WA Democrats ask Buttigieg for $200M to plan B.C.-Seattle-Portland bullet train
WA Democrats ask Buttigieg for $200M to plan B.C.-Seattle-Portland bullet train
A potential high-speed rail route, of about 350 miles, could bring the nation's fastest trains to the Pacific Northwest.
Yes, please! A bullet train up/down the west coast would be simply amazing!
10Yeah. Bc to Portland would be nice, but bc to San Diego would be amazing.
4In my view a fast and reliable bullet train from BC to Portland (or even better, down to Eugene) would supercharge the entire PNW region economically speaking.
Not only would it improve business connections between major cities, but it would also make it much more viable to live and develop all of the towns along the corridor. More affordable places to live and commute from without being completely isolated from the jobs and culture of three amazing cities. On top of that, tourism within the region could boom, both as people who live in one city might regularly visit the others, but also because people who are visiting from outside of the region would have easy access to the combined interest of all of them.
When you look at how the shinkansen totally transformed Japan and the potential economic upsides that could come from the investment, it seems like a no-brainer to me.
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I hope they plan the segments better than California's HSR.
I also think they should plan it to also be a backbone to regional rail as well. For Portland, you could put stations in Vancouver, WA and some locations south.
Hopefully Oregon participates as well to extend the system to Eugene.
9Hi, I'm a man from the internet who has spent entirely too much time watching urbanist YouTube, and I'll argue with anyone, anytime, over anything.
What's wrong with the CAHSR segments?
4The initial segment is a train to nowhere which won't provide any real destinations.
The system should have been built in two segments. The north segment should have been to leave San Francisco and make it past Gilroy in order to provide connectivity with a major city. The south segment should have been the Phase 2 segment connecting LA to San Diego, including a connection from Union Station to LAX in time for the 2028 Olympics.
That way, the north section sees ridership as a way to access SF while the Amtrak line between LA and San Diego can fall into the ocean after the replacement is finished. This could also possibly help with Brightline West as it could connect to the south segment through the Cajon Pass, making the system more valuable.
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$200 million for a study I assume. Christ this stuff does not need to be so expensive. Why do we continue to be so bad at this?
7I just drove from Bellingham to Portland. Let me say that the I5 corridor is an absolute death trap. Not to mention that Seattle traffic is the absolute worst.
Please for the love of all that is good and holy make this happen. Make the rails dedicated to passenger trains only. Have multiple departure times in the early morning and afternoon after 18:00. AND be reliable AND on time!
5YES. PLEASE.
4Good! Show those Californians how it's done.
4For complete engineering plans to include routes, cost to procure routes, actual cost of materials, etc. 500 million for a complete package - and then seek funding. Of course you're talking Seattle to San Diego... right? And an airtight contract. No change orders needed.
3People keep wanting these long as fuck HSR routes and, well, that's really not the space HSR fills in transport infrastructure. HSR generally replaces short-haul airline trips, which is why it would be YUGE for LA-SF, the TX metros, etc. But it still tends to lose out to airlines on long-haul trips because, eventually, jets are just faster. China does do these crazy long routes, and I'm not really sure why, unless their air infrastructure is really whack or something. I THINK that their longest lines still fulfill the role of replacing short-haul flights, it's just that it didn't make sense to separate the alignments when it's all along the same line anyway.
Basically, HSR is a huge PITA to build right, a well worthwhile PITA, but a PITA nonetheless. That makes it really expensive on the frontend, on top of not being competitive with air over very long distances. What would be more realistic for long-haul rail transit would be something closer to Brightline, which isn't true HSR. They use a different FRA rail class than true HSR, and don't achieve the same speeds, but it's still reasonably fast (in the triple digits), doesn't requires extremely specialized stock, and it's a lot cheaper to build. Replacing Amtrak's long-haul lines, like the Coast Starlight, with dedicated class six or seven alignment would mean that they could reasonably sustain about 125 mph. It's currently a 36 hour trip (notably, 2x the time to drive from Seattle to LA), but that would bring it down to about (1,135 mi / 125 mph, mi cancels leaving us with) 9 hours. I can't really set aside two days to take a train to Seattle, but I could plausibly set aside 9 hours, especially given that it's a little over half the time to do the drive. Heck, you could even make it a sleeper train. I'd do that over an airline in a heartbeat. The California Zephyr runs from Sacramento to Chicago, IIRC, and takes about a week. On its own class 7 alignment, that would be (2045/125) just 16 hours. That's a hell of a lot better than a week, and half the time of driving.
So, HSR for long distances isn't really that good or valuable, IMO, but that doesn't mean that we can't do highER speed rail for long distance travel.
4Rofl. For context to build light rail in the Seattle area the region is sending $50+ billion on st3. I want this but it's not gonna be cheap, and nor should it be. We should want it done right the first time.
3The issue is that, despite spending more money than any other country by an order of magnitude (excepting maybe the UK) per mile of track, we don't get it done right the first time.
SF's Central Subway which was, at one point, the most expensive rail project (light or otherwise) per mile of track in the world had to get the contractor to go in and completely replace the rails because they had tried to sneak substandard steel past the city.
The megacontractors who build these projects do not deliver quality, they do not deliver when they say they will, and they do not deliver for the cost they bid at. They do make a killing though.
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The fuck would I wanna go to Portland for. Unless you guys are paying lol
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