High Speed Rail and Amtrak News

[uncommon.name]

Amtrak resumes service between Portland and Vancouver, B.C.

Rail travelers will once again be able take the train directly from downtown Portland to Vancouver, B.C., three years after the line was disrupted.

Officials planned to gather at Union Station in Portland on Monday to celebrate the full revival of Amtrak’s Cascades line, which runs daily between Vancouver and Eugene. Trips into Canada were halted in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, as travel restrictions went in place around the world. In September 2022, the train line resumed between Seattle and Vancouver, but those traveling from Portland were required to transfer.

Travelers can now leave Union Station at 3 p.m. and arrive at Pacific Central Station in Vancouver at around 11 p.m., Amtrak officials said. The southbound train is scheduled to leave Vancouver at 6:35 a.m. and return to Portland at 2:55 p.m.

“With more people now traveling, we are thrilled to double the daily roundtrips between Seattle and Vancouver, B.C. By adding staffing and equipment to the region, we can once again offer customers a direct connection between Portland and Canada,” Amtrak CEO Stephen Gardner said in a news release.

Round trip tickets are currently on sale for as low as $102 on the Amtrak Cascades website, which is less than the cost to fly.

Read more on Oregonlive...

[2oh1]

That's great news, but the return time is kind of brutal. Departing at 6:35am? I wish it ran overnight. Ah well!

[subterranean]

Takeaways From a Blockbuster Week for Trains Across America | High Speed Rail Alliance
Rick Harnish

Let’s celebrate a big step toward U.S. high-speed rail!

Today, the Biden Administration formally announced the awards for the Federal-State Partnership for Intercity Passenger Rail and the Corridor ID Program. This combines Year 1 and Year 2 of a five -year commitment contained in the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL).

The big awards went to just a few projects, with several features common to all of them: 1) The state has shown a high level of commitment, in terms of funding and planning. 2) The state controls most of the land. 3) The project is ready to go.

Those states and projects were:

California: Continuing construction of the Central Valley segment of the Los Angeles–San Francisco 186+ mph high-speed line. $3,073,600,000
Nevada: Constructing the Las Vegas–L.A. Basin 186+ mph high-speed line. $3,000,000,000
North Carolina: Constructing regional rail on the Raleigh–Richmond segment of the New York–Atlanta Corridor. $1,095,576,000
Virginia: Building a second Long Bridge to improve the New York–Atlanta Corridor and other routes. $729,000,000
The other Fed-State Partnership awards were:

Alaska: A new bridge in Willow. $8,200,558
Amtrak: Concourse and platform improvements at Chicago Union Station. $93,600,000
Amtrak: Improvements to the Empire Builder route near Malta, Montana. $14,900,000
Northern New England Passenger Rail Authority: Construction to improve the Downeaster. $27,492,000
Pennsylvania: Construction to improve the Harrisburg to Pittsburgh line and add a daily roundtrip. $143,629,028

There are two big take aways from today’s announcements:

We need a much bigger federal program, and
We need a lot more projects ready to go.

That is where Corridor ID comes in.

The BIL established Corridor ID to create a pipeline of projects and launch a big, ongoing, federal program. Today’s announcement also included the news that 69 corridor segments have been added to the program. In some cases, they overlap with projects that already have funding. And, in many cases, each should be included as part of longer corridors or part of bigger networks.

Four new high-speed rail projects were included in this round:

Atlanta, GA – Charlotte, NC
Fort Worth – Dallas – Houston, TX
Portland, OR – Seattle, WA – Vancouver, BC
Palmdale – Victorville, CA (linking Brightline West to the California high-speed backbone.)

So, a lot of what we envision as a national network will soon be under study.

Source: https://www.hsrail.org/blog/takeaway...cross-america/

[uncommon.name]

Originally Posted by subterranean

Source: https://www.hsrail.org/blog/takeaway...cross-america/

Really hoping to see the HSR eventually connect all the way from Vancouver BC to the California HSR. Maybe even in our lifetimes, we will see a cross country route emerge.

[urbanlife]

Originally Posted by uncommon.name

Really hoping to see the HSR eventually connect all the way from Vancouver BC to the California HSR. Maybe even in our lifetimes, we will see a cross country route emerge.

I would be happy to just have it running in the Northwest from Eugene to VanBC, with regular rail spurring off from HSR stations.