By 2017, Amtrak Cascades should be making six round trips between Seattle and Portland per day, up from four trips daily now. That’s possible in part because of an extra $15 million the federal government is disbursing for a Port of Vancouver project–from a pot of high-speed rail money that Florida refused.
“The $15 million, along with $18.3 million in matching funds from the Port of Vancouver,” reports The Columbian, “will pay for a separate track for freight rail cars carrying shipments into and out of the port.”
Anyone who’s taken the train to and from Portland has waited for a slow-moving freight train to clear the track–this spur line is supposed to reduce delays by 40 percent while tripling the Vancouver port’s rail volume. Without work to reduce that congestion, you can imagine new Cascades trains simply piling up behind delayed trains in front, like buses caught in gridlock.
Amtrak had also asked for $10 million for preparatory studies to deal with its mudslide problem–this winter, more than 100 mudslides affected passenger and freight rail service. (To extrapolate, in December 2010 sixteen mudslides affected 90 train trips.) Even with Amtrak’s generous on-time window (trains can be from ten to thirty minutes late and qualify as “on-time”), only about 62 percent of its trains arrive on time.
The mudslides aren’t helping at all, but Amtrak has no money to fund the environmental assessment needed before any work could actually being. Funds disbursed from the Florida allocation, however, went primarily to “shovel-ready” projects. So, Catch-22.
“While disappointing, our total share of ‘HSR’ funding ($781 million) remains impressive relative to our population size,” says Seattle Transit Blog, “and it speaks well of WSDOT’s preparedness in seeking these grants over the past three years.”
A commenter adds that, “The mudslide issue is as much an infrastructure issue as it is a liability issue,” referring to the legal requirement that passenger trains wait 48 hours after a slide. If WSDOT and Amtrak can get that rule amended, then a huge part of the problem is already dealt with.