Quote:
Originally Posted by MNTimberjack
My largest concern is are we reaching a point where light rail isn't the best mode for this connection? A trip into Portland is going to take a long time on Light Rail. We trying to make light rail tackle multiple issues without excelling at any one of them. It may be time to start looking at what it would take to build out a regional rail network that connects more far flung nodes like Forest Grove, Newburg, and Woodburn.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by MNTimberjack
My back of the napkin calculations would be a 68 minute trip from Forest Grove to Pioneer Courthouse Square based adding current travel time from Hatfield to Pioneer Square and the 18 minute travel time from Hatfield to Willow Creek which is approximately the same distance from Hatfield to Forest Grove.
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That's a long trip. Per Google, driving from Pacific University to Pioneer Square is about 36 minutes. It's frustrating, because it feels like Portland builds LRT to the minimum standard possible, resulting in achingly slow travel. And frankly the SW corridor is where we should be putting any LRT money.
I'd love to see commuter trains down to Salem, out to Newberg>McMinnville, Forest Grove, Canby, etc. Beyond that, perhaps off topic, I know that high speed rail is sexy but honestly I'd rather see Amtrak reconfigured to get rid of long distance lines and concentrate on regional rail. Trains to Corvallis and Eugene and Longview and Hood River make sense; I don't think trains to San Francisco do, at least not as much.