Posted on 02/21/2017 3:18:18 PM PST by Publius
The idea of a high-speed train connecting Vancouver, Seattle and Portland was floated by a private organization last year. Now, Washington Governor Jay Inslee has set aside $1 million in his new state budget to study whether such an idea has legs (or, more accurately, rails).
According to Mark Hallenbeck, director of the Washington State Transportation Center, the region has the right geography for a high-speed line, CBC News reports. "They’re the right distance where it's small enough that the train would compete very well with an airplane," he told the news site. "If you get too much longer, then the airplane's extra speed is better than the train."
There's also a lot of movement and commerce among the three cities, he said.
The study would come at a time when transit agencies and departments of transportation around the US are watching President Donald Trump for signs of what they can expect in terms of federal funding in the next four years.
As California's high-speed rail project has shown, such infrastructure isn't cheap. The Northwest line would have a price tag in the multiple billions, Hallenbeck estimated, partly because of the cost of land and right-of-way. According to the Business Journal, a report by libertarian think tank Reason Foundation released this year puts the cost to taxpayers for a proposed Texas bullet train at $21.5 billion and declares a 205 mph Dallas to Houston connection unfeasible. Developer Texas Central Partners, which held a design competition for the line's stations last year, said the Reason Foundation's report was "deeply flawed."
According to the Seattle Times, former Seattle Mayor Paul Schell was an advocate of high-speed rail to connect Portland with Canada's British Columbia. The concept came up again at a conference of civic and business leaders from around the Northwest last year, hosted by the Business Council of British Columbia, the Washington Roundtable and Microsoft.
1 Hour from Vancouver to Seattle? Washington State Budgets $1M for High-Speed Rail Study
BC Supports Feasibility Study of High-Speed Rail Line from Portland to Vancouver
Guess who will get all this money? Won’t be for the actual train. Only the gravy train for govs pals. Look at CA, high speed train board of directors.....they have gotten a huge chunk of change. I think it is in the billions now.
Amtrak doesn’t cover this already?
This is intended to be a Pacific Northwest version of France's TGV, Germany's ICE and Japan's Shinkansen -- truly high speed rail on a separate right of way.
Mudslides constantly close the track between Seattle and Vancouver. Wouldn’t want to be moving into the slide zone at 150 mph when that happened.
2) Now billions to be spent Vancouver Washington to Seattle to shave 1/2 hour off of Amtrak’s present service? Cost benefit ratio doesn't make sense.
I guess their dams are all a-ok.
If it were a private operation could it financially compete with the airlines?
The proposal is for a totally new right of way that, like a freeway, wouldn’t traverse dangerous and unstable land by the sides of various bodies of water.
That was my first thought - those mudslides along the coast in the northern part of the line.
I’m guessing Inslee has already thought of that though, and they will use one of the lanes of I-5 to put the new bullet train on.
How many people, how often, need to get between Vancouver, Seattle and Portland that fast? And if it’s that important to business, let business finance it.
Yes, obviously that’s true. The current route hugs the cliffs along Puget Sound. But the deadly Oso mudslide that killed 44 occurred something like 20 miles inland. And the entire area isn’t exactly geologically stable.
They’re catching the disease from Moonbeam.
Seems that between Everett and Seattle it would just about have to use existing lines unless they’re talking about new long tunnels or bridges.
But last year they extended it north of downtown Seattle to Capitol Hill and the University of Washington. As soon as that opened, ridership more than doubled, and now they need to order more light rail vehicles to carry all the people who want to ride it. It has become a belated success. By the time they extend it to Northgate in 2021, it will be carrying the kind of loads that most urban subway systems carry.
The projects south of Seattle will permit Cascades trains to increase their speed from 79 mph to 110 mph and cut enough time off the schedule to make it competitive with driving. They also segregate passenger trains from freight traffic, thus permitting more trains and less interference with BNSF and UP.
Judge Robarts approves....
Hydrofoil ferries.
Hints in media of Inslee as a 2020 pres candidate.
1 million is maybe 100,000 in donations. So, say 10 million in such State gifts to donors by 2020 gets him a million in donations.
It’s a start.
That’s a good question, and it’s not easy to answer. It depends on the structure of fares and the cost of building. My sense is that it would have to be built as a public service and subsidized, the way that high speed rail projects outside the US are handled.
Tunnels and bridges, yes. Probably lots of them. It would be like building a second I-5 for rail.
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