New video from prolific High Speed Rail Youtuber "Lucid Stew" about Cascadia High Speed rail, which sketches out the details of a new hypothetical route between Eugene and Vancouver, BC. What do you think of this route?
Hey people in Washington State, have you written to WSDOT to ask them to revise their Amtrak Cascades long term plans to include faster travel times? Comments close on April 18, so please write now!
The Washington State Department of Transportation (#WSDOT) released a Preliminary Service Development Plan (SDP) for #AmtrakCascades, a step towards creating a blueprint for improving the route over the next twenty years.
Check out these preliminary alternative service diagrams!
While this is not true #HighSpeedRail, these are very important incremental improvements to speed & frequency that will make a big difference in the near term.
Just ran across your site, and was wondering if you were aware of the #CascadiaRail project? This multinational "high speed #rail" #HSR has been being worked on by the governments of #Oregon, #Washington, and #BritishColumbia for a line from #Portland to #Seatte to #Vancouver, with a target transit time of ~1 hour for each half. That would be speeds in the 110-125 kph, not truly HSR, but an incremental improvement. Key feature: right-of-way already secured.
I can't quibble with the content (it all holds water) and it's a good promotional summary of the topic.
The whole sponsored thing is a bit "ick", but whatever, newspapers aren't what they once were! And it's a nice counter to the regressive, anti-HSR editorials recently published in the Seattle Times.
The initial 2017 study looked at the cost recovery ratio for various numbers of round trips on the new HSR line. Looks like the sweet spot is around 12 to 24 roundtrips, and it slowly starts dropping off after that.
Then the 2019 business case analysis moved forward with two scenarios, of 21 and 30 roundtrips. So the 30 roundtrips mentioned in the Microsoft-sponsored Seattle Times article is certainly the high end, but not outside the realm of possibility.
In the scenarios in this chart, note that most of the options include a mix of local and express trains, so a town like #BellinghamWA might only get 12 trips per day.
"Oregon urged to join planning for high-speed rail"
"High-speed rail has the potential to not only catalyze the transformation of the Cascadia corridor by connecting major job markets, increasing international tourism and creating thousands of jobs, but also helping us reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
“We as a state need to begin thinking and talking about the future of our mega-region before we are left behind.”
Here's some good context about the winners and (temporarily) losers of the big #HighSpeedRail grants that were announced this week. The projects in California and Nevada were the biggest winners (because they're already under construction or ready to go) but it's nice to see that #CascadiaRail is one of only four new HSR routes added to the pipeline for additional study.