I'm a regular WES Rider, so I know what the problems have been with that system and they have a lot to do with the Positive Train control system and working out the DMUs, but what I have never understood about Portland is why they don't follow the same ideas that San Diego, LA, SF and Seattle have and utilize existing freight lines. In particular the fight over tracks to and from Vancouver Wa. They now have plans to build a new Bridge for I5 that will include LR lines for the MAX yellow line. And that's great. For years Vancouverites didn't want to spend the money to have this service, but why did it have to come to that? BNSF has an excellent line from Vancouver into Portland to Union Station. It largely follows the currently Yellow line. There is an excellent Amtrak Station in Vancouver. Why couldn't they fund some upgrades and purchase a couple used F40s or new MPI diesels some coaches, contract out to BNSF or Amtrak and have had this service a decade ago? Was it purely politics demanding the light rail solution? I can't believe it was just politics. Certainly I can't believe its the railroad. That line isn't at capacity and certainly they run Transit trains in other cities. What is it about Portland that made this undoable?
Good question. I have lived here for nearly all of 36 years. Back in the 1970s there was a proposal to build a freeway roughly tracking Powell Blvd out east, nicknamed the Mt. Hood freeway. This was opposed by several people in SE Portland, and I don't want to get too much into the politics of that decision here, but the idea to build a transit line from downtown to the east side came about, and that became the first MAX line. That system has since expanded into North Portland, out to Clackamas Town Center, the airport, and to the west through Beaverton all the way to Hillsboro. It has some strengths - good connectivity with buses, fast connections between destinations in most cases (there's an exception to this below), and it's quiet and clean. It has some weaknesses, too. One of the biggest, in my opinion, is that it essentially runs like a streetcar downtown, stopping every 2 to 4 blocks, and running at surface street speeds. This has a couple of nasty effects, one being that trains running through downtown are VERY slow and so cross-town travel on MAX is not terribly time-efficient, and the other is that the trains are then limited to 200 feet (the size of a Portland block) so the capacity of each train is low. I jumped up and down during the latest push to get the Green Line built UNDER the surface downtown instead of right on the street. I am of the firm opinion that they're going to be re-doing all of this in 20-30 years and put it underground anyway. We could have had longer trains (with some modifications of shorter platforms at some of the other stations) and we could have had much faster service to and through downtown, but no. Here's the big thing about what you propose and why it hasn't happened. I don't think that, beyond light rail and streetcars there has been much more imagination here about what could work for rail transit in the Portland metro area. You might want to get in touch with the folks at AORTA (Association of Oregon Rail Transportation Advocates, IIRC) and see what they're up to. There are folks there who've been harping on this stuff longer than either of us has been alive, and a lot of them are very nice and open people. We HAD heavy commuter rail lines in a lot of places. The SP&S used to run regular "daddy trains" between Portland and Seaside via Astoria. Southern Pacific used to run Red Electrics from downtown to points south and west of town. Union Pacific tends to not be terribly cooperative about anything running on their rights-of-way, but BNSF might be interested in a bit of extra revenue for trackage rights during certain rush hour commutes. There's also not much of a "big-city" mentality here. Despite the fact that the metro area is getting to, what, about 1.5 million people, we all still like to pretend that we're a big town. That works really well for some things, such as encouraging people to live and shop locally and ride their bikes and what have you, but it does mean that there's not a need for some transit options.
There are plenty of other "Big Town" mentality cities that are doing this though. Albuquerque and Salt Lake City come to mind. I may try to contact that group. Another one that blows my mind is Portland Traction. They are building all new tracks to run to Milwaukie, but they have the Portland Traction tracks to Sellwood existing and running through communities. If they had had any common sense, they could have had a line running all the way to Oregon city. And as nice as Willamette shores is as a touristy little thing, why don't they actually connect this service in and run it year round?
BTW, Amtrak is considered "Intercity Rail" and is not the same thing as heavy rail transit. "Heavy rail" transit refers to heavy capacity trains and the heavier infrastructure (i.e. tunnels, aerial structures, etc). The NYC Subway, the Washington DC Metro, the Chicago El and SF's BART are examples of heavy rail transit. Also Commuter Rail (on conventional RR tracks) is also not the same as "Heavy Rail" but is in its own category.
Amtrak can however be contracted out to run the trains which is the point I'm making. And certainly a route like the Surfliner is used as an intracity commuter line in LA. That's why they have rate sharing with metrolink. Also, I'm not sure I understand the distinction you're making. Heavy Rail is opposed to light rail and they refer to the number of passengers expected on the line. Which of course means my use of the term in the title could be in error...depending on expectations. From what I understand, the distinctions generally are Light Rail->Rapid Transit->Commuter rail. Both Rapid Transit and Commuter could be considered Heavy Rail. I use the term heavy rail to distinguish from DMU based systems like WES or SPRINT in San Diego which are light rail in terms of passenger expectations but run in the suburbs on FRA inspected track.
