Great potential if it would run along the existing rail corridor in the valley. And talk about development opportunity, with the Union Pacific Car Holding lots receiving very little use in Kent and the potential for conversion of closed car lots and dealerships in Auburn to residential housing, yippee!!!!

There's a third group that's somewhat in tune with the Cascadia concept but is solidly* behind high speed rail: city people. High speed rail would be a big boost in how our cities function, and enable the sorts of lives many city people prefer, with good transit options. (* This is pure assumption based on anecdotal data, but seems extremely safe.)

People talk about huge costs of HSR. They're forgetting that HSR (or even improved moderate-speed rail) can reduce the demand for stuff like freeway widenings, airport expansions, and new airports. It would be interesting to see a study of several options for how we can handle travel in 20 years, with relative prices.

Count me in all three support categories: environmental, business, and city.

I'm guessing you'd have quite a bit more passenger traffic on a train between seattle and spokane than a train between seattle and vancouver, b.c. The family and business connections are quite a bit more developed across the state than they are across an international border. For instance, just imagine the 10,000 WSU students from western washington driving 70 miles up to spokane to take a bullet train home for a holiday or a weekend.

That's counter to every theory I've heard. Better train service to Spokane would be great, but the potential is much less than Vancouver.

You're talking a much larger distance, with a fraction of the population, not only between the two cities, but with other cities along the way. Spokane probably has more family travel from Seattle, but Vancouver has vastly more tourism. People routinely take weekends in Vancouver, and vice versa.

HSR has a "sweet spot" where the train is quicker than both driving and flying, and there's heavy traffic supported by heavy population (preferably urban and transit-oriented) at each end. With Spokane's population, it would need to be much closer to Seattle to make sense.

Further, the concept of driving 70 miles then transfering is widely disagreed with. You'd get some people, but probably small numbers even compared to the Spokane's locally-based demand.

My suggestion would be a few extra trains per day, with some localized improvements to allow greater speeds through current bottlenecks.

Why does the headline say Seattle to Vancouver when it should say Eugene to Vancouver (after all that's what the article is about)? High speed rail is no less needed south of Seattle.

We need HIGH speed rail not just fast trains and a dedicated right-of-way.

At a minimum we need a mag-lev. This will enable us to go far fast. No more Sea-Tac for regional North-South travel. At best we should have a mag-lev in an evacuated tunnel - true speed there.

Start with Seattle and build N to BC and S to Portland, Eventually linking with the CA system.

Simple tourism (i.e. I see pretty things in another place) would be the lowest use of a bullet train. The biggest users of mass transit are people traveling on business and people traveling to visit family and friends. Spokane (which is in a metro area of 600,000 people, about triple the size of Eugene, FYI) is intricately tied economically, socially and politically with its cousins in Western Washington. The heavy traffic on I-90 and the packed jetliners all day to Sea-Tac testify to that. I've lived in various Northwest cities for more than 20 years and been to Vancouver once. I've been to Seattle dozens of times, and am a major contributor to the hotel and rental car taxes used to fund your fine sports stadiums there (dirty little secret of the collected-in-King-County stadium taxes. They are collected from the likes of me). My point is that if you want to build a monorail-like tourist attraction, by all means build a bullet train to Vancouver. If you talking about a heavily-used mass transit train, I'd connect the state's two biggest cities, and add stops at Ellensburg (or even Yakima) to connect to wine and sun country, George for concerts at the Gorge, and Moses Lake.

I'd focus on solving transportation problems. That means focusing on numbers, which means Vancouver.

In Seattle, we view Spokane as a close cousin. But from my perspective, we view Portland as a sibling and Vancouver as a half-sibling.

I'd peg business travel to Vancouver as well above business travel to Spokane.

YES to HSR
Improvements to freight tracks, grade crossings, signals and control, dramatically improves efficient movement of goods and people.
Rail is 2 to 3 times more fuel efficient than planes, trucks, and cars, while polluting our atmosphere half as much (EPA). This is a huge deal, when oil starts its upward climb again as supplies dwindle. Rail can be electrified in decades to come to use emerging energy sources, further reducing our need for foreign suppliers.
WA and OR began deploying tilt trains, capable of 125 mph, between Eugene and Canada in 1999. To date, even being limited to just 79 for lack of improvements to freight tracks, our trains carry more people between Seattle and Portland than airliners. Travel times and ticket prices are competitive with planes and cars. We look forward to improvements that allow our fast trains to finally go fast.
Mike Skehan, Member, All Aboard Washington

dear cousin mdhays, can't believe we have to belabor the obvious. in 2007, spokane was the 4th busiest destination for flights from sea-tac, with 8,632 flights, one step behind portland. that same year, there were 5,180 flights from sea-tac to vancouver. That's just one measure. any large puget sound businesses have operations in eastern washington, especially spokane. most everyone i know in both sides of the state has relatives on the other side. while u may prefer to be a brother to Vancouver, unfortunately you can't choose your relatives.

Unfortunately, the obvious is rarely the full picture.

Since Vancouver is closer, it would stand to reason that a larger percentage of its traffic is by car rather than plane.

As for people going from, say, Olympia to Bellingham or Everett to Vancouver...those are market dominated by driving, where rail could make a big impact.

Rail ridership is heavily influenced by distance, and relative time per trip mode. This is a big market share advantage for trips like Se-Va, and a disadvantage in potential market share for trips like Se-Sp.

Everything I'm saying about HSR issues is conventional wisdom on the topic. There's a reason the I-5 corridor is a priority route, and Seattle-Spokane doesn't come up much. It's not because advocates and the federal gov are failing to understand "the obvious."

ngeranios, it's interesting how the user base for mass transit is oversimplified, isn't it? Like you mentioned, HSR to Vancouver and Eugene couldn't survive on tourism dollars, but that's how it's presented. There's a similar issue with light rail in Seattle, where there is an overwhelming tendency to only talk about rush hour commuters. In our planning and our conversations about transportation, we need to talk about the entirety of major trip types: tourism, events (Mariners games, 4th of July), shopping, commuting, or just visiting friends and family.

Early streetcars in Seattle generally connected home, work, and recreation. In the same way, Japan's current train conglomerates - connected companies of widely varied commercial activities - grew out of entrepreneurial diversification to create extra off-peak trips. A playhouse at the rural end of a line - built to add weekend trips from the newly-developed suburb - led to Toho, one of the major film studios in Japan. The wedding of retail and streetcar stations caused a revolution in trips and the birth of modern Japanese department stores in the 20s. (This page has a great intro, http://www.jrtr.net/jrtr08/history.html)

I think one of mhays' points is that rail serves a string of locations, and is not just point-to-point. So the strength of the route on the west side of the mountains is not just tourism between Portland, Seattle, and Vancouver. It's in the real possibility of commuting from Mount Vernon, visiting family in Olympia, seeing a basketball game in Portland or hockey in Vancouver, and shopping in Seattle - all without spending hours burning enough fossil fuels to propel 20x the person's weight in automobile.

You mentioned the connection of WSU to Seattle, and mhays responded that there's a 70 mile trip still required on the Spokane end. You might have said that EWU is right near Spokane, Gonzaga is in the city, and CWU would be a stop on the way. I'd like to point out, though, that a Vancouver to Eugene HSR would connect all of these universities: University of British Columbia, University of Washington, Simon Frasier University, Seattle University, University of Puget Sound, Evergreen State College, Oregon State University, Willamette University, Pacific Lutheran University, University of Oregon, Western Washington University, Portland State University, St. Martin's University, Seattle Pacific University, etc etc. Think about the exchange of knowledge as the schools' departments become closer linked!

I continue to be concerned about whether we can get people out of their cars when they're so necessary for outdoor recreation. What would the replacement be like? I know Stampede Pass and Snoqualmie Pass were served by rail in the past, can we do something like that again? Could a visit to Lake Whatcom replace a visit to Lake Chelan?

nice to see the forward thinking. The East West route to the Inland Empire also should revive the concept of rebuilding a mega airport at Moses Lake, with ultra high speed rail between Seattle and Spokane. Sea Tac can only grow x much more. High speed rail Eugene to Vancouver BC, with a second train like the high speed French trains East West would allow us to build a mega airport that will not be outgrown in the next 50 years, and offer green transit to all key points in the region.

IF ONLY north to south high speed, one should review a mega airport perhaps near Marysville or Olympia...

Personally, I would b thrilled to see the Benson Trolley operational from the WSF dock to Pier 91, and the Monorail extended to the Stadiums. I give all three ideas about equal chance to take place in MY lifetime.

The Moses Lake airport was studied to appease local legislators, not because it was a logical idea. It has a long list of fatal flaws, starting with "why would anyone use it" and "why would any airline provide service".

People would have to commute to the rail station (like going to the airport), then wait for a train, then take the train...

Airlines weren't keen on the idea of service to the middle of nowhere. I don't recall any broad pronouncements, but I believe the odds of anyone establishing major service to such a remote airport are nearly zero.

Also, the concept required maglev or another "true HSR" concept like TGV. Proponents talked about firing up a couple WPPS reactors to power the train. So basically it was three megaprojects in one, all for a white elephant.

While waiting for more trains and faster trains, travelers can journey today from downtown Seattle to downtown Vancouver, BC on one of about 16 daily buses from three different private companies. Compared to present-day single Amtrak train, the bus trip is faster and costs less.

One of the companies offers buses that are Wi-Fi equipped and drop you off in downtown Vancouver wherever you want to be. No train will ever do that!

Washington State DOT and Canadian government agencies have in the past few years created dedicated lanes at the Pacific Highway border crossing to let buses bypass some of the car traffic waiting to clear customs.

In terms of market share, trains will have some catching up to do: buses now carry 5.8% of travelers and trains around 1/2 of 1% at the Blaine, Washington crossings. Cars move about 93.7%.

We need only look at successful transit systems around the world to know that a fast train from Vancouver to Portland is appropriate. This route has the potential to open access and communication between these communities while providing a realistic and desirable alternative to driving.

Interbay is a key link where we should be planning, right now, for a Seattle/North station. This location can immediately be serviced by Amtrak while providing future access to/from the north end for a more robust system. We need this station to balance access to and from the city. The limited focus on King Street Station as our only in-city portal demonstrates a lack of vision.

jefft

This is pie-in-the-sky stuff.

Just look at what has really happened to the current Seattle-Vancouver train system. The Canadian and B.C. governments have refused, repeatedly, to make desperately needed improvements to the existing tracks to speed the service.

Meanwhile, the federal governments have no good system for dealing with customs and immigration concerns.

As a result, there is still only one train daily making the round-trip between the two cities.

And some think it likely we will somehow break down those walls because the trains move faster? I'd like some proof of that.