The Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) recently announced grant funding for planning and development of high speed rail (HSR) in several corridors across the USA. Lucid Stew, a YouTube channel dedicated to HSR in the USA, is doing a series of videos on the these corridors. Their most recent video (19:15) was on the Cascade corridor, from Eugene, Oregon, to Vancouver, British Columbia.

Back in 2017, the Blog did a four-part series on the technical challenges of HSR, identifying many of the same issues discussed in this video.

Until the several tens of billions of dollars are identified to build “true” HSR across Cascadia, incremental improvements to Amtrak Cascades could do the trick.

103 Replies to “Video: Cascadia HSR”

  1. The cost per rider is simply too high; all four “metros”, even Central Puget Sound, are too small and too sprawling to make it work.

    With trains, buses or airlines, you can’t get past the mutiple-fares problem that makes any 2+ auto ride slam-dunk less costly than any form of “public transportation”. Airlines. though they certainly are “externalizing” the climate costs they produce, are otherwise profitable, and this would not be.

    So the “$79 billion” is just to build it, but then there would be operational subsidies forever. Quit expanding freeways except by adding HOV lanes where there are none and thereby force people into higher-speed rail and buses or to carpool.

    1. Nobody cares whether highways are profitable, and I don’t see why I should care whether public transit systems are profitable within themselves, either; the profit accrues to the whole region, collectively.

      1. I think Tom’s point was that ALL transportation projects need to be measured by cost per rider or cost per rider mile. Funding is limited and the eventual cost of these projects tends to be massively underestimated. CA has gone from a $100 billion budget surplus to a $68 billion deficit and its HSR is massively over budget and the ridership projections today look inflated. We have no idea who will be President in 4-8-12 years when this project might get the green light.

        Another measure I think it’s important is what other alternative forms of transportation along the corridor has the governments invested in, even if they are not our favorites. Along Cascadia we have freeways which mean cars and buses, airports, and regular train service. So what does spending $100 billion on this corridor for HSR really get us.

        If anything I think OR and WA will need the funding to meet the real cost to replace the bridge between the states.

        I agree with those who worry the perfect (HSR) will come at the expense of the better (improvements to existing train service along this corridor to speed up travel times. Like Tom I just don’t see the population or ridership to support the cost of HSR.

    2. I’m more and more agreeing with this outlook. We’re not exactly connecting Berlin and Munich here, maybe what we should shoot for is Deutsche Bahn’s Intercity service at 125mph instead of their intercity express at 175+mph.

      Even if the Cascadia corridor all got the notion to change allowed settlement patterns to grow into the density that makes HSR sensible, it would be two generations before the built environment actually reflected that.
      Maybe we revisit HSR in 2050 for a 2080 start of service but until then I’d be happy with train service that isn’t stopped every other weekend due to landslides and can get me to Portland somewhat faster than a car for $40 each way.

      1. Oops meant to reply directly to Tom terrific – that’s the perspective I’m agreeing with

      2. Exactly. We have to consider the distance as well as the sizes of the cities. For example, here are some trip combinations:

        Berlin to Munich — 365 miles
        San Fransisco to L. A. — 385 miles
        Hamburg to Berlin — 160 miles*
        Seattle to Vancouver — 140 miles
        Seattle to Portland — 175 miles

        To compete with flying, the first couple of trips really need very high speed trains. That simply isn’t the case with the other trips. They compete quite well at much slower speeds, just because flying is a hassle. Same goes for driving (assuming the trains are reliable and relatively frequent).

        * It takes 1 hours and 45 minutes (or longer) for the trip between Hamburg and Berlin. It is basically the equivalent of what we want to build. The line shows up as yellow on this map: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-speed_rail_in_Europe#/media/File:High_Speed_Railroad_Map_of_Europe.svg.

      3. If we start today, we would likely be looking at a 2050 or later opening. Hell, Sound Transit 3 might well get pushed back to 2050.

    3. You have to imagine that the four metros will be much more populous (and better served by urban mass transit) by the time the 50 year study-to-construction process wraps up. Think of how much suburban areas exploded during the multi-decade process of building the interstate highway system. Should they not have built it because the areas were farms and wild-lands at the time?

      We’re not talking about opening up HSR tomorrow or anything. Incremental improvements to Amtrak, especially simply running more frequent trains, is what will really affect us this decade. HSR is more of a generational investment, like the interstate highway system.

      1. I would like to think that. But our housing construction rate, while much better than e.g. San Francisco or New York, is still kind of slow.

        I think that building high speed rail at this point is putting the cart before the horse. Places with successful high-speed rail systems started with decent low-speed rail systems, and we just don’t have that.

        We already have a train from Seattle to Tacoma, which should have far higher ridership than a train from Seattle to Portland, and hardly anyone rides the thing. What is limiting the ridership of the Seattle-to-Tacoma route? Fix that first.

      2. Chris: Yes, Tacoma to Seattle is being fixed. Not in the best way (It should be Sounder every 30-60 minutes!), but Link running to Tacoma Dome will be much more frequent than Sounder, and will attract many more riders. There are also plans to increase Portland – Seattle Amtrak, though it also needs more commitment for more frequent and faster trains, bypass tracks where freight delays are common!

        Even with Seattle’s reluctance to go all-in on housing, it is much more of a city than in the 90s. Almost unrecognizable in many parts. We have to expect that there will be significant growth in the next 30 years as well.

      3. Brandon, there is simply not room for LA or Bay Area-sized Metros anywhere in the region except possibly (ironically) in Eugene.

        Central Puget Sound and Portland are already pushing up against the mountains to their respective easts. Central Puget Sound has three large waterways severely limiting east-west travel including Puget Sound which would be very expensive to bridge.

        Vancouver is in another country which increasingly is diverging from the formerly largely shared economic and political shared consensus between the two nations.

        Yes, improve the trackage between Portland and Mount Vernon to have higher speed intermediate distance trains in the parts of the corridor where it can be done reasonably cheaply.

        That might mean adding a third somewhat separated track south of St Clair — including a new bridge over the Nisqually River — moving the Centennial Station a few yards east, and using the old Milwaukee trackage between Offut Lake and Chehalis to save some money on land acquisition for separation.

        It also will require double-tracking the stretch along I-5 between Lakewood and St. Clair and straightening the wiggle at the freeway crossing.

        But the cumulative costs to get 125 between Centralia and Lakewood would be far lower than building true HSR.

        And this specific proposal assumes that WSDOT would agree to putting the trackway down the middle of the freeway so many places. Is that reasonable? I doubt it.

      4. “ Brandon, there is simply not room for LA or Bay Area-sized Metros anywhere in the region except possibly (ironically) in Eugene.

        “Central Puget Sound and Portland are already pushing up against the mountains to their respective easts. ”

        The Bay Area is limited by lots of geographic barriers from the San Francisco Bay to the many hills that are found in every Bay Area county. Even San Francisco itself has a higher maximum elevation than the City of Seattle does. It’s not “easy” to build a huge metro like completely flat Chicago or Dallas anywhere on the West Coast. Sure there are some areas like Tracy or Vacaville or the San Fernando Valley or Redlands or Palmdale that seem wide open but they are the exception.

        Lots of the limitation in our region is because remaining developable land is used by airports and military installations. If Boeing Field or Renton Airport were closed, there could be a new neighborhood with tens of thousands of residents in an urban density at either site. JBLM contains 141 square miles, an area as big as the cities of Seattle (84 sq mi) and Tacoma (62 sq mi) combined.

        There is a huge amount of undeveloped land between Woodinville and Monroe. Outer counties like Skagit and Mason seem to have lots of vacant land too. And of course there is seemingly unlimited land in Central Washington currently not in extensive agricultural use because it’s very arid.

        Finally, our regional population boom has depended on explosive migration since the 1880’s. Such growth depended on high birth rates or high migration rates from places with high birth rates. Birth rates have dropped dramatically even in the developing world in the last 20 years, and immigrant xenophobia runs rampant. Our best professional demographers at the Census Bureau say that the US population will cap out at 380 million in 2080 (about 14 percent higher than today) and then start to decline.
        https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2023/population-projections.html

        Compare that to just 226 million in 1980 (a 47 percent growth from 1980 to today). Simply put, we won’t see any more major population booms in the US like we have in the past 44 years barring a major world catastrophe.

      5. “Yes, improve the trackage between Portland and Mount Vernon to have higher speed intermediate distance trains in the parts of the corridor where it can be done reasonably cheaply.” Agree – it probably makes sense for most regional service (aka intermediate distance trains ) to include Bellingham, but that doesn’t mean that the Mt Vernon to Bellingham segment needs to be upgraded to higher speeds – if that is a slow segment, so be it.

        “Central Puget Sound and Portland are already pushing up against the mountains to their respective easts. ” What? The UGA ends before the Snoqualmie River valley. There is plenty of room to sprawl east, but the region has instead chosen to preserve that land as farmland and then timberland.

        “Lots of the limitation in our region is because remaining developable land is used by airports and military installations.” No. The vast majority of the developable land within the UGA is single family zoning. The region only “needs” to urbanize industrial land if it chooses to not densify residential neighborhoods.

  2. I think it’s pretty clear at this point that WSDOT is all in on full HSR and not incrementally improving the corridor. The federal government has been telegraphing for many years that a big infrastructure bill was in the works and when it finally came, WSDOT had exactly zero shovel-ready rail projects to submit grants for. Instead, they applied for and got a grant for HSR planning.

    Even the increased service plan options they released last year have very little in the way of large capital projects. They’re improving frequencies, which is welcome. But they really do not seem to want to spend any more money upgrading BNSF’s facilities.

    At least that’s how I read the events of the last couple of years.

      3. These “you are wrong” comments without explaining at all what they find wrong are honestly more annoying than DT’s comments. At least he held a position.

      4. > Your reading comprehension isn’t very good in this instance.
        @railrider
        explain what you find wrong with a persons comments, or don’t bother commenting these statements. It’s not productive to call out without explaining why.

      5. @WL — Agreed. I asked for an explanation yesterday and RailRider still hasn’t given one.

      6. Contentless criticisms will be moderated if we see a pattern from certain users. In particular, we need to know what Frank hasn’t comprehended or what’s wrong with his argument, or it’s contentless. Let’s also keep reactions to contentless comments short. If a comment is moderated, any chain of reactions may go with it.

    2. That is probably true but things can change. Look at the electrification of ferries. Not too long ago, everyone was all in favor. Not only that, but things got way past the planning stage. We were buying electric and hybrid-electric ferries (with the help of the federal government).

      Now, not so much. Both the Republican and Democratic front runners want to focus on getting ferries built as soon as possible, even if they are diesel. In the long run we might end up with an electric fleet, but this marks a big change from what Inslee wanted — what he assumed was going to happen — even if Democrats continue to control all chambers in Olympia.

      Same sort of thing can happen with high speed rail. The plans for very high speed rail in the Northwest are nowhere near as far along. They will study it, but there is no reason why the new governor (and legislature) can’t just settle on high speed rail, especially since the price tag and timeline are bound to be extremely high.

      1. I would be content with a “Cascadia HSR” which had been value-engineered all the way down to conventional rail speed, so long as it still provided express passenger service between the major cities along dedicated track, not shared with freight.

      2. Word inflation has already occurred. Traditionally medium-speed rail is 90-110 mph, and high-speed rail is 125+ mph. In the past year I’ve heard people talking about 90-110 mph as being high-speed, and 125+ mph as being ultra-high speed.

      4. The Cascades incremental-improvement plan is the level below yellow: gray. The current maximum speed is 79 mph. Cascades would aim for 110, which was the sweet spot in terms of riders/cost for the Washington/Cascadia market. The latest Cascades draft apparently retreated to 90 mph. The minimum yellow speed is 125 mph, so that would cost more than the Cascades plan (but not in the ballpark of the red or purple levels).

        The Cascades HSR concept is 250 mph, which doesn’t have a color band in the map — it’s beyond the maximum in Europe. Unless somebody got km/h and mph confused, which is easy to do.

      5. The 250 mph may be based on the Shanghai airport Maglev, which was operating at 268 mph prior to 2021, but has now been cut back to 190mph.

      7. That 2006 plan says, “During this period (1994 and 1995), extensive analysis of maximum speeds along the corridor was performed. Although initial findings indicated that speeds in excess of 125 miles per hour (mph) were required to achieve the desired travel times, further analysis indicated that this was not the case. The study team reviewed speeds of 110 to 125 mph, and found that only in some cases would trains be able to travel at the higher speeds, thus resulting in only a two minute travel time savings between Seattle and Portland, OR. In addition, the cost between constructing 110 mph service and 125 mph service was over $500 million (in 1995 dollars). As such, the Amtrak Cascades service, as presented in the long-range plan, travels at maximum speeds of 110 mph.” (page 29)

        That plan is currently being updated. The draft plan has maximum alternatives of 90 mph. (page 6, 7, 19, 20, 25, etc)

      8. @Mike — Yeah, that is what I was getting it. If the trains ran at 125 MPH then it officially counts as 125+ (purple on the map). But it isn’t worth it if it only saves a couple minutes over running 110 MPH. The map is general in nature (it would probably be better if it used average speed between major cities). The map could use different scales for the lowest speed, since there is a big difference between a train that goes 110 MPH than one going 60 MPH (especially if it goes at the high speed for a long distance).

        The greater point is that we are basically asking for “Hamburg to Berlin” instead of “Munich to Berlin”.

    3. Agreed. They have one final study to complete that would determine station alignment before an EIS study can begin. There’s a 2/1 Bellevue to Seattle station preferred option which makes sense considering a multitude of factors including the ferrying of techies from their hubs to their satellite stations in Vancouver and Portland; the newer facilities on the Eastside; and with more left leaning so called transit advocates leaning more towards wanting an I5 expansion project at twice the cost, the right leaning Eastside can afford to ride the HSR without asking for ticket subsidies, though most riders are anticipated to be business trip and tourism related versus local daily riders which I think is why so many daily riders who visit this page are against the project.

      1. with more left leaning so called transit advocates leaning more towards wanting an I5 expansion project at twice the cost

        Wait, what? No one here wants to expand I-5. I don’t know anyone on the left who wants to expand I-5. I also don’t think one has anything to do with the other. I-5 expansion (as stupid as it would be) could easily happen with or without high speed rail.

  3. I enjoy Lucid Stew’s videos. He obviously supports the idea of HSR — and yet provides a dose of realism that goes beyond utopian advocates.

    In this video, he lays the difficulties out there and makes suggestions on what it would take to overcome them. And I think he’s generally correct in his observations about alignment and cost.

    I do think he misses the importance of some interim destinations like Olympia and Tacoma. Not only are these important to connect with Seattle, but they are important to connect with SW Washington and Portland too.

    1. Stu says he’s a social liberal and a fiscal conservative. That explains his balancing of infrastructure enthusiasm and financial skepticism.

      That is probably best served for regular Cascades-style rail, ideally on lines not shared with freight. You could still get between Everett and Vancouver in fewer than 3 hours, and avoid that massive Peace Arch traffic jam.

      (BTW, how do you guys do that cut-and-paste of quotes with carets automatically? I added my carets manually. Is there a CTRL+ or ALT+ shortcut?)

      1. There is no way I know of to automatically make things bold or in italics (it is all done manually). If you are editor (like me) you can make changes like that via a different interface, but I usually don’t (unless I’m correcting something).

      3. Simple html formatting tags inserted in the comments work. Just remember to use the / and the tag to end the formatting.

        Eg: b for boldface, I for italics, Blockquote for that, etc. tags in all caps seem to work more often, for me, for some reason.

    2. It should be pointed out that what the “utopian advocates” want here is what the rest of the world already has, and has had for decades, and is being built out as we speak even in developing countries. We’re decades behind in passenger rail, in some respects like the USSR was in the 1980s.

      1. Not really. Here is a high speed rail map of Europe: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-speed_rail_in_Europe#/media/File:High_Speed_Railroad_Map_of_Europe.svg. What “utopian advocates” are pushing for is basically the red lines. As you can see, this is only a fairly small part of the map. There are huge swaths of Europe that don’t even have yellow. The areas that are yellow and grey (but no faster) include almost all of the United Kingdom (with the exception of the Chunnel train) and pretty much all of Scandinavia. As Dijibell pointed out above (https://seattletransitblog.com/2024/05/14/video-cascadia-hsr/#comment-931809) we aren’t talking about connecting Berlin to Munich. The Northwest cities are much smaller, more spread out, and closer together. We are more like Hamburg to Berlin (which has yellow). It is significantly faster than what we have now, but it isn’t as fast at the train from Paris to Lyon.

      2. To be clear, that comment was in relation to the Pacific Northwest. For other North American corridors things are much more like what you suggest. The East Coast should have very high speed rail network (red on the map) and the same is true in California. But the Northwest really has everything working against it when it comes to that sort of system: Very high cost of construction, cities with weak centers, cities with poor transit modal share, smaller cities (we aren’t L. A.) and relatively short distances between the cities.

      4. Just noticed. The USA is only scratching the surface of HSR, Canada and Australia are stuck in an endless study loop, and Britain forcibly shortened its line during construction. What is it about Anglophone countries that makes high-speed rail unable to gain traction? Continental Europe and East Asia have figured it out. Maybe it’s something in their political cultures that English-speaking ones lack?

      5. > Just noticed. The USA is only scratching the surface of HSR, Canada and Australia are stuck in an endless study loop, and Britain forcibly shortened its line during construction. What is it about Anglophone countries that makes high-speed rail unable to gain traction? Continental Europe and East Asia have figured it out. Maybe it’s something in their political cultures that English-speaking ones lack?

        We prioritize construction impacts over everything else, so it’s either don’t build it or build with incredibly expensive rights of way rather than cheaper methods

      7. “What is it about Anglophone countries that makes high-speed rail unable to gain traction? … Maybe it’s something in their political cultures that English-speaking ones lack?”

        Laissez-faire. Anglophone countries are more willing to let private solutions develop or to go without if they don’t. That leads to a glorification of SOVs and highways and fossil fuels and resistance to everything else.

        But the UK has made a lot of strides since the 1990s. It used to be called “the worst railway network in Europe”. But when I was there in 2000 and 2002, they’d built several medium-speed lines and I rode them between London, Bristol, Manchester, and Edinburgh. The “worst network in Europe” was still ten times better than what we have in the US. And this speed seems fine for Britain. I did an ultra-long trip from Inverness to London that took maybe 8-10 hours. That’s the one axis that could most use a speedup. I’m assuming that would go through Manchester and Birmingham and continue to the southeast coast, so that would be the entire long axis like Link in eastern Seattle.

    3. He left out Tacoma and Olympia and Kelso because he believes those can and should be serviced by commuter rail while true high speed should have quicker service (imagine that) with less stops and more frequency. Connecting regional hubs as opposed to outposts is the main point of HSR.

      I wish Stu explored the Bellevue route as opposed to the ID downtown way, as more business and tourism (think Microsoft and Amazon) would transit through downtown Bellevue which also has better hotels nearby compared to transiting from ID to …Westlake lol. Besides, if a HSR rider wants to get to downtown Seattle they will be able to ride the worlds first and only floating bridge light rail beginning in two years from Bellevue. Stu is obsessed with downtown cores but I think he fails to see the value in Bellevue, a sort of Puget Sound borough like Manhattan and Brooklyn are to New York, whereas in this case Bellevue is definitely the Manhattan or even the very nice Brooklyn (have you been?) and Seattle is more like the Bronx but with more tents.

      1. Oh Kelso is nowhere near the intercity market that Tacoma and Olympia are.

        There is lots of travel between the Portland Metro area and the greater South Sound. There is no “commuter rail” making that trip. Cascades do — but delays are common.

        Keep in mind the Olympia is the state capitol (lots of business meetings) and Clark County WA is over 500,000 all by itself (20 percent of Metro Portland). Add to that state colleges, and two giant military bases in Pierce and Kitsap. Those needs are not met by commute focused rail. The high speed rail system would reach Portland in about the time it takes to ride Sounder, and longer than it would take to reach Seattle on Link.

      2. I know Kelso’s relative size comparatively speaking but I was referring to the Cascadia HSR map mach-ups which include Kelso as an envisioned station. The only reason it and for that matter Olympia was included was because their districts need to be used for land purposes and they anticipate local dissatisfaction with being left out of any HSR plans while their territory is bypassed. I understand your metrics you mentioned but realistically politicians don’t need to use the HSR that much and if they did their tickets would actually be paid for by our tax dollars so I don’t support a HSR station there but am all for a commuter/Sounder or any other derivative style rail going to Olympia, Tacoma, and Ft Lewis (most soldiers have their pickup trucks and aren’t the most train friendly people) for rides to the HSR stations which should be limited so that speed can be faster.

      3. Shinkansen actually have a number of intermediate stops. Some trains make all stops, while others operate as expresses.

        Once you’ve spent the money to build something like the Shinkansen, it makes sense to get as many passengers as possible on it.

        Only a tiny fraction of the passengers need to go from major city center to center. If this is true in Japan, imagine how much more true it is in the USA, where sprawl is far worse. A huge amount of sprawl exists between Vancouver, WA and Kelso, and many of those places are better served by Kelso than Vancouver.

      4. “ Only a tiny fraction of the passengers need to go from major city center to center.” – This is false.

        It makes sense to build the rail at a cost that doesn’t annoy all of these people on this site which means for a cost effective amount. You can save a lot by bypassing Kelso and Olympia as was outlined in the video. As I mentioned, i support other intermediate rail options to shuttle between HSR stations and other cities as does Lucid Stu.

        I’m well aware how express routes work. If WADOT was interested in express routes then they would skip the Rainier Valley and go directly downtown from the airport for those commuting directly to and from there but they don’t. There is more disdain from people calling for intermediate stops (like you) and others who don’t want their stop skipped at all (“why even have the station if you don’t use it?”) compared to the sensical styles of express routes.

        Not building in Kelso, Olympia, and, Tacoma saves probably a billion dollars conservatively on design and construction. Upgrade Amtrak and other formats and build a marker for a potential fill-in station later if truly necessary but I doubt those “sprawling” communities would foot the bill for said stations but who knows?

      5. I’m not suggesting delays to anyone. I’m suggesting a Shinkansen like model, where the new line has both express and local high speed trains. The trains with more frequent stops are passed when they stop at stations, but otherwise operate at the same speed, allowing for best utilization of the money spent on the new line.

        Currently, Portland-Seattle currently at best only supports a half-hourly flight. This isn’t enough traffic to support an entirely separate high speed line. It’s maybe 300 people per hour. No matter where you put the station, the majority will still drive, because it takes too long to get to their closest station.

        If you add a few suburban stations, it becomes a lot more accessible to a lot more people.

        Shinkansen isn’t the only high speed service that does this. EG: The fastest German ICE has 2 stops between Berlin and Dresden, which are only 118 miles apart. A slightly slower train has 5 stops.

        Doing this shifts the number of people for whom the new line reduces travel time to a majority living in the corridor, and makes a new line easier to financially justify.

      6. Glenn, I agree with you about maximizing the investment of high speed rail tracks. Even premiere high speed rail like Eurostar tries to maximize the investment with two main branches to Paris and Amsterdam , with only some trains stopping in Lille.

        https://www.eurostar.com/us-en/destinations/routemap

        Northeast Corridor trains also have different stations where they stop.

        Part of what happens is that people in our region think that high speed rail should run like a light rail route, with every train stopping at every station. That comes from not having examined how high speed rail lines operate around the world. The web is in fact full of high speed rail trains passing by station platforms at high speeds without stopping.

        If the public is expected to foot the bill for the tracks, it would be foolish to not try to optimize the track use for as many passenger service operations as possible by both offering an express train every few hours, and train that stops more times in between.

      7. Express trains will certainly skip Kelso. The question instead is whether it is worth the expense to build new alignment to bypass those stations or if the existing alignment is good enough. for express runs. I’m with Ross – he compares the total distance between city pairs above – Seattle & Portland are close enough that we don’t need to hit a world-class speed. I’m deeply skeptical that a new alignment in Cowlitz County is worthwhile.

      8. Connecting regional hubs as opposed to outposts is the main point of HSR.

        Agreed. The only way you can possibly justify any improvement along the main corridor is based on the ridership from the main cities. That doesn’t mean that you wouldn’t have service to those other (smaller) cities. It just wouldn’t be as often, and maybe not as fast. (It depends on how the systems is designed. Sometimes the HSR only serves major cities, leaving smaller cities and surrounding suburbs with regular rail. )

        I wish Stu explored the Bellevue route

        But that would mean bypassing the main regional hub (as you put it) in the center of the line. Bellevue is a suburb. It is an important one, but it isn’t Seattle. Seattle has a much bigger downtown, a lot more density and a better transit system. One of the key advantages to rail (over flying) is that it can (and should) serve the main downtown area for the city (in this case Downtown Seattle).

        Only a tiny fraction of the passengers need to go from major city center to center.

        That is not true but this (along with the Bellevue idea) point out a general weakness when compared to other systems around the world. We sprawl. We sprawl so much that putting stations outside the central core (in Bellevue) are seriously considered. We sprawl so much that folks assume that ridership is driven by trips from one suburb to another (e. g. Federal Way to Beaverton). This is a problem when it comes to potential ridership. The more we sprawl the less attractive any rail system would be, and the more attractive driving is. You could run a train directly from Federal Way to Beaverton and the people who do drive between those two suburbs might very well say “No thanks, I need a car when I get there”.

        That doesn’t mean we can’t (or shouldn’t) improve thing but it means we should be realistic, especially when we compare ourselves to other cities around the world. Europe and Asia typically don’t sprawl like we do in North America, so it makes the comparisons difficult. One approach is to just assume we are much smaller. For example the official metro population of Seattle is about 4 million. But a lot of those people live in fairly low-density areas, and many live in low-density areas that are nowhere near Downtown Seattle, nor are they connected with great transit. So you could look at us as a city of roughly a million when it comes to this sort of thing. Another approach is to look at Australia, since they sprawl too. They did a study in 1993 and have been studying it ever since. No actual commitment to do anything, but it does seem quite possible that we will go down that same road, and study this for another 30 years while putting off easier improvements that could make a huge difference for people.

        To be clear, the distances are such that Australia should have built the thing when the companies were willing to build it. But my point is they had real proposals over 30 years ago and still haven’t built anything. The plans gets shelved and then some years later they decide to make new ones. We are still trying to get a rough idea of what this thing will cost (or where it will go).

      9. If Bellevue was an easy and inexpensive route for HSR to use, there could be merit to looking at it. However there isn’t. The ERC and I-405 corridor would seemingly be so constrained by the curves and elevations that building tracks to enable trains to go through Bellevue at a reasonable speed would probably be just as difficult and expensive as going through Seattle would be if not more. The nearby residents would fight any use of any part of the ERC strongly too.

      11. Bellevue is definitely the Manhattan or even the very nice Brooklyn (have you been?) and Seattle is more like the Bronx but with more tents.

        Absurd. Greater downtown Seattle is like Manhattan. It contains the main Central Business District for not only the region, but the entire state. I would extend “Seattle’s Manhattan” outward to include Uptown, South Lake Union, First Hill, Capitol Hill and the Central Area. This is where you have the most density in the region. You could even consider the CD to be Harlem (although that is a stretch, obviously).

        Closest thing to Brooklyn is Ballard. It was once an independent city (with its own mayor) but eventually became part of the bigger city. It still has its own identity. West Seattle would probably be Staten Island. Very suburban for being a part of the city.

        The closest thing to Bellevue is Jersey City. It remains a suburb, but it has plenty of big office buildings now. It is separate from the main city from a large body of water, but not that far. From a legal standpoint, it is completely separate (unlike the Burroughs). Bellevue doesn’t have the same history of corruption and working class jobs, but it is amazing how well these analogies fit (if you scale them down).

      12. I went to graduate school on the east coast. Some classmates live in Manhattan and have been out here. Seattle is the equivalent of SeaTac to them. Lazy, poorly dressed, undense, unvibrant, bad art, all white, uncouth. I doubt they would see Ballard as Brooklyn. I’m afraid Harlem has been gentrified out of existence. Bellevue would just be suburbia like where their parents live and they came from and eventually one day will return. It is the endless cycle of NYC. No one lives there forever, or more than five years, and when they move away they own nothing except a wardrobe that is all black that Seattleites try so hard to copy. Of course anyone who lived in NY can’t wait to get the hell out, except the super rich who spend a few prime months in NYC. Don’t fantasize NYC. Despite its shortcoming I much prefer Seattle. Bellevue is a little too suburban for me at this stage of life, but I wouldn’t mind if Bellevue ran Seattle because Bellevue is clean and safe and they know how to run a city. Like wishing Germans ran all transit but very little else.

      13. I’m afraid Harlem has been gentrified out of existence.

        Same is true of much of the Central Area. To be clear there are still plenty of black people, but there are a lot more white people. Many of the black home owners cashed out (and moved to places like Renton).

        In general my analogy requires scaling down. Like those tests (Manhattan is to Brooklyn as Downtown Seattle is to …). I stand by my Brooklyn example. I knew a former New Yorker (who grew up in Manhattan) and he lauded Ballard (for what it offered in terms of urban amenities and flavor). I’m sure he would be OK with the analogy. I knew people who grew up in Seattle, moved to Brooklyn, then Manhattan, came back for a while for a visit and said “Have you seen Ballard, it looks like Brooklyn!”. Of course they don’t mean literally. That would be silly. Seattle is so freakin’ small and provincial compared to New York. We are more like LA than we are New York. I’m just saying relative to the region as a whole, Ballard is our Brooklyn.

        Bellevue as Jersey City is the biggest stretch. Jersey City has strong working class roots with its own rich history. Bellevue has none of that. But if you look at it now, there are giant skyscrapers (although still tiny compared to the main city) similar to the relationship between the East Coast cities.

      14. Only a tiny fraction of the passengers need to go from major city center to center.

        That is not true but this (along with the Bellevue idea) point out a general weakness when compared to other systems around the world. We sprawl.

        This particular phenomena works the same in Europe as it does in the USA though.

        Sure, Berlin has a central station. Lots of people use it. However, very few have it as their final destination.

        Assume we have a manic wand remove freight congestion and trains here can run on time.

        You have a train from Portland arrive at King Street. How many of the people getting off there have that as their actual destination? Some might be going to meetings downtown, but the vast majority? For the vast majority, they get off there because it’s the most convenient station to their ultimate destination, which may be quite distant.

        Now let’s suppose we use a completely different model for high speed rail that recognizes this:

        • A train starts in Salem, and operates at conventional speeds to Woodburn, Wilsonville, and Portland. You really don’t want to do this with a bus, because entering and extracting the bus from the various downtowns takes a lot of time. Current Amtrak Cascades takes 45 minutes, but a bus on I-5 sometimes needs 1.5 hours.

        So, even though it’s not high speed, it’s faster than the alternative methods of getting to Portland.

        • Once in Vancouver, this is then coupled to a section of the train that came over Cornelius Pass from Beaverton and Hillsboro. Instead of the hour long slog to Portland plus the time required to get to Vancouver, this train allows people to go direct.

        Combining high speed train sets isn’t that unusual.
        https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=6dyMwAToYVk

        • This train then operates as an express to Seattle, giving everyone a quick trip to close to where they want.

        • However, for those headed further north, this train continues to Everett as a local, stopping in Ballard, Edmonds, and Mukilteo. Sure, it’s slower than an express train would be. However, it delivers a bunch of people closer to their ultimate destination, and does so quite a bit faster than an express bus, or even driving.

        Now, the entire journey becomes vastly faster for a whole lot of people. They experience the benefits of the high speed connection, but trains stop much closer to their actual destination. Even the slow parts are much faster than alternatives.

        This is why you will see high speed trains that have a couple of intermediate stops in suburban places: it helps expand the impact of the line. There just aren’t enough people headed to the downtown central station for it to be time competitive, even in densely populated Europe.

      15. @Al S. and others: Where would you put a Bellevue HSR station? I can’t see any real estate beyond the Spring District, and if Link couldn’t get withing five blocks of Bellevue Way, imagine the blowback against a proposed HSR station downtown.

      16. The station would site right in the middle of 405 and have a walkable transfer to Bellevue TC. It would probably be elevated (to avoid the interchanges). A Bellevue HSR alignment only makes sense if it is a WSDOT project that is leveraging the 405 ROW and is therefore much cheaper than a counterfactual Everett-Seattle alignment.

      17. As someone with majority Asian-American heritage, I have to push back against this narrative of Seattle as “all white”. My family socialized primarily with other Asians, none of whom were relatives; I’m always seeing Asian and other ethnic groups when I’m in Seattle proper, the suburbs and the Sound; and the Asian superstores even outside Chinatown are always packed to the gills. I was even raised as to identify more with my Asian heritage than my American birth citizenship.

        So I really can’t buy this talk about a lack of diversity in Seattle. If you want to talk about “all white”, you should’ve seen the small Michigan town I went to grade school in during the 1970s; we were virtually the only non-whites the people there had ever seen.

        BTW, I was born in New York, my dad’s family is from Staten Island, and I have relatives all over Queens, Long Island, Upstate/Westchester, and especially New Jersey. Seattle of course could never be as diverse as New York, but other than a very small Jewish population, we’re certainly one of the most diverse cities in the country.

      18. As of 2023 Seattle was 65.94% white. 6.70% were black. Mercer Island was 66.3% white, 1.3% Black, but its minority enrollment in the school district was 50%. Bellevue was 50.21% white. 2.67% were Black.

        Obviously wealthy Asians have caused governments to revisit “non-white” as a substitute for poor, which is why recent legislation forcing cities to examine racially disparate impacts in their development codes specifically refer to Hispanic and Black citizens.

        It really isn’t until you get to larger southern cities that you see a significant Black population that is much more mixed throughout the income strata.

        But hey, Seattle beats out Portland when it comes to the whitest large city in the U.S.

      19. I grew up going to minority majority schools. Minor, Madrona, Meany and then Garfield. Just recently my sister gave me some old school photos from my elementary school (that my mom had). My son — who is half black — said something like “You didn’t tell me your class was so black”.

        I thought I did. Anyway, my mom was on the school board back then as well. I’ve been to the Northwest African American Museum (which is close to the future Judkins Park Station) and seen pictures of people my parents used to visit with. I think it is safe to say that I know more about the Seattle African American community than your average white guy.

        It is easy to assume that black people just got pushed out of the Central Area as incomes rose. There was some of that (without a doubt) but there was a strong middle class in the Central Area and a lot of those people bought houses. A lot of those people just cashed out. If someone offers you a million dollars for your house (that you paid 200K for) the idea of moving to Renton looks mighty appealing.

        While Seattle was definitely segregated back in the day, the “ghetto” was never quite as “slummy” as many cities. There are a number of reasons for this, but one of them was the schools. For example, Garfield was outstanding in music, sports and academics. Keep in mind, this is thee intercity African American school and they were taking home trophies in chess and debate (along with men’s and women’s basketball). I’m guessing this is fairly unusual.

        Boeing was also a very middle class company. It was the era of strong unions. The shipyards were similar. I don’t want to paint an overly rosy picture — Seattle had its share of problems — but the black community was doing a lot better here than in a lot of other parts of the country.

        Another thing worth noting is that we’ve had a strong Asian influence for a long time. My school was probably 50% black, 30% white, 10% Asian and the rest a mix of various ethnicities. This includes folks like Bruce Harrell, who is mixed. While Seattle was fairly segregated statistically, it was quite integrated socially (in my opinion). I distinctly remember one of my classmates pointing this out while eating lunch one day. We were grouped more by interest (music, chess, cards) then race. She thought it was special; I thought it was ordinary. Talking to other people (even much later) I think she was closer to the truth than I was.

        You can’t talk about Seattle’s demographic history without mentioning software. Software is mostly white, Asian (and male). I worked in software for many years and there just weren’t that many black people. It is not really a local thing, it is a national problem. It altered the demographics of Seattle in a big way because software has had a huge impact on this relatively small city. Boeing hired plenty of black workers. The shipyards in Bremerton hired plenty of black workers. But Microsoft and Amazon? Not so much.

        It wouldn’t surprise me if a high percentage of African Americans in Seattle are more recent immigrants. Their ancestors were not slaves; they never experienced the great African American diaspora. They, like many Asian Americans in the area came from fairly well educated (and well off) families and they are making a living here.

      20. To Ross:

        “ But that would mean bypassing the main regional hub (as you put it) in the center of the line. Bellevue is a suburb. It is an important one, but it isn’t Seattle. Seattle has a much bigger downtown, a lot more density and a better transit system. One of the key advantages to rail (over flying) is that it can (and should) serve the main downtown area for the city (in this case Downtown Seattle).”

        Reply: Without coming across as argumentative there are facts that you’re either ignoring from my previous post or need to be addressed again. Here’s my previous points that refutes yours or otherwise need to be acknowledged:

        1) “if a HSR rider wants to get to downtown Seattle they will be able to ride the worlds first and only floating bridge light rail from Bellevue” &
        2) “more business and tourism (think Microsoft and Amazon) would transit through downtown Bellevue which also has better hotels nearby compared to transiting from ID to …Westlake lol”

        The business and main hotel core, in quality versus density and quantity is Bellevue (see quote 2). If your point for HSR is business purposes, Bellevue is the main station that should be focused on. If said business rider needs to get to Seattle (see quote 1) they can ride the world class floating bridge light rail in the Bellevue scenario. Otherwise they still have to transfer at International Dist in a Seattle scenario, with no nice nearby hotels to that neighborhood or would have to walk from Westlake after transferring from ID station. Time saved? More favorable? Like I don’t want to get into an argument about hotels but you have to admit the shear number of newer hotels and when considering proximity relative to each other, Bellevue is leagues above, although that Seattle Grand Hyatt looks nice.

        To Glenn: “ Currently, Portland-Seattle currently at best only supports a half-hourly flight. This isn’t enough traffic to support an entirely separate high speed line. It’s maybe 300 people per hour. No matter where you put the station, the majority will still drive, because it takes too long to get to their closest station.”

        Reply: The estimated number of riders shouldn’t and I don’t think is being taken directly from air travel passengers. This is for two reasons: 1) the HSR is easier to get on and off without parking, security and delays (your 30min figure is misleading to the overall times) so more passengers would be inclined to ride and at more affordable prices (“if you build it they will come).

        2) Part of this HSR topic that gets lost on people is the environmental aspect: getting planes out of the air for those “30min flights” and have carbon free travel options at better prices. Similar if not better or hopefully more convenient models of transportation integration is just a bonus.

        To Michael and AJ:
        “Where would you put a Bellevue HSR station?”

        First off, good points to AJ on possibilities. I also agree that an East side station would be very difficult to build besides my overall perspective that it’s a better fit overall compared to Seattle. I don’t have any real estate ideas personally but I would like to offer one format option: underneath or next to (still underground but expanded in one direction if construction deems it necessary) the Bellevue downtown light rail station.

        I would like to use Ueno, Tokyo Shinkansen station as my model here. Ueno Shinkansen’s take off from another direction than the Tokyo station Shinkansen’s (think mountain areas) from Ueno and Osaka from Tokyo station (although you can also still go through to Tokyo Station and onwards to Nagoya and Osaka from Ueno but mountain areas like Nagano originate from Ueno. Ueno us near main tourist areas (Tokyo sky tree, the Asakusa Temple, etc.), so it’s not “Shinjuku or Shibuya” (Pike Place Market analogy) smack dab in the middle of Tokyo, but centrally located enough. Neither Seattle or Bellevue HSR options put you at Pike Place Market if that’s the end goal for tourists but they align you with options just as Tokyo Station and Ueno link with stations that take you to Shibuya Crossing or Shinjuku to see the Godzilla head. (I digress -Back to point) Both JR trains and metro lines converge in Ueno with the Shinkansen station two very large escalators underneath them. I know this is crazy but escalators work around the world with the exception of Link stations. What if they went underground Bellevue? It works in Ueno and could theoretically work in Bellevue. Again, maybe building under Bellevue but adjacent to the light rail works as well or better. Tunneling is needed in either a Seattle or Bellevue option so we have to accept that and let’s agree to not worry about costs.

        Again, the true cost of highway is more expensive and the goal is to get planes out of the air for those short trips to Portland and Vancouver.

        Also to the curvature of I405 alignment: tunnel straight underneath or possibly go through Lake Washington. That would actually be cheaper and less time consuming than boring a tunnel as you construct it wherever you want and then just lay it in the water.

        My one point that isn’t a reply to others: you can have more than one core for transportation to succeed and in some cases it works better. So the “sprawl mentioned” of the area can actually be a benefit. Try not to get drowned into the concept of Tokyo being huge for a moment to see the Tokyo Station and Ueno stations with being different Shinkansen terminus points and why it’s beneficial. Seattle does have a lot of transportation vectors in their tunnel and that’s great, but there’s also a benefit (with connectabilty to a new business (2nd?) core in Bellevue and that’s reason to celebrate. Maybe HSR doesn’t work in Bellevue but I can tell you the ID in South Seattle doesn’t want more tunneling and there’s already effort from Bellevue (see Microsoft funding) to expand their responsibility for regional transportation – they want to be connected and be a part of the solution. In fact, bringing the East side into the equation limits more construction and burden on Seattle overall and brings the East Side business and political side into the equation more which is a good thing. Team work makes the dream work and I don’t see any Canuck fans or Timber fans having any real issue with riding into Bellevue.

        To be honest it may seem like I’m in love with Bellevue and hate Seattle but I actually just think it would be most beneficial in a number of areas (not all!).

      21. @NYC: A 35% non-white population still sounds pretty diverse. The comments about Seattle being “white” make it sound like certain parts of Idaho, where my Asian-European father told the locals he was Italian, to avoid issues. (Not kidding.)

        @Sally: Oh, trust me, Canucks and (especially) Timbers fans would absolute HATE a staiton in Bellevue. The trend is toward downtown locations for arenas/stadiums, for accessible transit options (or more parking, for those who need to drive) and hanging out at the local watering holes before and after the game. Bellevue can’t stack up to Seattle’s offerings in either. Out-of-town fans on HSR would also love quick access from the station to the arena, either on foot or a reasonable taxi/Uber. An HSR in Bellevue means a long and expensive taxi ride to the stadium, or a frustrating transit connection. Why would they want to take a train to Bellevue, when our stadiums are already adjacent to King Street Station? They’d rather charter busses, or even drive, thus taking away a key market for area HSR.

      22. To Michael: I can’t tell if you’re baiting me or not but I’ll bite because your response seems way below par comparatively speaking to the rest of the commentators so I’ll be frank and say almost everything you just said is laughable and probably should be ignored for the overall conversation.

        “Oh, trust me, Canucks and (especially) Timbers fans would absolute HATE a staiton in Bellevue.”
        – why? They just took a world class HSR trip to Bellevue in under or about one hour? What’s to hate? – nothing.

        “The trend is toward downtown locations for arenas/stadiums, for accessible transit options (or more parking, for those who need to drive) and hanging out at the local watering holes before and after the game. Bellevue can’t stack up to Seattle’s offerings in either.”

        – this has to be bait. First off there is no trend. There is only facts. Accessible transit options is literally taking the Link from a theoretical HSR station which would be connected to or underneath the downtown Bellevue station which has more amenities supporting visitors than King St, to Seattle in15 minutes! Yes, 15 minutes to downtown Seattle. And “local watering holes”?? Are you joking? First of all you’re crying to have to take four stations via the link, and secondly you sound lazy and not very adventurous and undermine and under estimate the would be travelers sense of choice and ability to suggest they only want to drink next door to the stadium.

        Dude go to Bellevue, there’s a million places with the game on and great options surrounding the station that are way more in number to what is an active five min walk from the stadium station. It’s also safer and cleaner and has shopping options. King St is a dump and I think Canuck fans have there wherewithal to ride a train from the stadium back to Bellevue for a great time and can understand the difference between a station for stadiums and one meant for entertainment which the stadium district is not unless you’re going to Little Darlings which under the strict rules of WA state doesn’t allow alcohol, or food. Now Portland on the other hand…I digress.

        Back to NYC – you think people hangout on 161st street in the Bronx after the game or do they get right back on that train and back to Manhattan? Don’t make me laugh. Your points are extremely bad. The only place people are partying next to the stadium is Wriglyviille – a utopian for sports fans. Nothing else compares or will compare so stop dreaming and trying to make SoDo a thing.

        “Out-of-town fans on HSR would also love quick access from the station to the arena, either on foot or a reasonable taxi/Uber. An HSR in Bellevue means a long and expensive taxi ride to the stadium, or a frustrating transit connection.”

        Frustrating transit connection? Hopping off the HSR to a Link Light Rail is frustrating? Four stations away is frustrating? Do you know how many stations it is from Penn Station to Yankee stadium in the Bronx? A HSR from Boston or Baltimore to the City in your theory would be too frustrating for east coast fans because they would have to switch and ride into the Bronx. Get out of here with that taxi nonsense too. If they can afford a ticket to Bellevue and a tickets to the game they can afford four station at four dollars for a link train and they can be sure to afford a taxi past midnight to cross the lake after paying for their “watering hole” choices in Seattle if they chose to drink there.

        Honestly man, just stop. Let go of King St being a thing. It won’t be world class in any life time or parallel universe. If you think four stations is frustrating don’t go to literally any big city in the world where HSR trains go places between the cities and connect to local metro – I have a feeling that going from the Sagrada Família → Barcelona Sants Station in Spain at eleven minutes would be too much for you and that all the Canuck and Timbers fans would hate Barcelona and Spain in general. And those Timber/Canuck fans all have no legs and can’t or don’t like to walk too. Bellevue to Seattle on the world’s only floating bridge light rail to get to and from a game after a quick HSR? They’d hate it. For sure. Too much to handle. Bellevue? Trash place. No where to eat drink or sleep – not the W, or Carmine’s, or the Pumphouse. All trash.

      23. “King St is a dump”

        What makes you say King St is a dump?

        Post pandemic, it all looks like it has always been.
        Typical downtown city activity.

  4. After watching the video, I can’t help but wonder if Washington should “go at it alone” and examine how to get from northern Vancouver WA to Bellingham (or maybe Blaine). The Portland metro segment looks difficult and expensive as does the portion to reach Downtown Vancouver DC. The extra cost to reach Eugene is also concerning although the surface alignment looks much cheaper in a cost per mile basis.

    I get how fully connecting the three big Downtowns is important. However, I feel that the interjurisdictional funding needs and contributions are the biggest obstacle outside of actual construction to getting the project built as envisioned.

    1. Kind of like your radical thinking here. A nineteen mile tunnel under Portland proper, PDX, and the Columbia River, plus the extra cost going to Eugene seems excessive but if you’re from WA or BC you really wouldn’t have to worry about it. Because the partnership is between two states and two countries, the cost is shared so the big overall costs you’re seeing are kind of misleading. Most Link Light Rail expansions have been covered 33% by grants.

      So take the WA portion, subtract the costs of Oregon and BC which would be paid for by them, plus subtract another third and that’s the number to consider which is pretty nice compared to the alternatives of doing nothing, or expanding I5 for $108 billion for an extra two lanes. Cascadia HSR would be awesome and more focused and optimistic people should take notice and make their voices heard because it seems like only the sad and dejected take the time to comment and blog about it, Lucid Stu not included in this company.

    2. There are two good candidates for “going alone”

      1. Olympia (really Lacey) to Seattle. There is a strong existing alignment, and WSDOT can invest in creating more dedicated public ROW. There are armchair plans of consolidating UP & BNSF freight capacity or continuing the existing approach of ST funding expanded capacity on the BNSF mainline, but either way the goal should be public ROW (either direct ownership of via permanent easements) to run trains all day. The benefit for “HSR” here is limited but more affordable if the alignment can be straighten to allow for higher speeds, and electrification of this segment also greatly helps with travel time as most trains will serve most stations.

      2. Seattle to Snohomish county. Here is project would be to create an entirely new ROW as the coastal alignment is inadequate. An entirely new heavy rail line would be orders of magnitude more expensive than #1, but would unlock immense regional value while also greatly improving intercity trail north of Seattle.

    1. “Epic takedown” lol I can’t help laughing at your attitude of a blog post that mostly rants and raves but misses many core points. Whether or not the commenters lean left is also a weird point to make. Do you care if riders are on one type of a political bias or not? It’s a weird thing to say. I’m not going to follow you any further down that point of a rabbit hole but if you prefer bloated complaints about high speed rail maybe you’d like one about the cost it would take to instead construct an I5 expansion? HSR is more cost efficient and time efficient.

      The point should be connecting riders between the PDX, SEA, and YVR, while the Amtrak and slow I5 driving options aren’t and haven’t been cutting it. I think real train advocates can envision the benefits said Cascadia HSR would have not only in business but tourism. Growing up in the Puget Sound I couldn’t take a trip to either location unless my parents wanted to drive me. If I was 15 and had the option I’d easily jump on the train and go get some Voodoo Doughnuts, and visit Nike Town before heading home. No drivers license, no parking, no directions necessary. Forget about having to waste fuel and time and extra money on a flight. Would love for cleaner skies by having less jets in the air and more trains on electric rails. There’s way too many positive scenarios that could counter and drown out the naysayers which yeah in this case seems to be left leaning which may or may not matter. Most techies might lean left but they’ll be using the HSR with expenses paid by Amazon and Microsoft for conferences and seminaries and they won’t have anything to complain about. Anyone else so far is just noise.

      Happy to see the Cascadia Corridor getting more attention and happy they’re included into the new CID program that is giving them the opportunity for federal grants. Nothing but great news.

      1. Of course the political views of commenters are important. You would think most progressives would be for mass transit and HSR, but the fact that those left-leaning commenters are strongly against it is telling. I’m saying there are valid arguments against Cascadia, and they have to be considered.

        (insert sticking-tongue-out GIF here)

  6. Stu’s routing ignores at least two significant obstacles: Ankeny Hill south of Salem and Willapa Hills between Castle Rock and Chehalis. I-5 grades are steep enough through there you’d not want to run high speed rail that way. Tunneling under either of these hills would be really expensive.

    South of Salem, other than a long tunnel, the best routing would be to use the old Oregon Electric right of way, which completely avoids the hill and has a long, gradual curve around it. Politically, I don’t know if you could do it. It only has several freight trains per day, which wouldn’t be difficult to accommodate. It’s nothing like the BNSF main line in terms of number of freight trains. In fact, following the OE line from Eugene to Wilsonville would give you a really good line, except an S curve in Junction City would need adjustment. This would probably be cheaper than a tunnel from downtown Eugene to I-5.

    I don’t see a good alternative around the Willapa Hills. BNSF already follows the Cowlitz river as best as it can, and it’s slow. There might be some route from Castle Rock eastward through Toledo and following the old highway?

    1. Yes, Jackson Highway is the answer.
      It would lead into the old Milwaukee stub that still runs a few miles east of downtown Chehalis.

  7. HSR is a distraction.

    WSDOT’s focus should be as follows:

    1. Regional trains service within the Seattle UGA. This means all-day service (15 min peak, 20~30 min off-peak) between Lakewood and Arlington. Sound Transit has a good starting point with Sounder that can be built upon.

    2. Regional train service for Western Washington. This means all-day service (30 peak, hourly off-peak) between Portland and Bellingham (not Vancouver b/c of the Int’l border). Ideally this is a collaboration with ODOT with some trains running from Euguen to Bellingham, but likely some runs will serve shorter segments (for example, Olympia-Everett). Amtrak’s Cascades is an adequate starting point.

    3. Express train service for Cascadia. This means a train serving only Portland-Seattle-Vancouver (maybe some runs serving Lacy, Tacoma and/or Bellingham). This train only needs to run 8~10 times a day. There is zero reason for this train to run overnight.

    Only #3 needs “High” speed. WSDOT should invest in (and in some cases, built out and own) a rail corridor that serves 1+2+3. The overall train throughput can be handled by a single alignment with thoughtful design to facilitate overtaking (i.e. triple/quadruple tracking some segments). #3 will have by far the lowest ridership of these three services.

    1. AJ, Bellingham is just too hard to reach cost-effectively. The idea of following I-5 is impractical; the grades at each end are too steep and land acquisition around Lake Samish and through Fairhaven would be prohibitive. The only practical route is a tunnel under Chuckanut Mountain. Big bucks.

      It’s not worth it, which is why I’m end new construction for a new regional service at Mt. Vernon. A reasonably inexpensive HSR line north of there to Van BC could follow the old NP route via Sumas and skip Bellingham though probably with a station near Deming. The existing trackway is not very curvy north of Sedro-Wooley. That’s why BN has kept it active.

      Certainly, keep the existing Cascades-style service to Bellingham and (we can hope) Blaine that exists, but on the existing tracks.

      1. Responded above – I agree that the capital investment to “high” speeds can be cutoff at Mt Vernon given topography. I’d argue there’s still value in regular service to Bellingham, even if that segment gets minimal capital improvement.

    2. Ive felt that your #2 is the right priority. In particular, I feel that the state needs to make Olympia more accessible to the region.

      I rue that the Olympia station is nowhere near Downtown and the Capitol. I try to think about if there’s a way to thread a train route to there. Between Olympia and JBLM, there is a large travel market that ST does not reach. Plus, I’m sure legislators would enjoy having the convenience and it would be so much easier to participate in state-related hearings and meetings.

      I even wonder if there should have been a Western Washington Regional Rail and Ferry District instead of ST — with state funding. A man can dream a futile dream!

      1. Al, if you’re OK with the roundabout UP access, you could have a train station right next to the Capitol building. If you want access to and from the south as well, the old NP right of way has track on it down to 66th Avenue SW and is fairly intact beyond there down to Gate. There are a few houses which are quite close to the ROW, but they could be bought out.It would be pretty slow going though.

        Best would be to greenfield a connecting track between Maytown and the NP about 110th SW. That would give access to the very well-separated Milwaukee line to Centralia. This would be a winding way from Centralia to East Olympia where the UP breaks off, but the speed from there on to Seartle would make up for it. Only for the #2 type trains that would run over it.

        The ROW should certainly be preserved.

        It’s probably “doable” for a track to use the part of the NP passenger loop from Nisqually Junction to end of track at International Paper, then tunnel to a portal between Henderson and I-5. It’s about two miles. That would make the Olympia Loop more palatable.

      2. You could make Olympia a stub end line, put the station at the downtown transit center, and start Vancouver BC bound trains there. Service from the south could be either a synchronized transfer at the current station or something along the lines of what they can do with the Danish Flexliner, and disconnect a few of the cars and have them run backwards on the main line to the junction and into downtown.

        If state money became available for the existing service, it seems to me you’d add a third main track from the Nisqually River to Olympia Junction, and operate Olympia to Tacoma as a local service using the Sounder stations.

      3. Yeah I thought about an Olympia “branch” or turnoff. A compelling operating pattern could be two regional lines, with the schedule offset to provide frequent service on the overlapping trunk. One serves Portland to Bellingham, stopping only at Lacy, and then a 2nd line that runs from Olympia (downtown) to something short of Bellingham.

        I really like the idea of serving Marysville and Arlington as a branch as well, leveraging the Kruse Junction to terminate in downtown Arlington (a small but lovely pre-automotive downtown). So for Al’s Western Washington Regional Rail District (which would be in addition to ST’s taxing district), I’d draw the district to be Thurston, Pierce, King, and Snohomish* counties (in their entirety) to fund, build out, and operate an all day regional train that runs from Olympia (downtown) to Arlington (downtown). This entity would absorb Sounder from ST and steadily invest in the ROW (and fleet, operation footprint, etc.) over time.

        The “Sounder” brand would continue to exist to denote service Lakewood-Seattle runs, which would become the peak overlay for all-day Olympia-Snohomish trains. “Cascades” would still operate under Amtrak for Portland-Seattle trains (which won’t serve the Olympia branch)

        *If the Seattle-Everett line is prohibitively expensive to create an all-day line, which probably entails an entirely new ROW, the WWRRD (pronounced “word”) could be just Thurston-Pierce-King and operate an Olympia to King Station line.

    3. I like all three and like #2 the most.

      Here is a link to the new Amtrak Cascadia train car renderings which look super sick. Get these bad boys running all day everyday and fix that stupid Point Defiance slow down that killed people on day one opening! While a HSR is being studied or built, Amtrak and Sounder can be improved or in this case expanded for service and speed!

      https://dailyhive.com/vancouver/amtrak-cascades-vancouver-seattle-portland-new-train-airo

  8. You’d probably not be able to get all the way to Bellevue, but what about an hourly train or so that ended in Renton? Because there’s at least track that goes that far. That gets train service a lot closer to a number of people on the east side.

    2. I think for Bellevue access, simply using King St. Station and the 2-line to connect is good enough. Building an extra branch in the line to Renton that doesn’t serve downtown Seattle, which would still require a bus connection down 405, just doesn’t make sense – gives up all of Seattle to save little, if any time for people going to Bellevue.

      It’s also worth noting that the existing Amtrak line already stops at Tukwila Station, which is practically Renton anyway. Granted, nobody gets off there to go to Bellevue because the bus connections are terrible, but it does offer the F-line service as a reasonably quick connection to Renton.

      1. I wouldn’t sacrifice Seattle for Renton, but if there’s enough demand something like a Vancouver-Seattle train could be extended to there.

      2. Renton and Bellevue are both “last mile” problems for Regional rail. The King street to ID station transfer is fine, so connection to Bellevue & Redmond are already covered by Link. Renton’s connection to Tukwila station is mediocre, but that’s a problem for KCM/ST to solve with a better bus network, not with a heavy rail branch line.

        A Seattle-Renton train is an intracity trip, so frequency is important. Currently a Seattle – Vancouver train probably will run only a few times a day, so from Renton’s perspective will look more like Sounder North and have anemic ridership. A HSR Seattle-Vancouver train will head immediately onwards to Tacoma, as that is a much bigger market than Renton (stopping at only Tukwila or Kent stations to serve south King).

        If Sounder South was to have a branch, it would be south of Kent. Right now the most likely candidate is Ortig, but most likely every single regional train heading south from Seattle will go to Tacoma.

  9. When I think about taking a trip I think about:

    1. Time. Around 180 miles is the max for me before flying is my first choice. I won’t take a train to Eugene at today’s speeds, let alone San Fran., certainly for work.

    Portland is a good example. That is the sweet spot. If my employer is paying for an Uber at both ends and I only have a carry on I will fly because I have Clear and TSA. Otherwise it is the hassle of getting to the train station vs driving vs the comfort of the train. The cost of parking at a hotel equals out the cost of getting to the station. This is where just marginal improvements in the time the train takes would make a big difference for me. I don’t need 200 mph. If the total train time including getting to it and the stops is equal to driving I prefer the train, although when I drive I listen to books on tape. I suppose that depends on the number of stops

    2. The other issue is cost which means who is paying. If driving for work I can take a deduction for 67 cents per mile at 180 miles = a deduction of $120 each way which is around $40 to $50 depending on your tax bracket, around the same cost as the train so it is a wash.

    I never go north for work and can’t imagine ridership would be strong enough north to support HSR. The Seattle Times has an article today noting how population growth in this area from 2022 to 2023 has slowed to a trickle so where will all the riders come from north of Seattle?

    Finally someone talked about HSR bringing Eastside tech workers to Vancouver WA or Kelso. Those tech workers don’t even go into the office here and invented the internet (after Al Gore) so they don’t travel much for work. Instead the travel pattern is TO the large urban center which is Seattle because that is usually where the headquarters are and there is convention or office space to accommodate the meeting. Plus if you live in Vancouver or Kelso or Eastern WA you want to go to the big city for a convention. The reason I travel to Portland for work is because my boss doesn’t. If I am going to a convention I want a city like SF or Vegas, not Kelso.

    I don’t what the speeds needs to be to get the train to the same time as driving including getting to the stations and stops but I think that is doable now.

    1. “1. Time. Around 180 miles is the max for me before flying is my first choice. ”

      180 miles isn’t a measurement of time?

    2. Excellent point on cost. I’d much rather have a 90 mph train where the state subsidies the cost such that it is $20/person/trip and the train makes sense for all sorts of personal/leisure trips. A 180 mph train that is $100/person/trip will have much lower ridership. The state is subsidizing either way, but IMO is very quickly is more impactful to subsidize O&M (more trips, lower fares) than subsidize capital (faster trains)

    3. “someone talked about HSR bringing Eastside tech workers to Vancouver WA or Kelso”

      We don’t need to support 30-minute daily commuting between Seattle and Portland. What we need is 60-90 minute regional service so that people can travel once a month or once a week, and can attend daytime events and return the same day. Likewise Bellingham should clock in at around an hour, and Spokane six hours. We don’t need more than that to have a robust medium-range transit network. Once we have that running hourly, then we can think about 150+ mph.

    4. I didn’t say number of miles is a measurement of time, unless you know the speeds of the different modes of transportation, along with stops and first mile access. Putting aside Einstein time is a constant, so what you need is speed and distance to equal time.

      Maybe you remember as a kid on a car trip asking your dad how much farther, when really what you were asking is how much longer until we get there.

      At 180+ miles whether current rail or car the trip is too long because the speeds of cars and trains on Cascadia are close enough.

      It doesn’t help that in this very undense area the next destination after Portland is Eugene, and after that SF. It isn’t as if it goes 180 miles, then 200 miles to the next destination.

      I find these kinds of reply posts unproductive and silly. Did anyone else think I was saying you measure abstract time by mileage, except when you know the speed and distance needed to travel?

      I rarely post but thought I would post my personal considerations about why I think improvements to Cascadia’s speeds NOW is better than focusing on HSR in 50 years, and I get a reply stating mileage isn’t a measurement of time. No wonder so few new folks post.

    5. @Transit Skeptic

      I think that is common. To make any sort of general comparison we have to make certain assumptions as well was throw out edge cases. For example some people want a car at the other city and would rather not deal with renting one. These folks will drive. Some live very close to the airport and are attending a meeting at the other airport. These folks will fly. You represent more of a typical user. You prefer taking the train because all other things being equal it is more convenient and comfortable. But you aren’t going to take the train if it takes a lot longer than the alternatives.

      Driving involves no waiting, but relatively slow speeds. Both taking the train and flying require some waiting and some trip to get to the airport or train station. For most people getting on to the train is a lot less time consuming than getting on to the plane. For sake of argument assume that it takes an hour in extra travel and wait time to fly and an extra half hour to take the train.

      With that in mind it isn’t hard to plug in some numbers and see when we reach the (approximate) tipping point. Seattle to Portland by car is about 3 hours. If a train averages 70 MPH, it gets there in about 2 and half hours. Thus even with a train that is by no means “high speed” it competes well with driving fairly quickly. A plane takes about an hour to fly there. If the train averages 90 MPH, then it would compete well with a airplane.

      This is why these particular trips do OK if you run the trains fairly fast (but not super-fast). In contrast for a trip between San Fransisco and L. A., you really need to run the trains super-fast (and for the trains to spend almost all of their time at that speed). Otherwise people will just take the plane.

      I’m glad you brought up cost because people often ignore it. It is common for high speed rail to cost more than regular rail as the folks who operate it function like a business. They know that people will pay more for faster speed. This can also effect frequency.

      That is another reason why I am bullish on the ideas reflected here: https://www.aawa.us/site/assets/files/7322/2006_washington_state_long-range_plan_for_amtrak_cascades.pdf. This seems to hit the “sweet spot” when it comes to speed for this corridor. At that speed it is quite likely that good frequency and affordable pricing would make more of a difference than faster speeds.

    6. Oh, and then there is Vancouver. Seattle to Vancouver is actually shorter, so the speed matters even less. Things get complicated because of the crossing, but that is where the agencies involved can do a better job. There aren’t that many things they have to worry about, and they should be done with the cooperation of border security in both countries:

      1) Explosives. This should be done with bomb sniffing dogs (at the train station before the train leaves).

      2) Contraband in the luggage. For most luggage they don’t need to do much (again, the dogs can help). If people are trying to smuggle things they are likely to do so with a car (or on foot — the border is actually quite porous). They should take the same approach that they take when driving across the border in that they don’t go through every bag. They target people they suspect of smuggling. This leads to the last item.

      3) Passport issues. These should be done on the train. When the train is cruising along the officials should check the passports of everyone and ask the usual questions (where are you headed, how long will you be there, etc.). Suspects should be isolated and dealt with at the other station. That is also where they go through their luggage with greater scrutiny. Everyone else just gets off and grabs their bag.

      It should be significantly faster to cross via the train versus driving or even flying. This means that for travel across the border a train would be even more attractive even if it wasn’t especially fast.

      These are things that can (and should) be done now.

  10. Everyone is talking about top speeds and normal travel times, but the number one thing I need from Cascades is reliability. Every train I’ve taken to Portland or Vancouver has been late, with at least 2 one way trips taking 6 hours to/from Vancouver. Yeah I’d love 1.5 hour travel times with HSR, or even 2.5 hours with improvements. But I struggle to even recommend the train today because it can turn into a >4.5 hour slog.

    I don’t know if 2023 data exists, but the on-time performance of Cascades was under 50% in 2022 (link: https://wsdot.wa.gov/about/data/gray-notebook/gnbhome/mobility/rail/ontime.htm)

    We need investments in dedicated and maintained passenger right of way across the region. Ideally it can be used for commuter rail as well as inter-city, and ideally it’s 110mph or better. But reliability and frequency first.

  11. Update on April 4th:

    “Biden-Harris Administration to Provide $20.5 Billion in Federal Funding to Support Transit Systems”
    https://www.transportation.gov/briefing-room/biden-harris-administration-provide-205-billion-federal-funding-support-transit

    WA State earmarked for $300 million:
    https://www.transit.dot.gov/funding/apportionments/fy-2024-full-year-apportionments-state-totals

    This is more than enough to fund and finish the
    “ combined total of US$198 million (CA$267 million) in US federal funding to support project planning and the initial development stage.” of Cascadia HSR requested last August!
    https://dailyhive.com/vancouver/us-federal-government-vancouver-seattle-high-speed-rail-funding-proposal

    This awesome team of commentators should ask Roger Miller if he intends to use the money for that or not. I think we deserve to know and if not why not.

    https://fmsib.wa.gov/bio/roger-millar-secretary-transportation

  12. The Bellevue alignment for hsr probably made bit more sense before the recent highway expansions for Renton/bellevue/lynnwood as the empty median in the middle of i405 won’t be there anymore.

    Honestly I think it would have been an “okay” alignment. From the Bellevue station to Seattle link wouldnt take too long.

    And then if they are going via Renton could continue further south via sr 167

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