[nickvanw]

Here in the PNW there is basically one corridor that would make sense as a semi-high speed (160+ kph) rail, which is Portland-Seattle-Vancouver. They are all under 200 miles from each other and connected by one road that is often very congested.

The current Amtrak route is not frequent, fast or cheap enough to be a good alternative to driving for most people.

Hourly service between them would be a boon to the whole area, and allow for a ton of flights to not happen between the cities for connecting traffic.

[ISL]

Especially if that service reached PAE, SEA, PDX airports. There's a ton of SEA->PDX flights.

https://www.portseattle.org/sea-tac/flight-status?flight_dat...

shows 23 unique aircraft flying SEA->PDX today and 32 unique aircraft flying PDX->SEA

At ~$80/seat one-way and ~80 passengers/flight, that's >$100M/yr in revenue.

Existing trains take 3.5 hr for the journey. Existing flights take 1 hr for the flight + time spent in security, so trains aren't that far off.

Furthermore, there are ~30,000 cars traveling each way each day along I-5 between Seattle and Portland (https://www.chehalisbasinstrategy.com/wp-content/uploads/201...) .

Speedy train service really would make a difference.

[lostlogin]

Any idea of the cost of that commute (multiplied by 30,000)?

There must be a business case in this surely, even if it’s worked out based on minimum wage as that’s a lot of commuters.