Part of Portland's problem is that its transit is built to move people into and out of downtown. Very little of it is built to move people between neighborhoods or across routes. That's somewhat understandable since downtown is the most common destination, but plenty of people (like you) end up without many options.
Some cities I've lived in have a star model. In Munich I'd take the subway downtown, change trains and head into a different suburb. Because the train was quick and the stops reasonable spaced resulting in a decent experience. In Portland the MAX stops so frequently downtown that taking it for example from the west side to the airport is way too slow. You spend way too much time just slogging through downtown. It starts to suffer from the same problem like most US buses that stop every fucking block. What's up with that insanity?! The T-Line in SF suffered from the same problem and I ultimately stopped taking it in favor of a kick scooter.
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.
