
The Case for Portland-to-Vancouver High-Speed Rail - pseudolus
https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2019/12/cascadia-high-speed-rail-train-seattle-portland-vancouver/602926/
======
ehnto
When "Sea Plane" seems like a good alternative to commuting between two metros
you have to chuckle.

High speed passenger rail has so many benefits past commute time alone. It's
fast and easy to get tickets, board and depart. It's consistent, predictable
and you can reliably plan around travel times. Done well, you can be at the
platform 5 minutes before you depart and be moving 5 minutes later. You can
bring luggage with no fuss, just pop it in the overhead. They are generally
well equipped, with full bathrooms.

It's nearly the speed of air travel, with none of the major downsides of air
travel. I would happily take rail over planes and spend an extra hour underway
than spend that extra hour dealing with airports either side of the flight.

~~~
criddell
> Done well, you can be at the platform 5 minutes before you depart and be
> moving 5 minutes later.

All it would take to change that would be one terrorist incident and we would
have TSA lines at the train station. I sure wouldn't count on quick to board
being a lasting feature.

~~~
ehnto
You might be right, but I don't think it would be the right choice. There's a
point where you trade off total security for usability. America is no stranger
to trains and metros, yet the majority of those run without TSA like security.

I noted while in Japan, that they have no bins. If I'm not mistaken, they were
removed due to a terror attack in the 90s. However, Japan train stations all
have coin lockers. Now in NYC, you've got no coin lockers, due to a terrorist
attack, but you do have bins. I don't believe either measure actually reduces
the likelihood of a terror attack, it's just security theater.

~~~
C1sc0cat
And you can cut down on cleaning staff

~~~
ShteiLoups
But add significant amounts of litter.

At least in North America, people will just toss their trash on the ground if
there isn't a garbage can available, but if there is a bin around they will
make use of it. Might be able to chalk that up to cultural differences when
discussing Japan, however.

~~~
criddell
The city of Portland did a study once where they removed trash cans in some
parking garages and the amount of litter went down. The theory was that if
there's trash on the ground (as there often is around trash cans, especially
when they are full) people will throw more trash onto the pile. Get rid of the
trash can and people will carry their trash out.

------
ericmay
The choices here are to spend $100bn adding a lane to I-5 or a $50bn high
speed rail between the cities. Adding a lane doesn’t reduce traffic in the
long term, and doesn’t reduce drive time even in the best of traffic
conditions. (You still can’t go as fast as the bullet train). I think even at
double the price it would still be the superior choice. But how will the
highway construction companies lobby to get the work for the extra lane?

Car-centric lifestyle has to go. It is maddeningly stupid and wasteful.

~~~
bitxbit
The US, especially the NW, is not that dense which means the infrastructure
must accommodate automobiles. The country is simply way too spread out to
implement something that resembles rail systems in EU and Japan. While I would
like to see high speed rails in the states, I believe the focus is rather
myopic considering that it doesn't necessarily solve the underlying
transportation problems.

~~~
claudeganon
> The country is simply way too spread out to implement something that
> resembles rail systems in EU and Japan

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-
speed_rail_in_China](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-speed_rail_in_China)

The only thing that’s lacking is political will to invest in public
infrastructure.

~~~
bitxbit
Well I would argue that there’s also a significant cultural difference. The
American car culture is not going to go away. People here love their cars. In
addition, people in China didn’t have broad access to cars until 1990s. Even
now, it’s likely below 30% per HH. So in that sense investing in alternative
transportation infrastructure makes a lot of sense. I just think we are
expecting almost an insurmountable change in our culture if we were to
actually utilize a fully flushed out rail system.

~~~
claudeganon
This is a tautological argument that can always be used to defend the status
quo. No one loved rural electrification, social security, medicare, or even
car culture itself until those things were in place and made part of our
cultural fabric. It’s all “if you build it, they will come.” Do you think high
speed rail wouldn’t integrate itself into American life were it put in place?

~~~
bitxbit
There are numerous feasibility studies in regards to high speed rail system
connecting the Pacific NW corridor. You can go see for yourself. Just because
you build a rail network doesn’t mean people will stop driving cars. In fact,
proliferation of autonomous cars eliminates any prospect of high speed rail in
the US. We are talking about investing in a system that could be made obsolete
in 20 years.

~~~
claudeganon
Autonomous cars are wildly inefficient compared to high-speed rail and would
likely require similar sized infrastructure upgrades and ongoing maintenance
in order to operate at scale. Assuming the 20 year timeline us actually
feasible, their better suited for short distance trace anyway.

I generally agree that one-off projects are a bad investment and that we
should be building a nationwide network of high speed rail. But your original
comment was to the broader concern of high speed rail’s viability relative to
the size of the IIS.

------
leggomylibro
People have been saying the same thing about a route between DC, Philadelphia,
NYC, and Boston for as long as high-speed rail has existed. Great population
density, and the distances look good.

But it never seems to pan out. My pet theory is that frequent air travel is
not nearly as miserable for people who are wealthy enough to be decision-
makers as it is for most of us, so the political will never reaches a breaking
point.

Plus, the existing rail transport options are already viable options for
people who have time. It takes about 9-12 times longer to go across the whole
country (72 vs 6-8 hours), but rail is already competitive between major East
Coast cities on both time and price. And it's worlds ahead in comfort.

So you'd wind up spending a ton of money for...what? Trimming 45 minutes off
of a trip which is already fairly pleasant?

How about a case for three high-speed rail lines belting the North, Center,
and South of the nation? Maybe connections between them could pass through
Denver or St. Louis.

~~~
serbrech
Trim 45 min? That would barely account for the commute to the airport in most
cities. Most train stations are right in the city, as opposed to airports.

in France high speed rail between Paris and other cities has pretty much
killed the local plane routes.

~~~
leggomylibro
Yes, exactly. Amtrak is already an option that gets you between city centers,
and it's fairly quick and cheap between nearby coastal cities. It's not "high-
speed", but passenger trains do exist in the US, and any proposed high-speed
rail project will have to compete with them. "We get you there an hour
quicker, but still slightly slower than an airplane" is not necessarily a
hugely appealing differentiator which would justify charging much more.

~~~
crooked-v
Amtrak is wildly unreliably because of how much it shares rails with freight
trains, which is the real problem with it more than just travel time.

------
noodlesUK
Please please please can we have this? I would be willing to pay so much more
for a service like this than any number of new lanes added to I5. I would love
to see the US have a decent rail network

~~~
criddell
All Americans have been in a car before and could potentially see themselves
using that road. Conversely, there are a lot of Americans that have never been
on a high speed train or train of any type. It's a lot easier to convince the
population of voters to build roads than rail.

~~~
downerending
...or they've taken Amtrak out of NYC. :-P

------
specialp
A recent development that went under the radar a bit is the rule change to
allow for light weight train cars on the tracks in the USA. The Acela line in
the Northeast has been plagued with problems even going 125 MPH due to the
large increase in weight needed for US crash standards that dictate they
basically need to come out pretty intact colliding with a freight train.

This made for very expensive, and heavy cars. And it also meant that using
other high speed rail stock in the world could not be done without significant
modification. The Acela train had problems with the brakes cracking from the
weight. With increasing urbanization, some areas with close cities could very
well be served by high speed rail. Even in Europe, larger distances are
covered by low cost airlines now. But with increasing airport crowding and the
fact that most train station are in city centers vs the fringes like most
airports it could be very useful.

[https://usa.streetsblog.org/2018/11/23/u-s-finally-
legalizes...](https://usa.streetsblog.org/2018/11/23/u-s-finally-legalizes-
modern-european-style-train-cars/)

------
chroem-
The Link light rail project won't even reach Everett until 2036. That's about
40 miles of track in the 40 years since the project was approved. How is this
supposed to work?

~~~
Mvhsz
High speed rail could share track with commuter lines in some cases, as acela
does in the northeast corridor. And building through the rural parts of the
state is generally easier, California essentially decided to only build the
rural segment of their high speed rail due to cost.

But in general you're correct that projects requiring new right of way are
very challenging and expensive. Especially high speed rail with limited turn
radius. Since the article mentioned a low-usage rail link between the cities,
I would prefer to see a campaign to increase ridership. Maybe you could
incrementally upgrade segments of that route that could support high speed
rail.

~~~
ken
Does sharing track ever work? Amtrak already has to share track with freight,
and that's why Seattle to Portland is officially "3.5 hours" but the margin of
error on that is +hours.

~~~
Mvhsz
Not from the PNW, but it sounds like amtrak rents track from a freight line to
run this route. So it works in the sense that they got something resembling
inter-city rail service for a tiny fraction of the capital costs up front.

Even so, I'm guessing that there are options other than $50B of high speed
track to improve the route. Maybe there's a few segments of track where a
large fraction of the delays happen, and 30 miles of amtrak-owned track would
really improve on-timliness. Just getting it from +hours to +minutes might
draw some new users.

------
8bitsrule
$100 billion? Maybe it's in there somewhere, but I didn't see the projected
ridership for this. At 10,000 riders each day for 10,000 days, ($10^11/10^8)
that's $1000 per rider-trip.

Even neglecting interest, maintenance and fueling, and the optimism, that's
pricey.

How, for example, does that $100B compare to taking one lane of existing
pavement to move a 'train' of CPU-coupled, road-powered electric vehicles at
half that (250mph) speed?

------
LargoLasskhyfv
Funny caption beneath the title picture. _Like this, but in Seattle._

Further down: _But Roger Millar, Washington State’s secretary of
transportation, sees a better way: a trans-national, ultra-high-speed rail
line that can hit 250 mph and put the three booming cities within super-
commuting range._

While _THIS_ [1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stadler_EC250](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stadler_EC250)
is new in rail development time frames, it tops out at 160 mph and is
permitted to only 125mph so far.

Anyways, why choose a picture of of something like _THIS_ [1] when it can't
reach the goal?

------
jeffnappi
I hope this becomes a reality. Driving over the border can be a nightmare
without a NEXUS pass for all car occupants. During high traffic periods it's
common to get stuck at the border for 2+ hours.

Also, Vancouver is beautiful - if you've never been, do yourself a favor and
check it out!

------
supernova87a
Sigh. While I'm a huge fan of high speed rail, and in fact Portland-Seattle-
Vancouver is close to the ideal distance for it to compete with air travel,
two things make this really hard to justify in cost-benefit, at least for the
near-term:

1\. Low density of population in this area, low absolute demand

2\. High cost of rail development in the US

These 2 factors just structurally disadvantage any such venture to create a
high speed rail line between these cities, as sexy an idea as it may sound at
first.

Speaking only of present demand, there is not really a huge enough sustained
daily ridership between even Portland and Seattle. There are approx. 2600
daily airplane seats one-way between the cities between the hours of 6am and
12 midnight, or 150 passengers per hour. There are very frequent (sub-hourly)
departures on very small planes, because people value frequency for such a
short trip.

For a top of the line rail service they're talking about (and to most utilize
the high fixed cost of the infrastructure), you would expect there to be at
least hourly (or even be generous, 2-hourly) service to call it a true
frequent high speed rail solution. You don't build a high speed rail to have
it run only every 3 hours.

The 150-300 people taking planes now just doesn't fill a 700-900 seat train,
and hope as you may to say that you can displace car vehicle passengers onto
the train, it seems like a big stretch to think you'll stimulate 700 people
per hour to take the train, especially at probably >$100 per ticket.

This is not to say that having such a service couldn't start to stimulate
demand over several years between the 2 cities. But would the public be
willing to foot the bill to make that bet, and for how long?

Secondly, the cost to acquire rights of way and get the expertise to built
such a high speed rail line is just way too high in the US. There have been
good articles wondering why this is, and that deserves a thread of its own,
it's so complex. We don't have a good track (hah) record of being able to
source the talent and the property rights and engineering leverage / cost
efficiency to do this affordably. Other countries have 1000s of rail planning
engineers who work on this stuff every day. It would be hard for us to fill a
single train car with such expertise.

Much as I wish such a thing could be possible, the cost-benefits of high speed
rail in the US really point you to spending your transportation $ elsewhere
for more positive impact. If it could be built at 1/10 the cost, it would be a
no-brainer, and for sure I would say take that bet. But that's not the reality
we've created for ourselves in this country.

~~~
9nGQluzmnq3M
High-speed train would displace not just flights, but also buses, private cars
and the existing (admittedly pathetic) rail service, plus it would also induce
new demand since it would make currently awkward trips (eg. flying from
Seattle to Vancouver for a single meeting and flying back) much more feasible.

Studies of other new HSRs over similar distances indicate quite consistently
that they take about equal shares (~30%) from planes and buses/cars, with the
remaining ~40% passengers from replaced rail service and induced demand.

[https://www.researchgate.net/publication/222774085_High-
spee...](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/222774085_High-
speed_rail_in_Taiwan_New_experience_and_issues_for_future_development)

~~~
supernova87a
The cost / time savings isn't what's the important factor in determining
whether the service is sustainable, once you are in the competitive territory.
It's how many people will take the service. Even if you assume that you'll
double the ridership from my numbers above, that doesn't fill a train
reliably.

SEA-YVR is even worse. There are 1350 passengers per day one way air between
those cities. Even if you think that there's hidden demand traveling by car
that you could convert, the volume just isn't there.

------
irrational
Vancouver is just over the Columbia. I don't think we need a high-speed rail.
What we need is a new I-5 bridge that includes a light rail line and many more
lanes. It's such a bottleneck between Portland and Vancouver.

~~~
Frondo
Vancouver, British Columbia.

------
mnm1
This might work in Europe or Japan but what are these people thinking? They
can't get a train between Portland and Vancouver Washington going, have wasted
hundreds of millions on it already with nothing to show for it multiple times,
and now they want to build this? So let's waste a few tens of billions of
dollars, get nowhere like California, and then give up? Fuck that. It's
impossible. This is America. We should try to live up to our own potential and
our own potential is not much these days. No one seems to have told these
idiots. I'd bet money right now this doesn't happen in my lifetime (I'm late
thirties). So let's stop with the fantasy cause the mere fantasy of a
replacement or new bridge over the Columbia (which this project would
absolutely require) is fantasy enough for me.

~~~
crooked-v
The Vancouver, WA thing is especially ridiculous given the whole Columbia
River Crossing fiasco, where the Washington legislature wasted a ton of money
by shutting it all down out of fear that Vancouver might have to pay to
operate a single rail stop on their side of the river.

