Yep, the MAX is sluggish enough downtown that it's often faster to bike to the other side of downtown to catch it. Say you want to get to Beaverton from the Sou

Yep, the MAX is sluggish enough downtown that it's often faster to bike to the other side of downtown to catch it. Say you want to get to Beaverton from the South Waterfront: you could take the Orange from there to Pioneer Square, then the Blue to Beaverton, but it would be faster for you to just bike to the Goose Hollow station. All because the Orange Line takes 12 minutes to travel the 1.5 miles from the South Waterfront to Pioneer Square. It takes 25 minutes to traverse downtown. I've long been an advocate to bury the MAX downtown (via cut-and-cover, not tunneling), but obviously even that could cost billions of dollars.