The dream of high-speed passenger rail connecting Vancouver to cities in the Pacific Northwest inched a little closer on Thursday, with the announcement of millions of dollars in new U.S. government funding.
The U.S. Department of Transportation’s Federal Railroad Administration announced $US49.7 million for planning on a proposed Cascadia High-Speed Rail project. Washington state has kicked in a further US$5.6 million.
The proposed rail line would link Vancouver, Portland and Seattle with regular service and trains operating at speeds of up to 400 km/h.
The new funding will be used to fund Step 2 of the Corridor ID program, including route planning, identification of capital projects and public outreach.
“The I-5 corridor is the backbone of Western Washington’s transportation system, yet a recent study found that Seattle is the second-most congested city in the nation,” said U.S. Senator for Washington Maria Cantwell in a media release.
“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.”
B.C. Transportation Minister Mike Farnworth said the province has contributed $900,000 in funding to help explore the Cascadia rail connection since 2018.
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“Today this vision is closer to reality,” Farnworth wrote on social media.
“A new $50M grant from the US Federal Railroad Administration will support technical planning across B.C., Washington, and Oregon, and supports engagement and collaboration with communities along the corridor to understand their priorities for the future transportation system.”
While the funding helps edge the project closer to reality, UBC Sauder School of Business economics professor Werner Antweiler said a Cascadia high-speed rail corridor is still years away at best.
Antweiler said actually building such a line would come with a price tag of between US$42 billion and US$100 billion.
One major hurdle, according to Antweiler, is a shortage of existing rail right-of-ways to use for the project, with most current corridors owned and operated by rail freight companies.
That’s compared to Europe, where rail projects typically involve upgrading existing tracks, he said.
“Very rarely do we see actually new construction (in Europe),” Antweiler said.
“Rebuilding that right from scratch and recreating that in places like Vancouver and Seattle and Portland, where would you put it?”
Antweiler said the other big problem is a lack of existing feeder rail networks in major cities like Vancouver and Seattle that would connect high-speed passengers to their next destination.
“When we are looking around Europe, we see it is a rail network, not just a set of high-speed rail lines,” he said.
“You have to run trains at least every hour, and for convenience you also need the connections within the city, getting to the train station.”
Paul Langan, with the pro-rail group High-Speed Rail Canada, said the government may get better bang for its buck simply improving current rail service rather than splashing out on a multi-billion dollar megaproject.
“There’s a case to be made for significant incremental improvements on the existing line that would make a lot of people happy,” he said.
“If we did a lot with the existing train, the existing border problems and the freight on the Canadian side, we could probably have six or seven trains a day going that would be a lot faster, without going full-out high speed.”
Langan said whatever the goal is to improve rail service, governments should get started sooner rather than later.
North America is half a century behind Europe and Asia on its passenger rail service, he said, and with the surging cost of building infrastructure every year projects are delayed pushes those costs higher.
“If you keep saying no, it’s going to cost even more money,” he said.
“Whatever improvements you make to your passenger rail, do it now.”
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