OLYMPIA, Wash. — Washington state lawmakers have introduced legislation seeking to significantly increase Amtrak Cascades service in the Portland, Ore.-Vancouver, British Columbia corridor, as well as cut travel times.
House Bill 1857 and its Senate companion, SB 5667, call for a minimum of 14 round trips daily between Seattle and Portland and five between Seattle and Vancouver, with travel times of 2 hours, 30 minutes for the Seattle-Portland trip and 2 hours, 45 minutes between Seattle and Vancouver. Under current schedules, there are six round trips daily between Seattle and Portland, with one-way travel times of 3 hours, 25 minutes, and two Seattle-Vancouver round trips, with travel times of 4 hours, 25 minutes.
The bills call for at least 88% on-time performance, and would require the state’s Department of Transportation to “prioritize the targets” set in the legislation as the DOT identifies the infrastructure improvements and coordination with host railroads that would be required. Full text of the House version is available here.
State Rep. Julia Reed (D-Seattle) is sponsor of the House bill, with 16 co-sponsors. That bill is currently scheduled for a hearing in the House Committee on Transportation on Feb. 10. State Sen. Javier Valdez (D-Seattle) is sponsor of the Senate bill, which has six cosponsors.
The news site The Urbanist reports the bill is backed by a coalition including the Climate Rail Alliance, Solutionary Rail, and the Washington Physicians for Social Responsibility. That coalition said in a press release that the legislation “is needed to address concerns that WSDOT’s plans for the Amtrak Cascades are not sufficiently robust.”
The Urbanist also notes the legislation does not address funding to achieve its goals.
“The Urbanist also notes the legislation does not address funding to achieve its goals.”
First things first. The Department of Transportation abandoned these legislative goals in 2007, proclaiming a more practical and reasonable approach.
That has led to a stagnant program that, when the ARRA grants came around, generated almost adequate infrastructure for was almost adequate service.
The current Service Development Plan is once again, woefully inadequate.
This is indeed a very difficult budget year, but the first step is to establish the legislative intent so more money is not spent developing mediocrity.
This isn’t the end. It’s the beginning.
The lower speed locations are naturally the extremely high cost locations to increase speed. Consider: 1) Columbia River and associated delta (operating) bridges between Vancouver, Wa and Portland , 2) River, steep grade, sharp curvature, between Nisqually and DuPont (BTW seismic zone) 3) steep grade and curvature between Tacoma and South Tacoma 4) highway crossings on the entire route should be eliminated. Just think about how many busy crossings are between Seattle and DuPont alone.. 5) other locations on the route where curvature exceeds 3 degrees.
Track maintenance cost increase exponentially with speed. It is not a straight line cost increase.
As a side note, the old Seattle to Tacoma inter-urban electric trains a hundred years ago were able to operate on its own dedicated track and on a route faster than Amtrak on its longer route today. Big dollars are required!
All of that is covered in the plan that was published in 2006. There were a bunch of BN guys working on it as well as Amtrak, WSDOT, and consultants that included at times Santa Fe and SP guys. Yup, to get something like that is pricey. Yup, lots of folks say it can’t happen. I had a General Manager tell me that it was not possible to fun a passenger train between Seattle and Vancouver BC in less than five hours. I had some Ft. Worth and local folks tell me that nobody would ride the Sounder and Cascades trains and they would bankrupt BN and all the industries. The connection between TR Jct and M Street on the Prairie Line was impossible, and on and on and on.
All the things you mentioned and more are covered here https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fo/0w7jzpb0djoi136ozo2ah/h?rlkey=13a65ggsoy6k2388920rbw9uq&st=kw8w7mqa&dl=0
Have a look.
Maybe they should try the new Talgo trains. They would allow faster speeds.
Washinton, If you want better, more frequesnt and faster service, my recommendation is pay for it yourself. Right now, Amtrak can’t find its butt with both hands and a flashlight…
Well maybe we should fund what is needed for rail passenger & freight to expand the RR’s will never invest what’s needed even for their own growth. We subsidize hundreds of billions of $$$ for drivers at the gas pump to expand roads there doesn’t seem to be any concern for the cost/deficit that entails.
These entities can cry all they want for more service, faster service, but the elephant in the room for increasing passenger rail in this corridor is the poor shape of the surrounding landscape of the ROW.
Until they can address the annual landslides that happen here, it will just be another Talgo disaster waiting to happen.
If this ever comes to pass, it will be interesting where WashDot will get the money. They do not even have the money to maintain or expand the roads. The roads in this state are in terrible condition and lack the capacity to handle the traffic.
If it is anything like the NY State Empire Service west of Rensselaer, the freight railroads will do everything in their power to slow walk or use lawfare to block capacity expansion. Introducing a bill is performance art. Only through the state’s use of eminent domain and capital funding is increased speed and frequency possible. Allowing the class 1s to retain ownership and operational control so they can run 3 mile, 15000 ton freights at 40 mph dooms passenger services.
The photo of the depot at Olympia/ Lacey appears to show a single platform on a diouble-track railroad. Now, cut to the south side of Milwaukee. Part of CP Rail’s price for increased Hiawatha frequencies (which BTW hasn’t happened) was two platforms at General Mitchell International Airport. Being completed as we speak. This means a footbridge with stairs and an elevator in each tower. Paid for by WisDOT. Which is not only a capital expense but an operational expense. Stairs don’t clean themselves, and elevators don’t maintain themselves.
The Washington legislature and WSDOT may be buying a bigger bill than they think. Back in the day we had plenty of trains but not a whole lot of wheelchair access.
SO Greg, are you advocating buying out UP and BNSF for this venture? You say, “Allowing the class 1’s to retain ownership and operational control…” as if they have NO SAY OVER TRACKS THEY OWN! You are right, this dooms passenger rail but would still doom it if freights were less than 10,000 tons and shorter. The goals of Passenger Rail and Freight rail are basically incompatible. Passenger rail will never be FASTER as long as it depends on the Class 1’s to pay for them (Amtrak) to access their tracks. Maybe if Amtrak was really paying their way, paying in part for siding construction or double track installation at key locations that would make a difference, but that will never happen because AMCRAK can’t even keep its trains running on a daily basis per the article on this website.
My two cents is like every good privately held corporation, in this case BNSF and UP believe, they would consider increase frequency with increase capacity paid by the state. Considering current politics it becomes of an issue of state legislatures desire to fund it.
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This is a corridor that could succeed with increase frequency and better times as a more practical approach then say some pie in sky HSR 200mph resources sucking the blood out of it.
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The low hanging fruit to me is the exiting bypass coming up Washington and cutting over to Tacoma. It seems like addressing the sharp curve as the tracks crosses over I-5 and some other improvement would offer immediate time benefits and doesn’t interfere with Freight traffic,
The story I heard was that NP told WA DOT when they designed I-5 that a curved bridge 10 MPH was all that NP needed. The line before I-5 was built was straight so a bridge would have been much more expensive. IMO Interstate money should pay for the building of a straight line bridge.
All very nice — except that neither Washington State nor Sound Transit owns most of the tracks. Is there anything in the legislation that would cause the freight railroads to agree to these frequencies, travel times, and OT metric? Sounds like the Washington State legislatures are playing with trains.
Sounds like the Washington State legislature has no idea what Is even remotely possible. Maybe they should do as Charles proposes and at least meet with BNSF and UP before they make any declarations about what THEY WANT. I suppose after that meeting all anybody would hear is the sound of crickets chirping…