is one small step from failure. Successful rail systems ( Boston, NYC, much of Europe ) are multitrack grids with redundant power, and won't shut down if a link fails. Portland is modeled on the DC metro, which also shuts down in ice storms. Our workforce and management is also modeled on the DC metro, where a portion of the workforce gets high wages and huge benefits, driving costs skyhigh, while other portions get garbage wages, have no spirit of duty, and stay home when things go to hell.

I was stranded as a tourist in DC when an ice storm shut it down; two days without food until I could get an Amtrak out of that disaster zone. My gratitude to then-Senator Hatfield and his DC office staff. They showed up on cross country skis, the only Senate workers who did so, and they helped visiting Oregonians and others survive. DC is a lousy model for anything.

Because of misplaced priorities, Trimet is lavishly funded to buy infrastructure, and hobbled with inflexible union rules that protect procedure rather than actual workers. Rules can't replace dedicated individual workers who value and are valued by their community, and managers focused on serving the community by giving workers the tools to do an excellent job. With enough workers, we could chain up buses, or clear ice off power wires, rapidly move borked Max cars off tracks, etc.

Trains make good sense in cities with ten times the density of Portland, cities that can put them in weatherproof tunnels downtown, or on 4 track elevateds towards the periphery. That is not Portland, and probably never will be. Our downtown is less dense than outer Brooklyn. Portland is build on earthquake-prone fill, not granite. And for better or worse, most of us have cars, and use them to travel many miles between widespread homes, jobs, stores, and services.

Max will keep failing. It will not ever meet our ludicrous expectations of it. It is time to be honest about how we actually choose to live and work and get around, and pick the least-bad practical transportation options that match that - a few miles of multiple-redundant rail in the core, and thousands of miles of bus lines to farflung suburbs, makes sense, matched to workers paid to be heros, not cogs in a bureaucratic machine....

http://www.oregonlive.com/portland/index.ssf/2014/02/trimet_max_service_now_stoppin.html#incart_maj-story-1