OPINION Tunnel Vision The promise of westside light rail provides an antidote to the toxins of Washington.   This has been quite a week. School began, the Dow's performance postponed our expected retirement age to 75, baseball briefly became the national pastime again, and we began to seriously question whether our portfolio of dirty jokes needed to get cruder just to stay current. In the midst of such a medley of hope, uncertainty, achievement and sleaze, we took an afternoon to ride the light rail out to Hillsboro. It was easily the most cleansing experience of the week. If there is any truth to the saying that we get the leaders we deserve, Americans are a pretty sorry lot. Sure, the investigation of the special prosecutor has spun completely out of control. Yes, doing it and lying about it and--perhaps--even encouraging others to lie about it may not, strictly speaking, be a high crime or misdemeanor. Big deal. Bill Clinton's alleged behavior is still icky, self-indulgent and quite arrogant. More distressing, his disregard for the truth could not be more pathological. It may be difficult to imagine how the opening of westside light rail provides any sort of curative to this nonsense. Isn't it, after all, just a fairly ambitious piece of engineering, an 18-mile, almost $1 billion train set? Hardly. At a time when most American cities can't get it together to do much of anything ambitious in a public way (except to raise money for pro-sports stadiums), this region's completion of westside MAX is nothing short of extraordinary. One cannot ride the new MAX without being wowed by the handsome design, the whimsy with which it uses public art or the engineering marvels of the tunnel and the zoo station. But the achievement of westside light rail is really about something else. It is about a willingness to try to shape our future in a fashion that encourages harmony and sensible growth. Already, 7,000 homes, apartments and condos are being built or planned near westside light-rail stops. Office buildings, day-care centers and retail development are in place. The connection between downtown and the suburbs is enhanced. Even though an investment in light rail won't yield real dividends for more than a decade, the benefits are already apparent. As Tri-Met itself is fond of saying, transit isn't about transit--it's about livability. In the past, this page has had its problems with what insiders none too fondly call the transit mafia. This powerful group of elected officials and bureaucrats has at times demonstrated a lack of political savvy, annoyance towards its critics and a short fuse. We would also add, as a minor criticism, that this group got a bit carried away in honoring those who helped bring this project about. The Hatfield Government Center is one thing. But the (Bill) Robertson Tunnel? And the Les AuCoin Plaza? These quibbles aside, none of this detracts from the magnitude of the accomplishment or the benefits it will bring. If there is any truth to the saying that we get the public investments we deserve, this region has just spoken volumes about itself.     originally published September 16, 1998