Re: Max - well, sorta - Max was intended to be an alternative to additional freeways. So it acts like a normal rail system outside of downtown, and a streetcar in downtown. Whereas the streetcars are an alternative to owning a car, because they extend the geographic range of a pedestrian.

But even a max system, as expensive as it is per mile, etc, can still be a strong improvement over one more high-rise parking lot in the central city and trying to figure out how to shoehorn one more lane of traffic from the suburbs to the city. Full disclosure: I loathe suburbs, as you may have guessed. I'm all for genuinely rural spaces, but suburbs are a barely mitigated evil.