The Pacific Northwest is one step closer — but still decades away from — the long-held dream of a regional high-speed rail line.
On Dec. 18, the Federal Railroad Administration awarded $49.7 million for planning work for the proposed Cascadia High-Speed Rail project, with the Washington state Legislature providing a $5.6 million match. The award, made possible through the 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, will fund an in-depth service development plan that will include route selection, outreach and identification of capital projects.
“This funding will enable the state to work with locals to develop the best possible high-speed passenger rail route and someday give Washingtonians the option to skip the highway and reach their destination faster,” U.S. Sen. Maria Cantwell said in a news release last week.
The “Cascadia Megaregion” encompasses the 350-mile corridor from Vancouver, British Columbia, to Portland, Oregon. The three-metro region has nearly 10 million residents, with another 3-4 million expected by 2050. Congestion on Interstate 5 has spread beyond rush hour, and extreme weather and climate impacts will continue to strain existing transportation infrastructure.
According to a 2018 business case analysis, the projected cost of the Cascadia High-Speed Rail is less than half the price of adding a single lane in each direction to I-5 in Washington alone — $42 billion for the former versus $108 billion for the latter. (Since then, however, the cost of infrastructure projects has skyrocketed.)
The distance between Seattle and Vancouver is less than 200 miles, meaning a train traveling up to 250 mph could make the trip in under an hour.
The project partners from Washington, Oregon and British Columbia have four years to complete the service development plan, which will include stop locations.
“A high-speed rail system won’t stop everywhere in this corridor,” the Washington Department of Transportation clarifies on its project page.
Rail construction could be between 15 and 20 years away, WSDOT program administrator Ron Pate told the Whatcom County Council of Governments during a presentation in December.
Rather than replacing interstate vehicle trips, regional air travel or local rail travel, high-speed rail would complement those systems.
In Whatcom and Skagit counties, Amtrak service expansion will likely have a more immediate impact for transit users than an entirely new high-speed rail system.
In 2023, Amtrak restored full service between Seattle and Vancouver, with two round trips per day, and ridership numbers have recovered to pre-pandemic levels. WSDOT released a preliminary service development plan for Amtrak Cascades in summer 2024 that advocates for more frequent trips, including additional trains between Seattle and Bellingham that omit the cross-border jaunt to Vancouver. WSDOT will now work on a more detailed Amtrak service development plan.
At the same time, WSDOT is performing a study of I-5 throughout the state in tandem with the high-speed rail planning effort, as well as a Skagit County-specific I-5 study. Whatcom County entities have requested some follow-through to the recommendations made in a WSDOT traffic analysis performed in 2020, but funding is hard to come by as the state reckons with a multi-billion dollar shortfall.
Julia Tellman writes about civic issues and anything else that happens to cross her desk; contact her at juliatellman@cascadiadaily.com.
