This is why it takes you an hour to get 5 miles across town. See, there's nothing wrong with building rail lines and bike lanes. The mistake is BUILDING THEM TO THE EXCLUSION OF EVERTHING ELSE!
Really well-planned cities with visionary leadership know a successful transportation plan is a balance of transit, bikes, pedestrians, and OMG! private autos.
If we'd have had this visionary leadership 40 years ago, we wouldn't have freeways built in the 60's and conceived in the 50's. We wouldn't have two lane roads (Powell, Sandy, Lombard, Hwy 43,) that go from four lanes to two randomly
We'd have at least three more bridges across the Willamette for autos, pedestrians, bikes and pre-engineered for rail traffic. We'd have a showpiece crossing over the Columbia. And they'd all be seismically sound to boot. We'd have separated bike and pedestrian lanes. We'd have maybe 4 MAX lines on wholly dedicated rights-of-way traveling fast, instead of the 6 that overlay what were perfectly functioning bus routes and that crawl.
Mostly we wouldn't be force fed the junk science of "traffic calming" and "road diets." Saying increased capacity results in increased volume ( common Portland Traffic Engineering dogma) is analogous to saying that opening a second check stand at the store when there's 50 people in line will result in more people in line. That idea is preposterous.
And yes, all this would have been incredibility expensive. But other cities found ways to do it.