Love seeing the buzz around this announcement. I desperately hope the projects don't get mired in development hell for political reasons
this post was submitted on 11 Dec 2023
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Most likely it will.
I travel from Salem to Seattle often. I’d love a high speed rail option. Hopefully they expand the schedule as well.
That would be great if they did extend it to Eugene was well. There is also a proposal to link Fort Collins, CO to Pueblo, which would be very convenient.
The current rolling stock for Portland to Eugene through cascades is a Siemens Charger, which can achieve a top speed of 200km/h. So it's surprising that the 177km route takes over 2h30, which is ~70km/h. Perhaps it's due to the frequent stops between each station, but I feel that it might simply make sense to add supplementary tracks (portland-canby and salem-albany) so it would have a straighter line (allowing sustained speed) and fewer stops. This would be significantly faster to build and leverage existing stock.
Yeah. that's often the problem with buses and trains. Along populated routes it takes twice as long as the actual drive because they stop at each city along the way.
Which is why in such populated areas there should be at least 4 tracks on a major route: 1 in each direction for local and regional trains (like S bahn in Germany, RER around Paris etc) and 1 in each direction for higher speed intercity or better (like ICE in Germany, TGV in France)... They don't necessarily have to follow the exact same route, the idea just being there should be fast non-stop options between big agglomerations AND slower stops a lot options to fill the gaps the fast trains leave.
Or at the very least 4 tracks at certain points to make it possible to combine local and long distance on the same tracks but with the option of the long distance one overtaking the local one...
As a Eugenian, I was looking for this in the article. I guess it's a potential future extension.
It would be awesome to have high speed rail to Eugene, and I think it'd be the cheapest part to build given the terrain. But I'm not sure a metro population around half a million could serve as a terminal stop.
I think it would work. I guess anyone who needs more services could get off in Portland. What they're looking at in CO would go from a town of about 300,000 (Fort Collins) to an area of about 150,000 (Pueblo), with Denver and Colorado Springs in between.
It wouldn't be a great terminal stop, but there are worse ones. I also feel like this route would probably try to bake in commuter rail improvements along the route, so an extension to Eugene isn't that farfetched.
We’ve been paying for at least half of that Pueblo to Fort Collins route for about 20 years now… expected to be done in 2074 last I heard. The railroad is a real fuckhead, but also, the project has been mismanaged for sure. Hopefully this kick starts some action.
I wish that it would come a little (see: a lot) further and connect to Alaska. It would be so convenient to take a high speed train down to Seattle.
It really should also connect to SF/LA/SD.
Eventually. If the northwest high speed rail is successful and California High Speed Rail is successful, there’s incentive to extend each and eventually connect, assuming there’s suitable land. Unfortunately, not likely to be in my lifetime
maybe just SF and catch CHSR... i mean a plane to LAX
I think it would be cool to take a high speed train up to Alaska.
When I lived in Seattle a few years ago, the rail service to Vancouver was terrible. Presumably still is.
Several times a year, the tracks would get shut down by weather or mudslides, and train passengers would be forced onto busses with what can only be described as the world's least comfortable seats.
When the tracks were open, the train was pleasant enough. Not anything like high speed though. Always seemed to have delays.
I took the Amtrak down from this side of the border once and I swear there were pensioners walking beside the tracks faster than the train was going.
Me on my island looking across the water to those exact three cities my island neighbours and waiving my fist “mainlanders and their big projects”.
It is kinda nice to see Amtrak swing for the fences, but there are so many huge gains that could be made on the Cascades with smaller investments. Stuff like the Point Defiance bypass.