First of all no matter which pass you go with you definitely want to live on the east side, no sense in crossing through the city center twice per ski day. A lot of the slow downs in traffic are on the mountain, but there's plenty of traffic in town before you get there. If you're down to live in the "outskirts" (lol not totally sure what those are), then i would consider towns in the lower Southeast (Milwaukie, Clackamas, Damascus etc). I live in Sellwood (lower SE Portland), and the drive to Meadows usually takes about 80-ish minutes on weekdays.
On the weekend it can take anywhere from 1.5 to 2.5 hours depending on weather and jabronies on the road. Living further east in Portland can definitely make a difference in your drive time, but living further south on the east side of Portland can save you a lot of time as well -- I take the 224 > 212 > 26, and it steers you clear of tons of traffic (most people take the 26 all the way from inner Portland). I live really close to Milwaukie and I'm sure it's saved me countless hours in the car over the years, makes sense when you look at the map since you bypass a lot of city traffic and stop lights on the 26. I would keep that southern route in mind wherever you look; i.e. if you lived in the Lents neighborhood in PDX you could get down to the 224 pretty fast.
Meadows - best terrain IMO, steepest, most interesting, most challenging. Heather / Clark canyons and Private Reserve are pretty damn big and are absolutely full of fun stuff (steeps, glades, cliffs, waterfalls, big powder fields, etc). Lots of windy ridge-tops all over the whole resort, which makes for tons of sweet natural features (windlips, cornices, gaps etc). Pow stashes all over the place when you get to know the map well. Honestly the best terrain parks you'll find at Meadows are those windy ridges with the natty features on em.
Slightly longer drive, actual terrain parks aren't great, and season is a little shorter than T-line. Night skiing is decent but not terribly exciting. Lines can get frustrating on the weekends sometimes, but not bad 90% of the time - almost every lift is high speed and when all the lifts are open, even on a Saturday, people often spread out and the lines aren't bad (5 minutes or less). The lines only get long (like 15 min wait) right when they open on a pow day/weekend, after a zone has just opened up (like Heather canyon), or if they can't run all of the lifts on a storm day (i.e. sometimes Heather, Cascade, and Vista chairs are all closed... then you're gonna get some lines).
Fusion - definitely true that if you're really into park Fusion is hands down the way to go, T-line's parks are prally the biggest and best in the NW and SkiBowl is a really sick bonus to have too (and it's so close to town). T-line has parks of several different sizes and styles pretty much all the time, and they maintain them way better than Meadows. There's some pretty cool terrain you can access from the top of the Palmer lift (a couple nice canyons if you traverse out skiers right past the rope), but it doesn't really compare to the canyons and PR at Meadows. Shorter drive but not by a whole lot (10-20 minutes usually). With the right timing you can get from pdx to skibowl in an hour or less depending on where you live, which is dope for shredding after work when it's dumping snow.
TBH if you're a proficient skier and you're not into hitting the park, you'll probably get bored at T-line pretty fast. SkiBowl is more challenging and interesting, and the night skiing is the best anywhere, but it's pretty small and at considerably lower elevation so they have a harder time with snow than the other two (and they can't stay open as late into the season).
TLDR -- if you want to ski big lines / powder / cliffs / trees / natural features etc. then Meadows is the way to go. If you're more into nice terrain parks, night skiing, longer season, and somewhat shorter drive, Fusion would be great. Live on the east side, try to take the 224 / 212 route to save time, and probably don't worry about lift lines too much.
