On June 9th, Mayors Mike McGinn of Seattle, Gregor Robertson of Vancouver, BC, and Sam Adams of Portland signed an agreement to jointly pursue high speed rail funds between their three cities:
1. Affirm their commitment to bringing high-speed rail to the Pacific Northwest;
2. Prioritize their legislative agendas to ensure that high-speed rail advocacy becomes a centerpiece of their long-term transportation infrastructure planning;
3. Commit to meeting semi-annually to review progress, set agendas and share best practices;
4. Work to establish municipal and regional task forces on high-speed rail to coordinate outreach to key stakeholders, support local efforts, and achieve results toward high- speed rail and station funding, planning and construction;
5. Ensure transparency and accountability for each partner’s contributions to this Partnership and the results of our joint efforts.
McGinn’s office did not respond immediately to the question as to whether the agreement applied to Cascades corridor upgrades (up to 110 mph), or a whole new right-of-way for true HSR.
(Via)
Do we really need ‘true HSR’? I mean yeah, it’d be cool and all, but my understanding is that the current plan to upgrade the Cascades corridor will beat both auto and air. I’d rather our scant resources be used for this, then some pie in the sky ‘true HSR.’
It’s all about the money! To me it makes sense to spend a little to *plan* true HSR now since in a few years there may be US federal funding for the capital expenses, and to apply for that we’d need to know routing and estimated ridership for cost of operation.
I agree entirely: upgrade the Cascades corridor, then implement HSR.
Gregor Robertson, not Robinson.
Nobody “needs” to get from Seattle to Portland, or Vancouver, BC in an hour, though some may wish to do so.
London to York and London to Leeds are equivalent distances and have half hourly and hourly services in under two hours and are very successful. Top speed is generally 200 KPH on each route. We could do the same here for far less than building a 300 KPH+ HSR system – the NIMBYs alone would drive the costs into the stratosphere.
Funny you mention north England… the Conservatives made HSR a campaign issue:
http://rossthomson.wordpress.com/2010/03/12/conservative-committment-to-high-speed-rail-solid/
We’ll see whether they actually build it due to UK budget problems, though.
The Tories won’t do HSR – they are too beholden unto the auto/pavement/petroleum interests as are most politicians here.
Oh how I miss the National Express East Coast and Yorkshire!
But you’re spot on Lloyd. For every unit of increased speed, we get diminishing returns in terms of real travel time saved. But perversely, for every unit of increased speed we also get exponentially higher costs. In the Seattle-Vancouver corridor, for instance, a doubling of the average speed (from 40mph to 80mph) would halve travel time from 4 to 2 hours. Doubling the speed again, to 160mph, would save 1 additional hour.
“Never going slow” is much more important than “going really fast”. The low-hanging fruit is more important. Build bypasses (White Rock, Point Defiance), improve slow sections (Pacific Central-New Westminster, Bellingham-Bow, Marysville-Everett, Vancouver WA-Portland), and add track…then we’ll talk HSR. Fixing the first 7 miles out of Vancouver would save 20 minutes alone. Getting to reliable 80-110mph service should be our focus.
Express trains would help a lot as well. A train that did not have to stop at all between Seattle and Portland could go much much faster.
But not too many expresses (maybe 3 a day?) – we need to build that small town and rural constituency – they drive a LOT of miles in cars, and we need the support of their legislators for rail service improvements.
And not before we have a lot more daily frequencies. Once that happens, having some non-stop or limited stop trains might make sense.
Once Amtrak gets their e-ticket capability online and we get eight or more trains a day, it might also make sense to add some alternative suburban stations to the mix. For example, instead of having all trains stop at Tukwila, one or two might stop at Kent or Auburn or Puyallup.
I requested station-pair Cascades ridership information from Amtrak, but they want me to commit to unlimited ‘research costs’ before proceeding. (Just send me the raw data, darn it)…
My (perhaps obvious) hunch is that 90+% of small-town ridership is to the Seattle, Portland, and Vancouver hubs, rather than small town to small town. If in future airline travel will de-emphasize small and mid-size cities and focus on domestic long-distance and international travel (as seems likely and prudent), intercity rail service can act much the way that feeder commuter flights do today, especially since all 3 Cascadia cities have good rail service to their airports. So yeah, a couple of expresses could only stop at VAC-SEA-PDX-EUG, and a couple ‘limited’ runs could skip only STW, EDM, TUK, ORC, and ALY, but most trains should stop at BEL, MVW, EVR, TAC, CTW, KEL, VAN, and SLM. I’d be very hesitant to bypass these larger stations.
I share your hunch, but I’d propose something more like the following: All trains stop at VAN, SEA, PDX, EUG, probably also TAC and VAN. And all trains stop at one more station between SEA and PDX, and one more station between SEA and VAN. So there is a lot of express service, and small stations are served by fewer trains, but they are express trains. Maybe there are still one or two local trains each day.
Send your request to WSDOT, they have ridership info for the Cascades. ODOT also publishes ridership numbers, here’s the report for April 2010: http://www.oregon.gov/ODOT/RAIL/docs/Passenger/Amtrak_Cascades_Mthly_Ridership_Rpt_04_10.pdf
There’s also lots of historical ridership information available from WSDOT.
What I’m looking for is origin-destination ridership. The mere monthly on-off totals for each station don’t help me much. I want to know how many are going Portland-Seattle, how many Centralia-Vancouver WA, etc…for all possible station pairs in the Cascades corridor. I’ll keep looking…and I’ll take up your suggestion and ask WSDOT instead of Amtrak.
It’s good to see that numbers are up this year, especially the 27%(!) year-on-year increase on trains 513/516 (the only through service from Portland to Vancouver BC). I hope the BC government is watching!
NARP has some of that information, you won’t get the exact number of riders, but you will get rankings: http://www.narprail.org/cms/images/uploads/fact_sheets_all08.pdf
For example: from Centralia, the top ridership destinations are Seattle, Portland, Tacoma, VAW, Bellingham.
agree 100%.
Hit the low hanging fruit first. 2 hour service would quickly explode demand IMO, especially if there is good transit at all destinations (Seattle is 3rd on this list, but improving). Then, once the demand is there, we can talk about improving beyond 2 hour service. But the thing is that even at 2 hours, it’s as fast as air (depending on security/parking/etc.), and significantly quicker than auto.
Note that that’s kilometers per hour. 200 km/h = 167 mph; 300 km/h = 250 mph.
One advantage of train travel in Britain is it’s twice as fast as taking a bus or driving. If you take a train from London to Cambridge it’s 1 hour; if you take a bus it’s 2 hours. (Part of that is the speed of the train; and part is that the motorway only goes to the edge of London.) 110 mph here would not be twice as fast as 70mph driving, but it would be a noticeable improvement.
It’s far more important to have frequent trains throughout the day than to have fast trains. That way people can leave when they want to, and spontaneous trips are easier.
HSR (250 mph) only makes sense if it’s part of a future line to California or Chicago. (Or maybe to Denver and Chicago, if that’s easier topographically and could share tracks with a NY-California train.)
200 km/h = 125 mph.
300 km/h = 185 mph.
I think you may have been using British miles.
@ spencer – a mile is a mile (unlike tons and tonnes), but your figures are correct and Mr Orr’s are not.
I realized that after posting. I mixed up the discrepency between British / US gallons with British / US miles.
Funny choice of photos. “Acela breaks land/sea speed record of 3 knots”.
That looks like a TGV to me.
Yes, I think you’re right – TGV (Tug Gaining Velocity)
Not just any TGV, but the one that broke the speed record! (V150)
Interesting. I wonder what they actually ‘committed’ to. Sounds like a bunch of guys patting each other on the backs more than anything.
As welcome as this is, I’d be much more encouraged if this had been Kulongoski, Gregoire, and Campbell instead of Adams, McGinn, and Robertson.
And Kulongoski is the best of that terrible triumverate.
I agree.. this doesn’t give much hope and there isn’t much that these Mayors can do.
They can sign a pact to get into Boy Scouts but that doesn’t bring the money to the table or an agreement to build or improve anything. Until there is some cash thrown around, its just more lip service.
Improvements to 110mph and additional frequency on the Cascades are no-brainers to boost demand and provide a generally competitive / convenient service. IMO those are good priorities for now. If the region wants to discuss True HSR, and I’m not sure it does, but… We will need to think about taking the rails away from the coast with its horizontal curvature, environmental sensitivity and rising water levels. Running Everett-Bellevue-Renton may be a faster alignment with lower, though still significant ROW costs. It has a lot of other issues with vertical topography, NIMBYs and of course missing Downtown Seattle. Sounder and Link would presumably provide connections to Westside destinations. Well, Maybe it will be a few years before we’re really ready to discuss true HSR, if ever…
We need an upgraded Cascades corridor 110 mph mainline from Seattle-Portland at the bare minimum. It would be great to add hourly train service between the two to avoid 4 hours + of Interstate 5 traffic during the holiday rushes and it’d open a few slots at SeaTac.
That photo makes high-speed rail look really slow!